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Google Sues Company That Scams Small Businesses By Impersonating Google

Google announced it has filed a lawsuit against “scammers who sought to defraud hundreds of small businesses by impersonating Google through telemarketing calls.” You know, the calls from “Google” asking you to claim your business or update your business information. Those calls are most likely, not from Google but from a fake company pretending to be Google to scam you out of money.
Google said that this company also “created websites advertising the purchase of fake reviews, both positive and negative, to manipulate reviews of Business Profiles on Google Search and Maps.”
He said some scammers have tried to abuse and profit from the free Google Business Profile tool “through deceptive and predatory practices.” Google said in 2021 Google had to stop more than 12 million attempts from bad actors to create fake Business Profiles and nearly 8 million attempts from bad actors to claim Business Profiles that didn’t belong to them.
So it filed this lawsuit (PDF) against GVerifier Technologies LLC d/b/a G Verifiers and
G Verifier Pro; GVerifier Softech Services LLC d/b/a G Verifiers and G Verifier Pro; Shri Hari
GoMarketin LLC d/b/a GHyper, GHyperlocal, and G Verifications; and Infinity GoMarketin LLC
d/b/a GHyper, GHyperlocal, and G Verifications. The suit says these defendants allegedly “make false and misleading statements about their identity, products, and supposed affiliation with Plaintiff Google LLC (โGoogleโ) in order to maliciously exact payments and sell fake or worthless services.”
Local SEOs are happy about this because they are just tired of working with small businesses that get scammed by these companies.
Good to see Google hitting back against scammers. Small business owners need this help, and more.
https://t.co/VwdTk4bRivโ Amy Toman ๐ [email protected] (@BubblesUp) November 30, 2022
Great to hear that Google is suing one of the companies that offers paid reviews and other scams. @google https://t.co/atUEDZg3OS
โ Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) November 30, 2022
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
SEOs Trust YMYL Content Less If It Is AI-Generated

Lily Ray ran a Twitter poll asking SEOs if they trust content in the YMYL, your money or your life, category more, less or the same if it was written by AI. The vast majority of responses said they trust AI-generated content less than human-generated content.
Lily asked, “If a site offering Your Money, Your Life information/advice (health, finance, etc) indicates that the content was partially written using AI, does this make you trust the content:”
About 74% of the over 1,000 votes said AI-generated content would be trusted less, 22% said there is no difference – they would trust it the same and 4% said it would be trusted more.
Here is the poll with the “See answers” option:
I know itโs hard not to be biased as an SEO professional, but try anyway. ๐
If a site offering Your Money, Your Life information/advice (health, finance, etc) indicates that the content was partially written using AI, does this make you trust the content:
โ Lily Ray ๐ (@lilyraynyc) January 15, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Ads Now Supports Account-Level Negative Keywords

We knew it was coming, Google Ads now supports negative keywords for brand safety at the account level. Google has just added account-level negative keywords to Google Ads and the PPC community is happy about it.
I spotted this first via Melissa Mackey on Twitter who credits @NilsRooijmanSEA with the find on LinkedIn. Melissa wrote, “Account-level negative keywords are here! This is big.”
The Google help document on negative keywords has a new section that reads, “Account-level negative keywords.”
When you create your account-level list of negative keywords, it will automatically apply to all search and shopping inventory in relevant campaign types. This allows you to create a single, global, account-level list that applies negative keywords across all relevant inventory in your account.
You can create a single, account-level list of negative keywords in your Google Ads account settings. In your โAccount Settings,โ youโll find the โNegative keywordsโ section. When you click on this section, you can begin creating your negative keywords list.
You can create your list by defining which search terms are considered negative for your brand. You can then enter this all at once in the โNegative keywordsโ section of your โAccount Settingsโ in your Google Ads account. You can also specify whether you want to exclude these based on broad, exact, or phrase match. A limit of 1,000 negative keywords can be excluded for each account. Learn more about account-level negative keywords.
Here is a screenshot of this setting, where Nils Rooijmans explained, “Google is rolling out this feature in most of my accounts right now.”
11 months ago, Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison said, Ginny Marvin responded to this saying “There are no current plans for a keyword tab in PMax. There are, however, plans to support negative keywords for brand safety at the account level.”
And now we got them.
Yay!!! pic.twitter.com/9uzIERjaY9
โ dan richardson (@njsdanrich) January 26, 2023
Bit more history:
Ginny mentioned the beta would start 6 months ago fwiw. Longish cycle from planning -> beta -> release https://t.co/eeUnFPjspr
It was spotted on Google’s roadmaps for Q4, seems to have been delayed a touch
โ Mike Ryan (@mikeryanretail) January 27, 2023
And some reaction on this:
The people asked for Performance Max negative keywords. We got account-level instead.
We typically want to exclude keywords from SOME campaigns, not ALL (for branded queries).
โ ๐ผ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฐ๐๐ (@MenachemAni) January 27, 2023
Donโt get me wrong, there is definitely utility in account-level negative keywords.
Just not what we were hoping for as it relates to PMX.
โ ๐ผ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฐ๐๐ (@MenachemAni) January 27, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter and LinkedIn.
Update: The Google Ads Liaison has now posted about this on Twitter:
1/3 Some have noticed Account level negative keywords are starting to roll out globally. From Account Settings, you can add keywords to exclude traffic from all Search and Shopping campaigns, and the Search and Shopping portion of PMax for brand safety: https://t.co/B0VBApPVCm
โ AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) January 27, 2023
3/3 And a reminder of existing brand suitability controls include inventory types, digital content labels, placement exclusions and negative keywords at the campaign level.
โ AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) January 27, 2023
SEARCHENGINES
Google Says Google Search Handles marquee Tags Appropriately

Gary Illyes, from the Google Search Relations team, said on LinkedIn that Google Search handles the marquee HTML tag “appropriately.” What does it mean by appropriately? That is Gary for you.
I assume it means Google can read the text within the marquee HTML tag.
The marquee HTML element is used to insert a scrolling area of text. You can control what happens when the text reaches the edges of its content area using its attributes.
Google even has this long standing marquee tag new easter egg that looks like this:
Here are some funny comments in the LinkedIn thread:
Again, Gary wrote, “Please note that, after digging through some ancient code, I can confidently confirm Google handles marquee tags appropriately. You’re welcome, internet.”
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
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