Customers search for your products online, trusting what they see on the first page of search results. Unfortunately, this trust has become a powerful weapon. Scammers on Google ruthlessly exploit this to prey on the image of honest manufacturing companies. When a customer clicks a fake link with your logo, they lose money and blame you. Discover the 6 most common methods used by scammers in the search engine.
1. Malvertising and Keyword Theft
Dishonest players don’t have to build their own brand—they simply buy ads (Google Ads) for keywords that are the exact name of your company or product. As a result, their sponsored, fake link appears at the very top of search results, pushing your official website down. The user clicks the ad, believing they are visiting an authorized store, while in reality, they are redirected to a site designed to steal payment card data.
2. SEO Poisoning
Scammers on Google also manipulate free, organic search results. This tactic, known as SEO Poisoning, involves the mass registration of domains with typos in your company’s name (e.g., “https://www.google.com/search?q=YourFirrna.com” instead of “https://www.google.com/search?q=YourFirma.com”) and artificially boosting their ranking. This phenomenon is growing at an alarming rate—recent analyses have shown a 60% increase in the number of these types of attacks aimed at hijacking the traffic of legitimate businesses.
3. Fake Stores and Synthetic AI Reviews
Modern fake stores look completely professional. To deceive algorithms and build customer trust, cybercriminals use artificial intelligence to mass-generate thousands of fake reviews. A customer types your product’s name into Google, sees a highly-rated store, makes a purchase, and never receives the goods. The reputational damage for the original manufacturer in such cases is enormous.
4. Tech Support Scams
Criminals position their own phone numbers so that they appear highest when a customer searches for your brand’s “service” or “customer support.” When an unaware consumer calls with a technical problem, a fake consultant impersonating your company extorts repair fees or persuades them to install spyware.
5. “Circular Legitimacy” Mechanism
This is one of the most sophisticated techniques. Attackers build an entire, closed ecosystem of credibility. A fake website directs a suspicious customer to a malicious phone number, and the fake consultant directs them back to a fake email address on a deceptively similar domain. After going through such a verification process, the customer is absolutely certain they are communicating with an official representative of the brand.
6. Fake Recruitment Impersonating the Company
The threat doesn’t stop at sales. Scammers on Google create exact replicas of official career pages of manufacturing companies and rank them in the search engine. By allegedly recruiting on your behalf, they extort ID scans and administrative fees from candidates, quickly leading to a massive PR crisis in the local labor market.
Why a Systematic Approach is the Only Effective Defense?
As the examples above show, scammers on Google attack on multiple fronts simultaneously—from keyword theft and organic result poisoning to building entire networks of fake stores and fabricating customer service. Each of these attack vectors shares a single goal: stealing your profits and destroying the trust your company has spent years building. In the face of such massive operations, the continuous and immediate removal of illegal content from the internet becomes an absolute necessity.
Manually searching for and reporting violations is doomed to fail today. However, implementing an automated system supported by artificial intelligence (AI) gives you a measurable advantage—it allows for the rapid detection and neutralization of threats in near real-time. That is why using the services of specialized partners like abuscan.eu is a great solution. It lifts the burden of fighting cybercriminals off your team’s shoulders, ensuring that your brand and customers remain safe.
Sources and Reference Materials:
- Harper James – Legal analysis regarding trademark infringements in Google Ads: https://harperjames.co.uk/article/google-ads-trade-mark-infringement-guide/
- Vectra AI – Report on the mechanics of “SEO Poisoning” attacks and search result manipulation: https://www.vectra.ai/topics/seo-poisoning
- Ashurst – Publication on the evolution of scammer techniques and the use of “circular legitimacy” tactics: https://www.ashurst.com/en/insights/a-rise-in-malicious-domain-name-activity/
- FTC (Federal Trade Commission) – Statistical data and reports on scams using business impersonation: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/data-visualizations/data-spotlight/2024/05/whos-who-scams-spring-roundup
- Google Safety Advisory – Official Google security advisory on internet scam trends (including fake recruitment and phone scams): https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-security/fraud-and-scams-advisory-november-2025/