Inside the AI Voicemail Scam Targeting Your Google Business Profile

A late-night voicemail says your Google Business Profile has an “urgent keyword issue” and services may be disrupted by 5 p.m. On the surface, it sounds helpful; listen closely and it’s a masterclass in AI polish, repeated script lines, and a pitch designed to trigger fear before thought. We unpack why “keywords” don’t exist in Google Business Profile the way scammers imply, how to spot synthetic cadence, and the real risks that begin the moment you call back or share your screen.

From there, we widen the lens to a tougher reality: even official platform reps—Google and Meta—can lean on pressure and half-truths when end-of-quarter incentives hit. We share how to handle those calls without burning bridges or your budget: ask for recommendations in writing, keep account control, and verify changes against business goals. You’ll hear practical ways to evaluate advice, like testing auto-created assets in a contained environment, monitoring search terms and creatives daily, and prioritizing exclusions, measurement, and brand safety over shiny toggles that promise quick wins.

Most important, we offer a simple playbook to stay safe and sane. Verify alerts inside the platform, not via email links or caller prompts. Inspect sender domains, avoid inbound links, and never grant access on the spot. Build a routine that transforms urgency into a checklist so your team can protect data, ad spend, and reputation. If you’ve seen suspicious messages or high-pressure pitches, send them our way—sharing examples helps everyone spot the patterns faster.

If this helped, follow the show, leave a review, and pass it to a business owner who needs a calmer plan for the next “urgent” call.

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Transcript

The Suspicious Voicemail

SPEAKER_02 0:00

So I got the weirdest text message yesterday from a client. Um it was pretty late at night, but let me read it to you. So it said, I've been in and out of service all day, just listened to this. Is this legit? If so, exactly what could it be regarding? And it was a voicemail. So I was like, all right. So he sent me the voicemail recording, and this is what it said.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Hey, this is Michael from the Business Help Center. Um, we're having an urgent issue with the keywords on your Google business listing, and would like to get this fixed before the end of the day so it doesn't disrupt services. So please call us today at your earliest convenience. 877-306-3088. That's 877-306-3088. Um our office is closed at 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time today, so please call us back before then. But uh again, we're having an urgent issue with the keywords on your Google business listing and would like to get this fixed before the end of the day so it doesn't disrupt services. Uh please call us as soon as you can. 877-306-3088. Thanks. Talk to you soon. Okay.

Red Flags: “Keywords” On GBP

SPEAKER_02 1:10

That's very interesting. All right. So what are what's your first red flag?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Well, you don't really add keywords on a Google business profile.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

That's a big one. Like if you understand Google business profile at all, you're like, wait, I don't understand. What is anybody talking about?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

You add business categories.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

But like he said a couple times like keywords.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Yeah right. There is there's a there's a if to me, it's obviously AI. Um, and there's some it's convincing, though. It's very convincing. Like, I think a big convincing part is when he reads his phone number, which I'll play it again, and then he reads his phone number again, but pauses between the the three sets of numbers, and it makes it sound six three zero eight eight.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

That's eight seven seven three zero six three zero eight.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

You can even hear him inhale.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Which is crazy. And uh there's also he doesn't say who he's with. He just says, Hey, this is Kevin, blah blah blah, and just goes in. Yeah, he doesn't actually give like a business, like what it is. He doesn't even say I'm from Google.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Nothing. It just says there's problems with your keywords and stuff. Um there's also one other there's one other giveaway which I caught after listening to the second time.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

And would like to get this fixed before the end of the day so it doesn't disrupt services.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

So wait. That's the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

And would like to get this fixed before the end of the day so it doesn't disrupt services.

AI Tells And Script Loops

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Listen to the end of it. It's it's the exact same words, exact same cadence. So, like, if he repeat himself, that's fine. But it wouldn't sound identical. He'd say it different inflection or whatever.

unknown 2:54

Please call us back before then.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

But uh again, we're having an urgent issue with the keywords on your Google business listing, and would like to get this fixed before the end of the day so it doesn't disrupt services.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

It's it's it is the exact same. Right. And it's like, oh, that's wild. But it just shows like all these scams. And and first of all, this could just be what this could be is like a marketing company that is trying to get a client so they're reaching out to people, they're leaving messages like this, so they just get a call back, and from then they try to get leads. It could be a lot more than that.

Scam Or Aggressive Lead Gen?

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Then maybe what they were meaning is like like for what your business is, it's not showing up when you type in specific search terms in Google, which is so you know off from like that's the only thing that I can really think of that he might mean. So, like if it was a real agency, I I would I would be hesitant in their competency.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Yeah, and I don't that's the thing, is like that was the best case scenario is that this is some sort of lead generation for a marketing agency, and they're just trying to get new clients, and this is the way they're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

But worst case, you call them, they have you log in and they do some sort of like screen sharing, they now have access to your Google profile.

Real Risk: Access And Screen Shares

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Like, you know, it it's it could be really and if it was a marketing company, you'd think that they would even say who they know that they would know well, they would either they would know that the book Google business profile doesn't have keywords, like they would be more specific. Like if we were like if we wanted to do it. And he mentioned to disrupt service, which doesn't make sense, which not with keywords, it's probably just a way to for urgency for people to call them. Yeah. Um, but anyway, I it's a crazy scam. Whatever it is, it's whatever the end of the thing is, it's just like I don't like that at all. And the fact it sounded so real, and I had a client contact me about it, being like, hey, what do we do about this? I don't know. It's like no, nothing's wrong.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

That reminds me, so I saw a buddy who's also a fellow digital marketer post something on LinkedIn of an email he got from a legit Google rep, legit Google rep saying that there's a massive issue in their Google Ads account, and it gave some like really scary verbiage on there. Basically, made them almost sound like their account is in major trouble. Oh, and he he screenshotted it, pointed out, and is like, this makes me furious because these get sent to the clients, and the clients think that there's something bad. Two days later, one of my clients got the same email, yeah, and it was from Google, like so, like even the Google reps are getting more shady because what they say is not true.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Yeah, right.

When Official Reps Use Fear

SPEAKER_00 5:56

You know, and and they they have incentives, especially towards the end of the quarter, to contact a lot of their clients, right? The the businesses that they're assigned to. And so they're getting more and more pushy. Like, I'm getting calls every day, like early in the morning, and it's Google reps, and it's it's just it's fascinating, it's weird, it's becoming more spammy tactics. So I just really don't know.

Meta Parallels And Sales Incentives

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Meta's been pretty much the same as well. Like, I do a lot more meta, you do a lot more Google, and the meta reps will call a lot as well, and they'll call day after day after day, and it's like, hey, we're good, like right, because the whole goal for meta rep sometimes are very helpful. Like, I I they can be super helpful, especially when things are acting weird, it's software happens, and they can have some back-end capabilities that we don't have, right? Right. So that's great. But they're also salespeople, and you have to go in there with a grain of salt because they'll be like, you know what? I think is that your campaign's actually getting throttled, so you should put double the amount of budget into it. Yeah, because they get to get out of the learning phase, like they get incentives from that stuff, and it's like, okay, so when you do that, so these emails come through and it's like, oh, you're you know, you're getting throttled and your budget's not high enough, and something's affecting this, and it's an urgent thing. It's like and and so then you have to have a yeah, you have to have a conversation with your clients, being like, hey, no, don't let everyone take a breath. We know what we're doing. It's just this is a tactic that they use.

Pushback Tactics With Platform Reps

Auto‑Created Assets: Proceed Carefully

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Right. If if you are a small business owner and you get these kind of scare tactics, even from Google reps, don't panic. Yeah, like just you can engage with them if you want. If you need help with your Google Ads account, just be aware what they're gonna do is they're gonna try to get you to spend more because that's what they want. That's how they make their money, is they get you to spend. They'll want you to turn on automatically created assets and things like that. With those, you have to be really careful. You can turn them on, but then you have to be prepared to monitor them often to see what's pulling up as automatically created, so that you can either allow it to keep running or pause it. Because you can pause automatically created assets within Google Ads. But I have not seen a whole lot of automatically created assets perform well. Yeah, and so I typically turn them off, and the Google reps will get really pushy. Yeah, and so what I like to do is I like to say something like, Oh, I have somebody that's gonna do these changes. How about you just tell me the changes and I'll pass them along? They still don't love that, but if I keep insisting, then they'll give you the changes, and then you can take those changes, put them into chat GPT, put them into Gemini, ask more questions about them to see if it really is beneficial. Um it it's it's sad when small business owners that don't know how to run Google Ads, things like that, when they just take everything that these Google reps say and apply it, like it's the best thing for them, which a lot of times it's not. Yeah, you know, I I I always joke around about like when running a Google Ads campaign, it's it's not even so much you know what to do, it's you know what not to do. Yeah, you know, yeah, right. There's so many things you could do, so many things people will tell you to do, and it's like you have to really understand like what not to do that these Google reps and everyone else is saying.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Yeah, and I think uh like from the scam here to Google reps to uh the million, hey, we can really help boost your SEO emails we get daily, or hey, we can increase your client meeting.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

We notice problems on your website, yeah, stuff like that.

Spotting Sophisticated Pitches

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Yeah, it's like and some of those aren't necessarily scams, so I'll say that, but there are a lot of scams out there targeting small business owners because we all want our businesses to grow. That's the whole point. So they they target you with the like proposition that we can help you grow. And I think we'll we'll continue to bring some of these scams because they're getting really sophisticated. They are like that. Call was a pretty dang good example of a sophisticated thing that it sounds extremely legit. He gave a name, he used words which a lot of small business owners like this client isn't gonna know a lot about keywords, and but he's heard keywords and he knows he has a good Google business profile. It kind of sounds like it should go together. Like that kind of stuff is going to get people tripped up and cost people a lot of money. So we'll continue to bring these to the podcast to kind of shed light on like, hey, be aware of these things because they're they're happening.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

And if you do get a warning, a lot of times if you have something that's truly an issue, log into that platform.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Yeah, independently.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Don't click on any, like if it's an email.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

No links that they send, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Go to the platform and see if there's a notification.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

And read the notification if there truly is a problem.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

And it will be there. It will be there. And I mean, Google's pretty good at whether it's on Google Analytics or Google Ads, it has a big red notification thing at the top. It's very clear when something's actually needs attention. So yeah, that's great advice.

Verify In‑Platform, Not By Link

SPEAKER_00 11:24

When you know, speaking of scams, like when you do get a kind of an email, that uh I I always try to pay attention to what like my eyes and forehead do whenever I'm reading something. If ever I'm like, I know something is like needs to be brought attention to. Like, just sometimes things just don't make a hundred percent sense. Yeah. And you kind of gotta listen to your gut. But if there ever is a question as to like what's real, what's not real, the one of the easiest things you can do is go look at the from email address. You you may have to click on the email address like to get it to expand and just look at who it's from. Yeah, make sure there's no misspellings in the domain, like if it was from Google, make sure that there's not three O's, you know. Yeah, right. And but like most of the time, like so. I've gotten emails from Shopify reps that talk about there's an issue with your site, like things like that. Yeah, and I click on that from address and it's a Gmail. Yeah, right. And it's just like, okay, no, this isn't this isn't legit. There's there's Facebook credit cards. Facebook will do it, meta, yeah. Yeah, so just click on that from address if nothing else. Yeah. But the second thing is never ever click on buttons or links in that. Like right-click on it, do copy link, paste it in a browser, look at it, and just make sure it's not sketchy one.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Don't do if you have any spidey sense that it's like this is not right, right? Just don't do it. Yeah, just literally don't do it. Because like if you don't do it, you're in the same position you were and nothing changes.

Email Hygiene And Domain Checks

SPEAKER_00 12:59

If you change if you click on it, most of the consequences behind that, like there won't be any serious consequences. Like, you know, like so. If you if they say, Oh, there's a problem, you look at the from address. If it's a Gmail or not from that company, no, it's spammed. Spam it.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

Yeah, just spam it, report it.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

If it does look legit from an actual email address that makes sense, then go into that platform. So, like if you get a credit card thing with Chase or something like that, right? Log into your Chase account and see what's going on there. Don't click on any links on those, even if they look legit. I typically don't click on them.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

And so, yeah, just a couple little things you can do to kind of protect your business.

Resources And How To Follow

SPEAKER_02 13:40

If you have any scams that you guys have seen in come through your email, your phone for your small business, send them to us so we can review and share them with others. So that way we can kind of spread these scams out so people understand what is going on, especially as they get more and more sophisticated. Thanks for listening. Every week we go over news, tips, tricks, and best practices to help you grow your small business. So follow and subscribe below.

Safer Click Habits And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 14:09

For more information, check out our website at launchingpros.com where you get access to a bunch of free resources and courses designed to launch and grow your business online. Check out the links below.