seo

Google Files Lawsuit Over Fake Business Profiles and Fake Reviews

Agroup of defendants with an alleged common owner have brought a whole new meaning to Search Engine Optimization. According to a lawsuit filed by Google, one Ethan Qiqi Hu set up more than 350 fraudulent business profiles and bolstered them with more than 14,000 fake reviews. Although this case has no tie to the financial services industry, it may be worth knowing how the scheme was carried out.

Defendants did not limit themselves to a niche. According to the complaint, they pretended to be repair shops, chiropractors, cleaning services, spas, painters, and more. They got around the verification step by skipping the mailed postcard and consenting to video chat inspections, in which defendants relied on movie-like sets and props to convince Google’s staff they were at whatever business in question. Once established, its alleged they relied on thousands of fake reviews from Bangladesh and Vietnam and then used the business profiles to either generate and sell leads or to sell the profiles themselves for a profit. Google said that the scheme undermines people’s faith in their products.

“In 2022, we protected more than 185,000 businesses from further abuse after detecting suspicious activity and abuse attempts,” Google said. “We also stopped 20 million attempts to create fake Business Profiles in 2022, and continue to invest in new technologies and processes to keep information on our products helpful and reliable.”

Google said that they took this legal action “against a bad actor for deceiving and scamming consumers.” It added that it hopes the lawsuit “builds awareness that we will not sit idly by as bad actors misuse our products.”

There’s a message here that one can’t rely on Google business profiles alone to authenticate legitimacy (looking at you underwriting) just as one may not be able to rely heavily on Google Maps.

Lawsuit Alleging Google Ad Abuse is Latest Iteration of the Search War

Google parent company Alphabet reported a record profit in Q1 2021 of $18 billion, up 162% from 2020. The firm attributes the success to a 32% surge in Covid related advertising sales.

A recent lawsuit from ten US States filed in a district court in Texas would argue that it’s not just a covid based bump in ad sales. According to the WSJ, in response to the lawsuit, Google accidentally confirmed what prosecutors suspected: they run a secret program called “Project Bernanke” that uses proprietary data to win bids on the firm’s ad exchange, netting hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. It amounts to a digital ad monopoly, which has already pushed Google’s parent company, Alphabet, to new highs.

Google’s ad exchange works like a stock exchange for marketing, as enterprises buy and sell placements and seconds of attention within the Google advertising universe. Firms bid on purchasing slots for ads in browsers and videos, and the auctions happen lightning fast in real-time. The lawsuit from ten states through the Taxes district court alleges Google used insider information on what they knew firms were willing to pay, to drive the prices as high as they would go.

Google is both on the buy and sell-side of its transactions and admitted in the papers WSJ saw that the data they mined to inform bids in Project Bernanke was not disclosed to publishers. The papers were quickly redacted and sealed by a judge days after WSJ found the details. The documents also mention “Jedi Blue,” a sweetheart deal between Google and Facebook. Instead of competing with Google ads, Facebook agreed to bid on and automatically win a fixed percentage of Google ad auctions. The deal originated back in 2018 when Facebook announced it was joining a competitor advertising program called “open bidding.” The states’ lawsuit alleges the firms must have made a side deal then, and the leaders of the internet ad market colluded; it’s why a bipartisan coalition of ten states is pushing back.

deBanked has tracked Google’s relationship with funders who use the search engine for marketing their products. After reducing the effetiveness of SEO and forcing most businesses into buying ad space out of necessity, the new lawsuit alleges Google rigged the game for themselves. The House always wins.

Back in 2012, deBanked’s Sean Murray first evaluated the SEO landscape. Google punished blogs that were printing out backlinks by the hundreds, nose-diving the competitive market for SEO rankings.

In 2014, Google’s “penguin algorithm” inflicted further pain.

In 2017, Google outright blocked merchant cash advance as an advertising keyword.