Junk Phone Call Alert: “Press 1 To Verify Your Google Listing”

Do you ever get those annoying calls saying “Press 1 to verify your Google listing?” I have many prospective clients who get those calls all… the… time… and aren’t sure what to do. Here’s a hint: you can ignore them, I promise. And here’s something you can actually do to make sure your “listing” is really “verified.”

Video Transcript

Hi there! Ron Stauffer with Lieder Digital. So here’s a topic that I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. Do you ever get voicemails like this?

“Your business is not verified. Press one now so we can verify your business with Google. If you’re the business owner, press one now. If your account is not verified, customers searching for your services on Google will not find your listing. Press one now to verify your listing. Press two to be removed from this list.”

Obnoxious Random Spam Caller

Okay. First of all, in case you couldn’t tell, that’s not Google calling you. Google doesn’t call businesses like that to verify your business. Google already—for the most part—already knows who you are, and you contact them to verify your business.

Second of all, pressing one does not verify your listing. And third of all, pressing two does not remove you from their list. If you get voicemails like this, delete them, ignore them. Don’t talk to those people. There are some serious scammers out there that use very misleading and tricky tactics to trick you into thinking that they are “with Google.” They’re not with Google. They are not related to Google at all… almost every single time I’ve seen these kinds of voicemails, and I’ve actually followed through, or I have potential clients who’ve followed through or who’ve asked me about them, it’s usually some third-party company that wants you to pay them $197 or $295 a month for three months or something like that.

Google doesn’t do that. Google has a system called “Google My Business,” and if you’re concerned about your business’s actual listing on Google, you can visit google.com/business, and log into the Google My Business dashboard, and then you will see whether your business has actually been verified in the past or needs to be verified.

Either way, you don’t need to call anybody, you don’t need to answer the phone, just visit google.com/business, and if your business does show up there, you’re good to go. Now, if your business doesn’t show up in a Google My Business dashboard, you’re going to have to claim it. So, basically, all you have to do is go to  google.com/business, and then it will ask you what your business name is. And if you type your name into the little box, it’s going to do a quick search and see if your business is already listed in Google My Business or not.

If it is, you can claim it that way. If it isn’t, you can submit your business to be included in Google My Business. Now, what happens after that is you will submit your request to be included. It may take a couple of days or a couple of weeks from that point where an actual human being who actually works for Google will review your request and look at your application and make sure all the data looks accurate like you’re not scamming them or creating some fake business, and then they will mail you a postcard to the address that you put in your application. A little tiny postcard with your name, your business name, and your address on one side, and on the flip side, it’ll have something like a six-digit PIN, and when you get that postcard, go to google.com/business, and then fill in that five or six-digit pin to verify your listing.

So, to recap: don’t answer phone calls. Don’t return voicemails from people who say things like, “this is Google calling; we need you to verify your listing.” If you do answer the phone and you get that robocall, don’t press one to be added to Google, and don’t press two to be removed from the list. Either way, they’re going to try to connect you to a person who’s going to try to scam you.

So. Ahhhhh… hopefully, that should be a weight off your shoulders. Ignore phone calls that talk about “verifying your business with Google.”

Thanks for listening. I’m Ron Stauffer with Lieder digital.