Hi ,

If you read the GROWth Report the other week (see the archive here), you'll know that we've been seeing a massive uptick in spam calls through Google Business Profiles (GBPs). 

What's Happening?

As of right now, our data show that 40% of “leads” from Google Business Profile (GBP) are spam. That’s across all clients. Plus, about 25% of calls from direct website traffic are classified as spam. And the % overall is growing.

The ever-increasing volume of spam calls wastes your time and distracts you from serving actual customers.

Where These Calls Are Coming From

These calls are from scam and lead‑gen outfits scraping GBP data and blasting robocalls at those numbers. Because GBP numbers are public, easy to harvest at scale, and strongly associated with real local businesses (making them a good “mark”), they attract a very high percentage of this junk traffic.

What We're Doing

We’ve been changing your GBP phone numbers regularly to stop the onslaught of robocalls. That helps for a couple of days, and then it starts again...

RECOMMENDATION TO REDUCE GBP SPAM CALLS

We recommend implementing a “spam challenge” through our lead tracking system that forces callers from GBP (and only GBP) to press a key (usually 1) before the call is connected. Most robodialers cannot do that (yet), so it greatly reduces the number of spam calls you receive.

We provide 3 spam blocking options. Option 1 (and 2, if relevant) has already been implemented for all accounts receiving GBP spam calls. Effective March 1, we will set up option 3 for each account that receives a high volume of spam.

1. Block known spam callers (using an internal database plus Nomorobo data). This has already been enabled on your account, and we continue to add more numbers to the spam database, but it's not working as well as it used to.

2. Spam challenge for restricted and anonymous callers (there aren't usually very many of these - spammers tend to spoof real numbers). We automatically turn this on for accounts with more than 25% spam calls.

3. Apply spam challenge to all callers from GBP - This is the most effective approach, as it eliminates virtually all spam calls from GBP. Unless you opt out, we will implement this on calls from your GBP account if more than 50% of calls are from scammers.

Some of our clients have been reluctant to implement a spam challenge for callers from GBP, even though the costs of not doing so are increasing daily. To help you understand the impact on your business, why it's happening, and how to stop it (yes, it IS possible to prevent GBP spam calls from reaching you!), I've put together a detailed set of FAQs about the problem.

👉 Spam Calls From GBP Have Risen Dramatically: How to Handle the Onslaught

As described in the article, I recommend setting up an IVR call flow that greets all callers from GBP with one of these two options:

1. “Thanks for calling Acme Tree. Please press 1 to request a tree service quote or press 2 for customer support.”

2. "Thanks for calling Acme Tree. Please press 1 to connect".

Honestly, there is really no other way to reduce the GBP spam problem - and it’s only likely to get worse.

IMPORTANT!

If you do not authorize TCMS to set up a spam challenge if GBP spam tops 50%, please reply to this email letting us know that you understand and accept the implications of allowing a high volume of spam calls to continue. If we don't hear from you, we'll turn on the spam challenge if it becomes necessary.