How to Report Fake Home Service Listings on Google

To report a fake home service listing on Google, open it in Google Maps and choose Suggest an edit, then Place is closed or not here, then Offensive, harmful, or misleading; when the name, address, phone number or website points to fraud, file Google's Business Redressal Complaint form, which takes a batch of Maps links at once. The reason to start now came on May 11, 2026, when the Justice Department, on behalf of the FTC, and the state of Illinois sued Premium Home Service, alleging it posed as thousands of local HVAC, plumbing, electrical and garage-door companies in listings that showed up in Google's local results, then routed callers through more than 7,600 local phone numbers to representatives mostly outside the United States.

Every one of those calls started with someone looking for a local company, and in a market where you run a branch, some of them were looking for a company like yours. The complaint says the scheme deceived well over 100,000 consumers since 2018, and FTC Commissioner Mark Meador wrote that it diverted customers "away from reliable local providers with genuine reviews." For a brand with 20 or 200 locations, listings like these can sit in the same Maps results as your branches, and nothing in Google alerts you when a new one appears near a branch, so finding them is a market-by-market job that belongs with the rest of your location-level profile and listings work. The second job is inside your own house. The complaint says staff, relatives and SEO vendors wrote the reviews, and the FTC's review rule reaches fake reviews a business procures from its own employees and agents.

Last verified: September 29, 2026.

What the complaint alleges

The complaint, filed in the Northern District of Illinois as case 1:26-cv-05415, describes a Chicago-area company, B.E.S.T. GDR, LLC, doing business as Premium Home Service, that since at least 2018 has built online profiles for home repair companies that don't exist. According to the complaint, the names were invented and often paired a trade phrase such as "heating and cooling" with a town, the addresses belonged to unrelated places or to nothing at all, and the phone numbers, more than 7,600 of them across more than 250 area codes, looked local. The listed addresses it gives as examples include a donut shop, a wine bar, an indoor golf facility and the fountain in a town square.

Callers reached representatives who, the complaint says, answered in the fake company's name, promised a technician within a same-day window, and charged a dispatch fee of typically $49 to $149, or about the same for an annual membership. The jobs then went to third-party providers, some of them unlicensed, and in many cases, according to the complaint, nobody showed up at all.

If you run marketing for a multi-location brand, read the review allegations twice. The complaint alleges that the company, its employees and their relatives, the owner and his family, and others acting for it posted five-star reviews under invented customer profiles, some with real people's photos, and it says the company admits using third parties, including search engine optimization providers, to write and change reviews posted on Google. One "reviewer" allegedly posted 29 five-star reviews of the company's invented electricians in different cities around January 2024, several in nearly the same words. The complaint also says the fake reviews kept coming after the FTC sent a civil investigative demand on or about February 6, 2024.

The United States brings five counts: three for deception under Section 5 of the FTC Act, one under the Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule at 16 CFR 465.2(a), (b) and (c), and one under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act for false statements used to collect card and bank details. Illinois adds three counts under its consumer fraud and deceptive trade practices laws. Minnesota's attorney general filed a separate lawsuit the same day in Hennepin County, saying the company posed as hundreds of fictitious local businesses across that state.

On July 17, 2026, the defendants moved to dismiss all or part of the complaint. Their motion argues, among other points, that the review rule can't reach conduct from before it took effect on October 21, 2024, and that the three FTC Act deception counts can't support monetary relief or civil penalties. The court stayed discovery on July 31 and the briefs were complete on August 21, according to the public docket copy on CourtListener. As of September 29, 2026 we could not confirm a ruling.

Why fake listings take calls from real branches

Google catches a lot of this. In an April 16, 2026 post it said it removed over 13 million fake Business Profiles in 2025 and blocked or removed over 292 million policy-violating reviews. The complaint shows what gets through anyway: one of its screenshots, captured October 2, 2025, shows a company it says the defendants invented in Google's results for an electrician search in a Florida town, nearly 20 months after the FTC's investigative demand.

The setup favors the fake listing. It picks up the phone, shows a street address in your town and carries a handful of perfect reviews, so it competes for the same "furnace repair" search as your branch, and the customer who calls it believes they found a local company. One profile pictured in the complaint showed 4.7 stars from 14 reviews, and a customer quoted in the complaint said he likely wouldn't have hired a company rated under 4 stars.

A thin profile with a high rating doesn't keep a business out of AI answers either. In the Cheers Market Baseline, 23.5% of the 8,523 Google AI Mode answers that showed rated business cards between August 31 and September 20, 2026 named at least one business with fewer than 20 reviews, while 3.7% named any business under 4.0 stars. That is an association in the answers we recorded. A small review count usually means a young or small real business, and nothing in our data says any business the engine named was fake. It does mean a listing built the way the complaint describes isn't screened out by its review count, so I'd treat reporting fake listings as part of your AI search work too.

How to tell a fake local listing from a real branch

No single sign proves fraud. New branches start with few reviews, and plenty of legitimate brands, possibly including yours, route calls to a central team; Google's guidelines ask for a local number instead of a call-center line only "whenever possible." What the complaint describes is a pattern, and Google's Guidelines for representing your business on Google give you the standard to test it against: the name the business uses in the real world, a real location or a hidden address with a service area instead of a virtual office, a phone number under the business's direct control, and one profile per location.

Hold your own portfolio to that test before you report anyone else, and keep answering Google's notices about customers' suggested edits to your profiles, which now carry a four-day deadline. If an agency ever set up a profile at a mailbox or an unstaffed coworking desk, fix that first; Google's rules on virtual offices for home services walk through it.

How to find fake listings in each market

Start with the searches your customers run. For each market, search your core service plus the city in Google Maps, such as "water heater repair" and the town name, and write down every listing on the first screen you don't recognize. Then check each one four ways:

• The address. Look at it on Street View and check whether the suite exists. Several of the complaint's addresses belonged to restaurants and shops with no connection to home repair.
• The name. Search it in your state's business registry; the complaint says many of the names were never registered.
• The phone. Call it from a company line, ask where the shop is and who would come out, and write down exactly how the call is answered.
• The reviews. Open the reviewer profiles. The complaint's reviewers posted five-star reviews of similar companies in distant states around the same month, in near-identical words, and the owner replies arrived in batches.

Keep one row per listing: the public Maps link (Google's form only takes links that start with https://www.google.com/maps), dated screenshots, the search that surfaced it, and your call notes. That row is both your evidence and your recheck list.

Don't answer a fake listing with reviews of your own. Google's Maps content policy bars posting content on a competitor's place to undermine its reputation, and it treats a review from an industry competitor as a conflict of interest.

Which Google report to use

Google keeps separate paths for separate problems, and its help page asks you to use the right one:

• A listing that looks like it doesn't exist: in Google Maps, Suggest an edit, then Place is closed or not here, then Offensive, harmful, or misleading.
• A name, address, phone number or website that points to fraud, or a business that doesn't exist: the Business Redressal Complaint form. It asks for your name and email, the organization being harmed, which content is malicious, the public Maps links, and an explanation that quotes the exact content. Google recommends 10 to 100 links per submission and accepts a spreadsheet.
• A business that offers incentives for reviews: in the Maps app, Suggest an edit, then Report business conduct.
• A fake review on one of your own profiles: the review's report option and Google's Reviews Management Tool, covered in removing fake Google reviews across multiple locations.
• Information that's simply wrong, with no sign of fraud: a normal suggested edit. The redressal form says not to use it for that.

Set expectations with whoever owns this. Google says it can't guarantee action on a redressal complaint and won't update you on its status, so the only way to know is to look. I'd recheck every reported listing 30 days later and resubmit with new evidence if it's still live.

When to go to the FTC or your state attorney general

Google decides what stays on Maps; regulators decide whether a pattern becomes a case. The FTC takes reports of fraud, scams and bad business practices at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and your state attorney general's consumer protection office takes complaints as well. Minnesota's attorney general asked residents to report this scheme or anything like it. File when you see the same pattern across several markets, or when customers tell you they called what they thought was your number and reached a stranger. If a listing uses your brand name, logo or trademark, talk to counsel before you do more than report it.

The FTC is also looking at the platforms. On September 24, 2026 it asked for public comment on whether to update its Rule on Impersonation of Government and Businesses to address search engines, social media and other platforms whose ad-optimization tools may help scammers impersonate real businesses, including whether platforms should vet advertisers and remove impersonation ads. The notice centers on paid ads and the tools that tune them, not on free Maps listings like the ones in this case. Comments are due 60 days after it appears in the Federal Register, and as of September 29, 2026 we found no Federal Register publication, so the deadline isn't set yet. The notice says comments carry more weight with evidence behind them, and a brand that has watched someone run ads in its name has exactly that.

Audit the reviews your own people write

The complaint's review allegations track the FTC's review rule, in force since October 21, 2024. Section 465.2 bars a business from writing fake reviews, from buying reviews it knew or should have known were fake, and from procuring reviews from its officers, managers, employees or agents, or their immediate relatives, that misrepresent who the reviewer is or what they experienced. Section 465.4 bars offering anything in exchange for reviews that express a particular sentiment, and 465.5 covers reviews by insiders that don't disclose the relationship.

For a franchise system or a roll-up, that becomes a short set of questions. Ask every agency and SEO vendor, in writing, whether it writes, buys or edits reviews for any location, since the complaint says third parties, including SEO providers, did that for the defendants. Ask franchisees and branch managers whether staff or their families review their own branch. Check technician bonuses and contests for anything tied to five-star ratings, which the rule's sentiment clause reaches, and for review quotas, which Google's Maps policy bars. Then pull the review history for any branch with a sudden run of short, similar five-star reviews, because Google treats unusual volumes or patterns of reviews as a sign of rating manipulation.

Another FTC review action this year makes the same point outside home services. On July 15, 2026 it finalized an order against the supplement seller TruHeight, whose complaint alleged reviews written by its own employees and vendors and by customers offered free product or a discount for a five-star review; the order imposes a $4 million judgment, suspended after TruHeight and its principals pay $750,000.

None of this makes asking for reviews risky. The rule's purchase and insider clauses exclude reviews that come from general requests to customers, Google lets you ask every customer, and the compliant review collection playbook covers neutral wording, incentives and staff targets.

What to do this week

Run one sweep across every market you serve, for your highest-volume service. Say you have 40 locations and five regional managers; that's about eight markets each. On Monday, give each manager a sheet with their markets and one search per market, and have them list every Maps listing on the first screen they don't recognize. On Tuesday and Wednesday, they check each unfamiliar listing's address, registry record and reviewer histories. On Thursday, they call the ones that still look wrong from a company phone and log how the calls are answered. On Friday, put every listing that fails into Business Redressal Complaint submissions with the Maps links and your notes, send them, and put a 30-day recheck on the calendar. Any problem the sweep finds with your own profiles goes to the top of next week's list.

Sources

• Complaint, United States and People of the State of Illinois v. B.E.S.T. GDR, LLC (d/b/a Premium Home Service). U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, case 1:26-cv-05415, filed May 11, 2026, read September 29, 2026. Source of every allegation about the listings, calls, fees, reviews, the civil investigative demand, the counts and the rule sections cited.
• FTC and Illinois Take Action to Stop Deceptive Conduct by Company that Created Thousands of Business Listings of Fake Local Home Repair Businesses. Federal Trade Commission, May 11, 2026. The FTC's summary of the case and the Commission's 2-0 vote to refer it to the Justice Department.
• Concurring Statement of Commissioner Mark R. Meador. Federal Trade Commission, May 11, 2026. Source of the quote on diverting customers from local providers.
• Attorney General sues Illinois-based home services broker for deceiving homeowners by posing as local businesses. Minnesota Attorney General, May 11, 2026. The separate Hennepin County lawsuit and the invitation to report similar schemes.
• Docket, United States of America v. B.E.S.T. GDR, LLC, 1:26-cv-05415. CourtListener copy of the public docket, read September 29, 2026, last entry shown August 21, 2026. Source of the July 17 motion to dismiss, the July 31 discovery stay and the briefing dates; CourtListener notes its copy may not be up to date.
• FTC's 2026 enforcement approach to fake reviews takes shape: Takeaways for companies. DLA Piper, July 27, 2026. Independent report of the July 17 motion and the TruHeight order.
• 16 CFR Part 465, Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials. eCFR, read September 29, 2026; sections effective October 21, 2024. Text of sections 465.2, 465.4 and 465.5 and the exemption for general requests.
• FTC Approves Final Order Against TruHeight for Deceptive and Unsubstantiated Advertising of Supplements for Kids and Teens. Federal Trade Commission, July 15, 2026. The TruHeight review allegations, the $4 million judgment and the $750,000 payment.
• FTC Seeks Public Comment on Whether to Update Rule on Impersonation of Government and Businesses to Address Platforms' Role in Promoting Impersonation Scams. Federal Trade Commission, September 24, 2026, with the proposed Federal Register text. Scope of the inquiry and the 60-day comment window; a Federal Register search on September 29, 2026 found no publication yet.
• Report a business on Google Maps. Google Maps Help, undated, read September 29, 2026. The Suggest an edit paths and the pointer to the Business Redressal Complaint form.
• Business Redressal Complaint Form. Google Business Profile Help, undated, read September 29, 2026. What the form covers, the fields it asks for, the 10 to 100 link guidance, and Google's note that it can't guarantee action or report status.
• Guidelines for representing your business on Google. Google Business Profile Help, undated, read September 29, 2026. Name, address, virtual office, service-area and phone rules.
• Prohibited and restricted content. Google Maps user contributed content policy, undated, read September 29, 2026. Fake engagement, conflicts of interest, staff review quotas, unusual review patterns and content posted to undermine a competitor.
• New ways we're protecting businesses on Maps. Google, April 16, 2026. Over 13 million fake Business Profiles removed and over 292 million policy-violating reviews blocked or removed in 2025.
• Cheers Market Baseline: 34,742 answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode to 32 home-services questions in 100 US and Canadian metros, August 31 to September 20, 2026. The two Google AI Mode figures use the 8,523 answers that showed at least one rated business card. Associations only; business counts are lower bounds. Methodology.

Dylan Allen-Arnegård is the CEO & Co-Founder of Cheers, the local search platform for multi-location service businesses.