Fake AI Photos in Google Business Profiles: The New Scam Stealing Your Customers' Calls

Imagine your Google Business Profile looks exactly as it should: description, opening hours, address, everything checks out. And yet some of the customers trying to reach you end up talking to a complete stranger. Not because you changed anything in the dashboard. Because someone else added a photo to your profile.

In September 2026 a new, well-organised scam was documented that exploits a Google Maps feature allowing anyone, not just the owner, to add photos to any business profile. Scammers upload AI-generated images showing a phone number that doesn't belong to the business at all. Google can display such a photo very prominently, sometimes in the very spot a customer sees first.

This kind of scam is particularly insidious because it leaves no trace in the owner's dashboard. Your phone number in the profile fields stays unchanged, your ranking doesn't move, the statistics look normal. The only symptom is a quiet drop in the number of calls that nobody connects to a specific cause.

How the scam works

The mechanism is simple, which is exactly why it works. Google Maps runs on the Local Guides programme: any signed-in user can add a photo to any business profile, whether or not they have anything to do with that business. Normally this works in companies' favour: customers add photos of their purchases, the interior of the premises or a completed service, which builds the profile's credibility and helps it stand out from the competition. A common example is customers adding photos of menus or dishes in restaurants.

Scammers use exactly the same opening for the opposite purpose. They upload AI-generated photos, fake company signboards, service-van liveries, advertising banners, with a clearly visible phone number. That number doesn't belong to the business but to the scammer. To a customer browsing the profile, the photo looks like a genuine shot of the company's sign or fleet, so they call the number on it without hesitation.

A documented, specific case from September 2026 (reported by Search Engine Roundtable) shows the scale: a single Local Guide uploaded the same fake phone number on photos added to more than 150 completely unrelated businesses, across different trades (roofing, flooring, patio covers, drywall) and different cities in the United States. That points to an organised, automated campaign rather than a one-off incident.

Why it works and why it's so dangerous

The scam's effectiveness lies in how Google displays photos added by Local Guides. A photo from a complete stranger can be shown very prominently on the profile, sometimes in a position that looks like the company's cover photo. That means the fake number can appear to a customer before they ever scroll down to the real, verified number in the profile fields.

The most worrying part, however, is that the problem is practically invisible from the owner's perspective. The profile management dashboard shows no alert or warning, because technically nothing in the profile itself has changed. Only what the customer sees on the other side has changed. The owner may simply notice fewer calls for weeks, with no reason to connect that to a photo someone added.

Service businesses whose customers need help right now and call the first credible-looking number they see are especially exposed: roofers, plumbers, electricians, locksmiths, damage restoration companies. A customer with a burst pipe or a leaking roof doesn't carefully compare the number on the photo with the one in the profile description. They just call.

What Google is doing about it

The documented cases suggest Google's response to individual reports has so far been disappointing. The owner of one of the affected businesses reported the problem to Google support and received an entirely irrelevant reply listing unrelated solutions. The photo stayed on the profile.

The situation changed only once the case gained publicity, first on LinkedIn, then on the industry site Search Engine Roundtable and elsewhere. Within a day of the case going public, Google removed the account of the user responsible for mass-uploading the fake photos. That's a telling signal: a single report through the standard support channel can be ignored, while media attention or wide exposure on social media can speed up the response dramatically.

To be fair, what we know about the scale of the problem so far comes from the accounts of affected businesses and industry publications, not from an official Google statement on how widespread it is. That doesn't change the fact that the mechanism is real, documented and could just as easily reach Poland or any other market. It's worth taking a look at your own Google Business Profile.

What you can do today as a business owner

Checking your own profile takes a few minutes and doesn't require logging in to the management dashboard. In fact that's the point: as mentioned, the problem is only visible on the public side of the profile. Google itself, however, points out in its guide to protecting your business profile that claiming ownership of the profile is one of the most important steps you can take, so if you haven't done it yet, now is the time. An unclaimed profile is easy to manipulate.

Here's how to check whether your company's Google profile contains unwanted information:

1. Search for your business the way a customer would. Open a browser in incognito mode, or use a phone without a signed-in account, and search for your company name in Google or in Maps. This matters, because the owner's view in the dashboard looks completely different from the public view.
2. Open the photo gallery and sort it by newest. Check the "by owner" and "by visitors" tabs separately. Any photo with text embedded in the image deserves a closer look.
3. Read every phone number visible in the photos. Compare it digit by digit with your company's real number. Scammers often change just one or two digits so the number slips past a quick glance.
4. Check the profile of the user who added the suspicious photo. If that account has dozens of photos added to unrelated businesses in completely different cities, you are very likely dealing with this scam rather than a random customer photo.
5. Take screenshots of everything before you report it. Save the photo itself, the fake number on it, the user's profile and the date. You'll need them if the first report gets nowhere. Google provides an official guide to reporting inappropriate content on Business Profiles.

When reporting, keep two things in mind: report the photo and the user profile once, without repeating the report multiple times. Duplicate reports tend to lengthen rather than shorten the review time. And don't try to "outshout" the fake photo with your own image showing your phone number in big, loud text. Such material looks inauthentic and genuinely lowers trust in the profile instead of building it.

Summary

This scam is dangerous precisely because it doesn't require breaking into your account or changing any data in the dashboard. It relies solely on Google Maps' openness to photos added by complete strangers. Regularly checking your profile the way a customer sees it, not just the way the owner sees it in the dashboard, is now part of basic care for your company's Google Business Profile, alongside keeping an eye on reviews and keeping opening hours current.

So check whether someone is impersonating your phone number on your Google profile. And since you're already there, it's worth making sure that same profile is genuinely working in your favour. The Google Business Profile is one of the most powerful free marketing tools available to a local business today. Get in touch and we'll look together at how to make it attract and convert more potential customers.