Everything You Need to Know
Straight answers about how a Spam Watch Campaign actually works, what it costs, and what we do and don't guarantee.
Getting Started
Does every business qualify to run a Spam Watch Campaign?+
Not every business has a presence in Google Maps, and you need at least one Google Maps listing to qualify. We also don't work with businesses or agencies whose own listings are lead generation or fake. If we find that a client's protected listing falls into either category, we reserve the right to terminate the account.
Why would we pay for a Spam Watch Campaign when we could just do it ourselves?+
You could. Information is easier to find than ever, and running a false competition audit yourself is possible. But doing it well, every month, without automation or a dedicated team, takes real time. The question worth asking is whether your time is worth more than the cost of having our team handle it for you.
How It Works
What does a Spam Watch Campaign do for me?+
We audit your competition in Google Maps and report listings that shouldn't be competing against you. Google Maps only has three spots in the map pack, and losing one to a fake or outdated listing is losing market share. From there, you have two options: try to outrank the listing, or report it. We take the reporting route. Reporting false competition is a clean, simple way to gain visibility in Google Maps.
Why is reporting fake and old listings considered so effective? Why not just outrank them?+
It comes down to time and money. Outranking a listing for every keyword it competes on costs far more than reporting it once. If Google accepts the report, that listing stops ranking against you entirely, for every one of those keywords. Compare that to the time and money it would take to outrank the same listing keyword by keyword.
Privacy, Compliance & Risk
Can anyone tell we are running a Spam Watch Campaign?+
No. There's no connection between your listing, your company, and us, not even one Google could see. Realistically, the only parties who would know are us, and possibly Stripe, our billing processor, if they connected your email to both your business and ours. Unless you tell someone yourself, there's no way for anyone to trace it back to you.
Do we need to give you access to our Google Maps listing?+
No. Our service never requires access to your Google Maps listing or your Gmail account.
Is there a risk of suspension when running a Spam Watch Campaign?+
No. Our process never requires login access to your Google account, so the service itself can't trigger a suspension on your listing.
Are we breaking Google's terms of service?+
No. We use suggest edits and the redressal form, the exact tools Google provides the public for reporting listings like this. Our platform just makes that process turnkey and scalable for your business or agency.
Billing & Account Structure
How does the billing work?+
We charge a monthly subscription per Google Maps listing. If your business has three listings, you can open up to three subscriptions. There's no contract and no early termination fee.
Why do I need a monthly subscription? Wouldn't the work be done in the first month?+
New fake and outdated listings can enter your market at any time, so the work is never really finished. There's also no guarantee that every listing we report in month one gets removed that same month, some take longer. And a removed listing can come back. When it does, our system catches it and puts it back in the queue to be re-audited.
Is there a limit to how many Google Maps listings we can have under our Spam Watch Campaign?+
You'll have one account, and under that account you can open a subscription for as many locations as you'd like protected. Each listing takes one subscription. You can also claim as many additional listings as you want at no cost, our free whitelist program. As with protected listings, we don't allow claiming a listing that breaks Google's guidelines, and we reserve the right to terminate accounts found doing so.
Guarantees
What are your guarantees?+
We guarantee a monthly audit of your competition in Google Maps, based on the keywords you give us. We'll identify any fake, outdated, and keyword-stuffed listings and report them to Google through suggest edits and the redressal form. We also guarantee our dashboard will show you every listing removed, why it was removed, and whether it comes back.
What do you not guarantee?+
We don't guarantee the removal of any specific listing. Be cautious of any service that claims otherwise, that decision always belongs to Google, not to us or anyone else running the audit. Only Google could guarantee a removal, and they don't share that kind of information with the public. Our data shows that a good number of listings do get removed over time, which is why the service works. But we'll never promise we can remove any one listing for you.
Keywords & Results
If your service is working, why am I still finding spam, old, and keyword-stuffed listings in Google Maps?+
A couple of reasons are common. First, onboarding covers five keywords. If you're searching variations of those keywords, or entirely different ones, you'll see different results than we do. Second, our data comes from SerpAPI, one of the best tools available for understanding how a business ranks in Google Maps, but it can't surface every listing that exists. As we clear out current false competition, new listings can appear to fill the gap, and some of those may be false competition too. Since audits run monthly, anything that shows up after one audit and before the next won't be caught until the following month.
How many keywords can I protect?+
Up to five keywords per subscription right now. We plan to offer higher keyword limits in the future.
What keywords do you recommend adding to your service?+
Two approaches work well. Pick the five keywords most valuable to your business, or pick the five keywords you already know are full of spam and old listings. A personal injury attorney, for example, might choose Car Accident Attorney, Personal Injury Attorney, Truck Accident Attorney, Medical Malpractice Attorney, and Nursing Home Abuse Attorney. Whichever approach you take, avoid picking keywords that are just variations of each other, like Personal Injury Attorney and Personal Injury Lawyer, since you won't get as much value out of the overlap. The choice is ultimately yours, and if only one keyword matters to your business, that's a fine place to start.
Could a Spam Watch Campaign report our own listing?+
No. Opening a subscription automatically whitelists your own listing, so it never shows up in our audits. If you manage multiple locations and don't want to protect all of them right away, you can claim them instead, a free service that whitelists a listing without opening a paid subscription for it. We don't allow lead generation or fake listings on the platform, claimed or protected, and we reserve the right to cancel any account found adding them.
Still Have a Question?
Schedule a call and we'll walk you through exactly how a Spam Watch Campaign would work for your business.