Things That Will Get You Suspended or Penalized

What you will walk away with: a clear list of what NOT to do, so you do not lose your business profile after building it.

Doing any of the below is grounds for Google profile suspension or removal from AI search results. There is no recovery for some of these. Be careful.

Review gating. Filtering which customers get review links based on their satisfaction. Banned and actively enforced as of April 2026.

Buying reviews. Any payment, discount, or incentive in exchange for a review. FTC rule allows civil penalties up to $53,088 per violation.

Fake business name keywords. Naming your business "ABC Plumbing — Best Emergency Plumber in London." The business name field is for your actual legal business name only.

Wrong address. Using a PO Box, a UPS store, a co-working space, or a virtual office as your address. Google verifies physical locations and suspends profiles that fail.

Multiple profiles at the same address (unless you are genuinely a multi-business location). Setting up 5 GBP profiles for 5 fake businesses at one address gets all of them banned.

Keyword stuffing services or categories. Padding the list with irrelevant entries to capture more searches. Triggers quality reviews and suspension.

Generic content at scale. AI-generated pages with no real expertise, copied across cities. Google's helpful content system and AI Overview spam policies penalize this.

Inconsistent NAP across the web. Different business names, addresses, or phone formats on different sites. Confuses AI engines and weakens trust signals.

Buying backlinks. Paid link schemes are detected and penalized by Google's link spam systems.

Asking customers to mention staff first and last names. New rule as of April 2026. Banned.

If you stick to the workflow in this course you will not hit any of these. The course is designed around what is actually legal, ethical, and durable in 2026.