There's a thread in Google's own help forum with this title:
"Is this a scam? Had a phone call from somebody claiming to be with Google stating that I had to pay"
That thread has a lot of company. Same question, asked constantly, by a different business owner every time.
Google does not cold call you to tell you there's a problem with your Business Profile, and it doesn't robocall you about your listing expiring. Google says so itself in its own help documentation about fraudulent calls.
The rest is worth reading, because contractors get hit with this harder than most, and there's a second kind of call that isn't a scam but will still eat your afternoon.
Why it lands on you specifically
Your phone number is public on purpose. That's the whole point of the listing.
So the minute you verify a profile, your number goes into a pile that gets scraped, sold, and dialed. One contractor described 200 unsolicited calls in two weeks after turning his listing on. That's what happens now when your number goes public.
You also make a good target because your listing matters to you. A guy who gets most of his calls from Google Maps hears "your listing is about to be removed" and his stomach drops. That reaction is the product they're selling.
What the scripts sound like
They vary, but they rhyme.
- The expiration. "Your Google listing is set to expire. Press one to speak with a specialist." Listings don't expire.
- The verification. "Your Google Maps verification is incomplete and your business will be removed from search." Real verification issues show up in your profile, not in a robocall.
- The final notice. "This is the final notice, your business listing has not been claimed." Urgency plus a deadline plus a callback number.
- The helpful update. Somebody who says they work with Google, offering to "optimize" or "manage" your profile for a monthly fee. This one's often not even lying about being a third party, just heavily implying otherwise.
That last one is the tricky one, because there are legitimate companies who manage profiles. I'm one of them. The difference is that a real one tells you who they are in the first sentence and doesn't open with a threat.
The tell
Three things, and if you only remember one, remember the first.
Urgency. Anything that needs a decision on this call is a sales tactic. Real support gives you time to log in and look for yourself. Nothing about your Google profile is on a clock that runs out during a phone call.
A payment on the call. There is no scenario where a stranger who called you needs a card number to keep your free listing alive.
A request for access. Asking for a code that just got texted to you, or for you to add them as a manager during the call, is the version that does the most damage. That's how they walk off with your account.
The two sentences that end it
You don't need to be clever or rude. You need to be boring.
"I don't take business calls I didn't ask for. If it's a real problem I'll see it in my account."
Then hang up. Don't press a number to be removed from the list, because on the automated ones that just confirms a live human answered. Don't argue, don't ask questions, don't try to figure out if this one's real. The real ones don't come this way.
If you're worried it might have been genuine, log into your profile and look. That takes 30 seconds and it's the only verification that counts.
Worth telling whoever else answers your phone, too. If your wife takes calls, or you've got somebody in an office, they need the same two sentences. A lot of these get paid because the person answering didn't know the answer and didn't want to be the one who let the listing lapse. That's the exact fear being sold, and it works better on somebody who isn't sure whose call it is to make.
Make it easy for them. "We don't buy anything over the phone, ever" is a rule anybody can follow without having to judge whether a caller sounds legitimate.
Where real notices actually show up
Google contacts you in your account and by email to the address that manages the profile. Notifications appear in the profile itself. If something's wrong, you'll see it when you log in.
So the habit worth building is simple: log into your Business Profile once a week anyway. If you're already posting to it weekly, you're logging in weekly, and every scare call gets answered by you looking at the actual account instead of trusting a voice.
That habit costs nothing and it turns this whole category of call into background noise.
The other flood, which isn't a scam
Separate problem, same phone.
After you go live you'll get pitched constantly. SEO, web design, lead services, directory listings, someone who has "noticed your website has errors." Some of these are real companies. Most are cold calling from a list, and a few are just fishing to see who picks up.
You can't stop it entirely. What you can do is decide once, in advance, that you don't buy anything from an inbound cold call. Ever. Some callers sell decent stuff. A decision made under pressure by a guy on a ladder is still a bad decision.
"Send me an email and I'll look at it tonight" ends 95 percent of those calls, because most of them won't bother. The ones that do send something real, you can evaluate when you're sitting down.
If you already paid, or already gave access
It happens to people who are not stupid. Don't spend a week being embarrassed about it, just move.
If a card was charged, call your bank and tell them what happened. If you gave somebody access to your profile, log in and remove any manager or owner you don't recognize, then change your Google account password and check the recovery email and phone on the account while you're in there.
You can edit a changed listing back yourself. Wrong hours, a changed phone number, a website pointed somewhere else, all of that is fixable from inside your own profile.
And report it. Google has a way to report third parties misrepresenting themselves, and the FTC takes reports on fraudulent calls. Neither will get your money back today. Both are worth the five minutes.
The version worth remembering
Google doesn't call. Your listing doesn't expire. Nobody who calls you needs a card number to keep it alive.
Everything else is a sales call, and you're allowed to hang up on a sales call.
Managing profiles is something I get paid for, and I'm still telling you to log in and check it yourself first, because most of the time nothing is wrong and the call was noise.
If somebody's got you spooked and you're not sure whether your profile is actually fine, send me your business name. I'll look at it from the outside and tell you what I see, and if it's clean I'll just say it's clean.