What kind of ranking scam is this?

[bdlowery]

I'm researching carpet cleaning companies in an area and I found 10+ businesses all ranking highly in the local map pack (first page), all with the same copy + paste websites, generic stock photos, and tons of fake AI reviews.

What kind of scam is this? Is it someone who doesn't live in the area outsourcing leads to cheap labor? Rank and rent? Has anyone seen something like this before?

Examples:

• https://share.google/EZQOkWWmfs9gCHP1q
• https://share.google/GswjiKjxKPPzBGUyl
• https://share.google/Stn0gtnW6ZdLdzfjh
• https://share.google/5rlBGPWgYpXKmyYC0
• https://share.google/WHxulYCE2uYtCLJHE
• https://share.google/j5mdRv6CvV3fq2ZOf
• https://share.google/hUylAEQ4b0p1xgcbx
• https://share.google/sohmmTKUt1GYiFui6
• https://share.google/XOXLnfNZ5RXHfrDka
• https://share.google/2tc3hb5zt1ZaIcAcA
• https://share.google/D6uDBs1YPjCuoU77w

I used the gs location changer chrome extension to set my location to Sacramento, CA and searched "carpet cleaning near me", but you can find a lot of these just searching "carpet cleaning sacramento"

 

[science4me]

Staying on trend to learn more about this phenomenon

 

[keyserholiday]

It's lead-generation spam. It's either rank and rent or they sell leads to multiple people. Rank and rent, the person who creates the websites and Google Business Profiles (GBPs) owns both and rents them to one company. When they straight-out sell the leads, they offer the leads to several companies for a fee.

Is this negatively impacting one of your clients?

 

[fisicx]

This sort of thing has been around for years. A bit of digging and you can find the same thing for all sorts of services. It's just someone who is better at marketing than the competition. You may find it's a short term win - they get in a load of leads (which they sell on) until Google catches up and everything gets penalized or banned. They then rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

 

[bdlowery]

This sort of thing has been around for years. A bit of digging and you can find the same thing for all sorts of services. It's just someone who is better at marketing than the competition. You may find it's a short term win - they get in a load of leads (which they sell on) until Google catches up and everything gets penalized or banned. They then rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

"It's just someone who is better at marketing than the competition."

This is not marketing... it's literally spam. The companies are verified somehow at bogus locations (maybe from the old postcard era?), all of the reviews are fake and AI generated, all of the websites are fake copy + paste jobs with keyword spam....

I attached a review where the AI review they copied was messed up lmao.