Owen Sound and area businesses are being contacted by a person identifying themselves as an employee of Google who states that “your business listing on Google is not verified” and has been flagged in “non-maintenance” status. According to the caller, this would result in people not finding your business in a Google search. When asked if they actually represented Google, they offered a badge number but no actual contact information. They went on to state that we had been contacted multiple times by Google through email to update our listing.
During the call we checked the actual status of the page in question on Google which confirmed it was verified. When this information was shared with the caller, they stated that it would incorrectly report the status because we were checking from the IP address associated with the page. The caller did not realize that we had checked on a cell phone with a different IP address. When this was shared with the caller, they hung up.
We were unable to determine what the real intent was behind the call, whether to sell a bogus service or use that as a ruse to obtain credit card information. This could happen if you actually paid them to fix the “problem” and pay with a credit card.
The persistence and responses the caller used could easily confuse and convince an unsuspecting business owner that there was a serious problem with their Google business listing that needed attention.
