Google Business Profile Photo Scam Is Stealing Your Calls

What Do I Do If I Find a Fake Photo on My Listing?

Google’s official removal path runs through the photo itself. Follow Google’s instructions for reporting inappropriate photos on your Business Profile: open your profile, select Photos, choose the offending image, select Report a problem, pick a reason, and submit. Google states plainly in that documentation that the review process can take several business days, and it warns that filing duplicate reports on the same image can actually slow the review down.

Pick your reason carefully, because the reason code routes your report. An image carrying a competitor’s or scammer’s phone number under your business name falls squarely under the Fake and Misleading Content, Impersonation, and Misrepresentation sections of Google’s Maps user generated content policy. Choose the option closest to impersonation or misleading content rather than a vague quality complaint.

Then escalate rather than wait. The September case documented by Search Engine Roundtable’s report on the Maps photo scam was resolved in roughly a day after it became public, while the owner’s earlier support ticket produced only a generic reply. Report the contributor account itself, not just the single photo, since one account is typically hitting many listings at once. Post the evidence in the Google Business Profile Help Community, where product experts monitor threads. If the fake number has already taken calls, notify your customers directly through a Google post and your usual channels.

How Do I Make My Profile a Harder Target?

You cannot switch off contributor photos. You can make your listing harder to hijack and easier to defend, and most of it takes an afternoon.

• Claim and verify every location you operate. Google states in its official guidance on protecting your Business Profile that unclaimed locations are far more vulnerable to hijacking.
• Upload a strong set of real photos with your correct phone number visible on vehicles, signage, and uniforms, so a fake number sitting beside them looks obviously wrong.
• Audit who has owner and manager access, and remove former employees and old agencies immediately.
• Keep your phone number identical on your website, your profile, and every directory listing, because inconsistency makes a fake number look plausible.
• Track your call volume weekly so a sudden unexplained drop triggers an investigation instead of a shrug.

Call tracking matters more than owners expect here. A profile hijack does not throw an error message. It just makes the phone quieter. If you already watch your call volume and your booking rate, the anomaly shows up fast, which is one reason we pair profile monitoring with conversion rate optimization for our service business clients. It is the same discipline that protects you when Google’s AI starts calling your business to confirm details on its own.

Common Mistakes Business Owners Make

• Assuming the top image on the listing is one they uploaded. Google chooses which photo leads, and it is often a contributor image.
• Trying to bury a fake photo by uploading twenty new ones. Google ranks profile photos by its own signals, not by recency, so the fake image usually stays put.
• Filing the same report over and over. Google’s documentation says duplicate submissions can delay the review.
• Reporting the photo but never reporting the contributor account behind it, which leaves the same scammer free to re upload.
• Checking the profile only from the owner dashboard, which does not show the listing the way a customer actually sees it.
• Waiting quietly on a support ticket. In the September 2026 case, public escalation is what produced the removal.
• Treating this as an isolated incident. The same contributor pattern also drives review spam and the naming violations behind many Google Business Profile suspensions.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Can someone really upload a photo to my Google Business Profile without asking me?
   Yes. Any Google account with Maps contributor access can add a photo to any business listing, and you receive no approval request before it goes live. This is a standard Maps feature, and it is exactly the opening the Google Business Profile photo scam exploits.

2. How long does Google take to remove a fake photo?
   Google’s own documentation says the review can take several business days. In the September 2026 case, the offending contributor was removed one day after the situation was reported publicly, which suggests visible escalation moves faster than a quiet support ticket.

3. Will adding more of my own photos push the fake one down?
   No. Google decides which images lead your profile based on its own relevance signals, not upload order, so flooding the gallery does not reliably hide a fake image. The owner in the reported case added a logo and a cover image and the fake photo stayed prominent.

4. How do I know if a photo on my listing is fake?
   Look for text baked into the image, especially a phone number, and compare it digit by digit with your real line. Then tap the contributor name: an account with many uploads across unrelated businesses in other cities is the clearest signal of the Google Business Profile photo scam.

5. Does this affect how AI assistants describe my business?
   It can. Assistants like Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity draw on public profile data, and inconsistent contact information weakens the confidence they place in your listing. Keeping your name, address, and phone number consistent everywhere is a core part of AI search optimization.

The Bottom Line for Your Business

A fake image with a stranger’s phone number is one of the cheapest attacks available against a local business and one of the hardest to notice, because nothing in your dashboard breaks. The Google Business Profile photo scam costs you the call, the job, and the customer’s trust all at once, and the only reliable defense is checking your public listing on a schedule rather than assuming it looks the way you left it. FOG Digital Marketing works with San Antonio service businesses on exactly this kind of profile integrity work, and if you want a second set of eyes, start with a free Google Business Profile audit.