I want to be careful how I tell this one, because “the platform assigned me a helpful rep” is exactly what a shill would write. So here’s the full version, including the part where their interests and mine don’t line up.
Why I ignored them for weeks
If you run a local business, you already know why. The moment you have anything Google-adjacent — a Business Profile, an ads account, a new website — the calls start. “We’re calling about your Google listing.” “Your business needs to be verified.” “We can get you to the top of Google.” Every contractor I’ve worked with in Oakland and Genesee County gets these, some of them weekly.
Almost all of it is junk. Third-party marketing firms cold-calling and implying they’re Google. So when real emails from Google started showing up in my inbox offering to help optimize my campaign, my pattern-matching filed them in the same bin. Free help from a company that makes money when I spend more felt like a setup.
That instinct is a good one. It was also, in this case, wrong.
What changed my mind
Honestly? My campaign had a problem I couldn’t diagnose. I was tracking a gap between the clicks Google charged me for and the visits my analytics recorded, and I couldn’t tell whether that was normal, a tagging error, or money quietly disappearing. I’d read the documentation. The documentation is written for people who already know the answer.
So I booked the call, mostly to rule it out.
What I actually got out of it
Google Ads is genuinely complicated, in a way I don’t think the industry is honest about. It presents as a simple product — write an ad, pick a budget, get customers — and underneath there are dozens of settings that quietly determine whether your money reaches anyone useful. A direct line to somebody who can see the machinery is worth more than another blog post.
Now the part where our interests diverge
The rep works for Google. Google’s revenue is your ad spend. That isn’t sinister, but it does shape which suggestions come up, and you need to hold that in your head the whole time.
Things to be ready to say no to
Raising your daily budget. Broadening your keyword matching. Expanding your geographic targeting. Turning on campaign types that spread your money across more of Google’s inventory. Every one of those can be the right call, and every one of them also increases spend. “Let me look at what that does to my cost per lead first” is a complete and reasonable answer.
The mechanical questions are where a rep is most useful and least conflicted: is my tracking working, why is this setting doing that, what does this metric actually measure. The strategic questions — how much should I spend, how wide should I go — are where you should stay firmly in the driver’s seat, because you’re the only one in the conversation who knows what a job is worth to you.
How to tell a real Google contact from the fakes
This is the practical part, and it applies whether or not you ever run ads, because the scam calls target every local business with a Google Business Profile.
Signs it’s legitimate
- The contact appears inside your Google Ads account, not just in your inbox
- They reference your actual campaign names and real numbers
- They never ask for your password, and never ask you to grant access to a new email address
- They’re fine with you hanging up and calling back through the account
- Nothing is urgent, and nothing expires today
Signs it’s a third party pretending
- They called you about a “listing” you never advertised
- They promise first-page rankings — nobody can sell that
- They want a monthly fee to “manage” or “verify” your free Google Business Profile
- There’s a deadline, a suspension threat, or a limited-time offer
- They ask for card details or account access on the first call
The single reliable move: don’t act on anything from an inbound call. Hang up, log into your own Google Ads or Business Profile account, and see whether the message exists there. Real notifications live in the account. Scams live only on the phone.
What I’d tell you to do
If you’re spending real money on Google Ads and you have support available, use it. Go in with specific mechanical questions written down, not “how do I do better.” Ask them to verify your conversion tracking end to end — if that’s wrong, every other decision you make is built on sand. Then decline the budget increase and go check your own numbers before agreeing to anything.
And if you’re getting cold calls about your Google listing that you never asked for, those are a different thing entirely, and the answer is no.
The reason any of this mattered to me is that I’m running these campaigns with my own money and publishing the results as I go — the full numbers are in 90 days of Google Ads and the head-to-head against Facebook is in Google Ads vs Facebook Ads for a local business.
If you’re getting those calls and want a straight answer from somebody with no stake in your ad spend, book a 30-minute call. I’ll tell you what’s worth answering and what to ignore.