Is it illegal for a company to sell me fake Google reviews?

Buying or posting fake reviews breaches Australian Consumer Law, and the ACCC has pursued enforcement action against businesses that did it — regardless of whether a third-party service arranged the reviews. The legal exposure sits with the business whose profile benefits, not just the seller.

Can a scam caller actually get my Google Business Profile suspended?

A scammer can't suspend your profile directly, but if you hand over your login credentials, they can make changes that trigger a suspension — or lock you out entirely. The real risk is giving away access, not the phone call itself.

I got a call claiming to be from Google about my business listing — is that legitimate?

Google doesn't cold-call businesses to sell verification, ask for payment to maintain a free listing, or request your account password over the phone. Treat any such call as a scam, hang up, and check your account directly by logging into business.google.com yourself.

Reputation

Google Review Scams: What Small Business Owners Should Watch For

Not every offer to "boost your Google rating" is legitimate — some are expensive nothing, others can get your profile suspended, and a few are outright fraud. Here's how to tell a real reputation service from a scam.

Updated 9 July 2026 · 6 min read

The pitch usually sounds a little too good

If you've ever received a cold call or email promising to "boost your Google rating," "remove all your bad reviews," or deliver "50 guaranteed five-star reviews this month," you've been targeted by one of the more common scams aimed at small business owners. These offers prey on a real anxiety — a handful of bad reviews can genuinely hurt — with a solution that either doesn't work, breaks the rules, or is an outright fraud.

The tell is usually in the certainty. No legitimate service can guarantee a specific star rating or promise removal of reviews that don't violate Google's policies, because neither of those things is within any third party's control. Anyone promising it either doesn't understand how Google works, or is being deliberately misleading.

The scams worth knowing about

A few patterns show up again and again:

Bought or "farmed" reviews — a service sells you a batch of five-star reviews from accounts with no real connection to your business. These are detected and removed by Google at a steady rate, and buying them breaches both Google's policies and Australian Consumer Law.
Review "removal" fees — an offer to get negative reviews taken down for a fee. There is no official mechanism to pay for review removal; Google removes reviews only for policy violations, assessed through its own free flagging process, never through a paid intermediary.
Phishing calls posing as Google support — a caller claims to be from Google, says your listing is at risk of suspension, and asks for your login details or a payment to "keep it verified." Google doesn't cold-call businesses asking for account credentials or card details to maintain a free listing.
Fake invoices for a "Google Business Profile verification fee" — Google Business Profile is free to create, verify, and maintain. Any invoice implying otherwise isn't from Google.
Listing "hijack" threats — a message claiming to control your profile and demanding payment to "release" it. Genuine ownership disputes exist, but this pattern is more often a bluff designed to create panic.

Why buying your way to a better rating backfires anyway

Even setting aside the legal risk, purchased reviews rarely deliver a lasting result. Google's detection systems are specifically built to catch clusters of reviews with no genuine visit history behind them, and a sweep that removes dozens of fake reviews at once can also trigger a wider review of your whole profile.

The ACCC has taken enforcement action against Australian businesses for exactly this — publishing fake or incentivised reviews is treated as misleading conduct under the Australian Consumer Law, and it's the business named on the profile that carries the risk, not the service that sold the reviews.

How to tell a legitimate reputation tool from a scam

Plenty of real, useful tools exist to help you manage reviews — the difference from a scam is usually visible if you know what to check.

A legitimate tool helps you respond to and monitor your existing genuine reviews — it doesn't promise to generate fake ones or guarantee a specific star rating.
It never asks for your Google account password. Legitimate integrations use Google's own sign-in flow, where you grant access without ever handing your credentials to a third party.
It's transparent about who runs it — a real business with a findable ABN, a real address, and reviews of its own.
It doesn't threaten you with suspension or ranking loss to create urgency for a sale.

If you think you've already been caught out

None of this is embarrassing to have happened to you — these scams are specifically designed to sound plausible. If you think you've paid for fake reviews or handed over account access:

Check your Google Business Profile settings for any third-party users or apps you don't recognise, and remove their access.
If you gave out payment details, contact your bank to check for unauthorised charges.
Report the scam to Scamwatch (scamwatch.gov.au), run by the ACCC — it helps other businesses avoid the same offer.
If fake reviews were posted on your behalf without your knowledge, consider disclosing this to Google support rather than waiting for their systems to catch it — a business that self-reports is usually treated more favourably than one that gets caught.