As a locally owned property damage restoration company, we’ve spent years building our reputation one job, one review, and one relationship at a time. We’ve done the hard work: earning real 5-star reviews, learning SEO, running our own ads, and creating content to help our customers.
But lately, a new kind of threat has emerged—one we never expected to compete with: AI-generated fake companies and click fraud bots.
These new tactics are more than just frustrating. They’re damaging real businesses, especially those of us who handle our own marketing. Here’s what’s happening.
AI-Stuffed Funnel Sites Are Gaming the System
You may have noticed it yourself—suddenly, a company you’ve never heard of appears in Google Maps or the top of search results with hundreds of glowing 5-star reviews. But try calling them and you’ll likely get a call center or get routed somewhere else.
These are funnel sites, and they’re powered by artificial intelligence.
Scammers build fake businesses using AI to:
- Write hundreds of realistic, keyword-rich reviews
- Build professional-looking websites in minutes
- Claim Google listings using spoofed addresses
- Dominate search results without offering real services
The goal? To capture leads and sell them to real businesses—often the very ones they’ve outranked using fake credibility.
Click Fraud Is Draining Your Ad Budget
It gets worse.
These same scammers use bots to manipulate Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. Here’s how it works:
- They build a fake search engine or results page on their website.
- They get approved as a publisher for ad networks.
- They use advanced bots like Puppeteer Extra with stealth plugins to visit their site and click on high-value keywords—like “fire damage cleanup in Raleigh” or “emergency water removal near me.”
- The bots then click on paid ads—your ads—and sometimes even fill out a contact form using harvested personal info from real people.
That click may cost you $25–$100, and the lead? It’s fake.
This is known as click fraud, and it’s costing small businesses thousands—often without them realizing it.
Why This Is Devastating to Local Business Owners
As a business that does a lot of our own SEO and marketing, this hits hard.
- Our organic rankings drop behind AI-inflated funnel sites
- Our ads lose ROI because bots are burning our budget
- Our reviews lose credibility because fake ones flood the platforms
- And our trust with customers is harder to maintain in a sea of digital noise
We call this trend digital gentrification—where fake companies push out the real ones by gaming algorithms and platforms.
What You Can Do to Fight Back
Until Google, Yelp, and the major ad platforms catch up with these schemes, here are a few things you can do:
- Use click fraud protection tools like ClickCease or CHEQ
- Monitor your leads—if conversions increase but quality drops, you may be getting botted
- Report fake listings and obviously fraudulent reviews
- Educate your customers—let them know why choosing a real, local company matters
- Double down on local content and community involvement—bots can’t build real trust
Final Thoughts
This isn’t just about digital marketing. It’s about fairness. It’s about protecting the hard work of local businesses who show up, day after day, to serve their communities with honesty and professionalism.
At EMERG-NC Property Rescuers, we’re not just fighting fires and floods—we’re fighting for the integrity of small business in the digital space. We believe in transparency, trust, and doing the right thing—even when it’s harder.
And we’ll keep showing up—for you, and for our community.
