When you’re looking for reliable and reputable garage door repair companies, there can be many things standing in your way. For example, spam, fake websites, fake suppliers and dealers trick thousands of consumers into losing their money every year, with plenty of unauthorized home services companies performing shoddy work which cost the consumer more money than necessary in the long run.

When you’re looking for garage door repair services or any other home services and you’re unsure of what to look out for when choosing a garage door service company, be sure to read through this article! Ultimately, we want you to find a reliable and certified garage door service or home service provider who is best suited to you and your needs.

Home Services Web Spam

According to Wikipedia, search engine spam is defined as:

Spamdexing (also known as search engine spam, search engine poisoning, black-hat Search engine optimization (SEO), search spam or web spam) is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. It involves a number of methods to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed, in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system.” Many search engines check for instances of spamdexing and will remove suspect pages from their indexes. Also, search-engine operators can quickly block the results-listing from entire websites that use spamdexing, perhaps alerted by user complaints of false matches.” These methods are more focused on breaking the search-engine-promotion rules and guidelines.”

Many fly-by-night garage door and lead generating companies use spamming tactics and black hat marketing methods to try and grab new customers. However, if a given company using web spam as part of their marketing strategy, this is not usually a good sign. After all, if a company is good and honest, you should hear about them organically, via word of mouth and legitimate advertising practices.

Google and search engines in general, are having problems with fake garage door repair map listings, fake home services sites and fake listings in general. One pundit described Google’s Maps platform, which users often search and find local businesses on, as the “Wild West” when it comes to fake business profiles and phony virtual locations.

These fake profiles and locations aren’t just search engines concern, many of them also are listed on the Yelp platform. This is especially easy to get away with, as there are no regulations on Yelp to stop anyone from creating a fake profile at any location, and then, create a bunch of fake profiles as “customers”, leaving 5-star reviews on the fake business profile (although they improved their algorithm to filter fake reviews). With lack of regulation and supervision, fraudulent businesses can also advertise on Yelp, despite not having a license to operate legally. While it’s not considered illegal as of yet, it has major effects on local business owners and consumers.

The people behind these operations are sometimes can be unlicensed, uninsured, and unqualified to do the work, trying to scam people out of their money. In a post on WJLA.com, Ethical Hacker Bryan Seely, described the way it’s being done:

Scammers create a fake business name and address, but attach a real phone number. They walk through a few easy steps on search engines to get the “business” listed, and voila! A few days later, that fake business is getting very real calls from unwitting consumers.”

So-called “lead generating” companies largely to blame, with lead generating companies such as HomeAdvisor, Angie’s List, and Thumbtack helping to spread the amount of fake companies and scammers operating in the home services space.

What is lead generation?

What exactly is lead generation, and what does a lead generating company do?

To put it simply, a lead generating company is in charge of finding new customers for their clients. For instance, if a garage door repair company hires a lead generation company’s’ services, this lead generation company would search for ways of finding new customers and generate new leads/business for them. Sometimes these lead-generating marketing techniques are ethical, but oftentimes they involve search engine spam, using data illegally, and creating fake maps listings in order to boost business and maximize profit. You might even find that some lead generating companies create fake customer reviews for their clients in an attempt to increase interest in their services and make them look more trustworthy online.

HomeAdvisor, Angie’s List, and Thumbtack are few examples of lead generating companies who allegedly follow unethical business practices and practice deceptive and manipulative techniques to gather new customers, harming local business owners and you, as the consumer. As a customer, you should be advertised to in an ethical manner, yet these company’s use worrying tactics to attract you and other consumers.

Why you shouldn’t trust lead-generating companies

Lead generating companies tend to outsource the work, which comes with a whole host of problems. For instance, when companies are outsourcing their work, there can be problems with communication, collaboration, and skill levels, raising doubts in the minds of customers. It can also be deceitful and confusing for customers who are trying to understand the organizational structure of the home services company or garage door service provider they are dealing with.

Why a garage door repair company is using lead generation services such as HomeAdvisor in the first place? Ultimately, if their genuine customer reviews and interactions are not good enough to sustain their business, then maybe they are doing something wrong? There are a lot of potential reasons for contractor failure, and unsupervised, inexperienced garage door repair contractor can make crucial, costly mistakes.

A several contractors recently filed a Class Action Lawsuit against HomeAdvisor, a lead generation service for home services and garage door repair providers. Here is an excerpt from the official documentation which shows their dissatisfaction, courtesy of roofcalc.org:

Plaintiffs claim that in addition to the mandatory annual membership fee, they have spent hundreds and thousands of dollars on leads which contain the following: ‘wrong or disconnected phone numbers and contact information; persons who never even heard of the company; stale leads; contacts for homes that were listed for sale; and contacts for vacant or non-existent residences.”

As we can see, garage door companies using these services, have been trying to contact people who had little or no interest in the company at hand, desperately trying to pluck sales out of thin air.

Reporting fake companies and garage door repair listings

If you notice a lead generating scheme such as fake garage door repair company or any fake home services company on Google Maps, then there is a process you can follow to report it and get it removed by Google. This fake map listing is most likely a bogus location set up by a lead generating company which is collecting data to garage door companies who use their led gen services. Don’t tolerate desperate companies cluttering Google Maps platform with traps – do something about it.

One method is to take screenshots of fake companies on Google Maps and use the picture on social media with the hashtag #StopCrapOnTheMap in order to get exposure and attention. An effective way to report fraudulent activity is to “submit edits” to a business listing on Google Maps, which is usually used for Google users who want to report a store’s opening times or telephone number, for example, see more details how to use this method here.

You might also notice that some Google reviews are suspiciously written in a similar style, or that the same user is leaving reviews for bunch of businesses in the same category. This could be a red flag that you’re dealing with a fake home services provider or at least a real company which is using shady practices. If you spot reviews which you think may be fake, Google has a process for reporting Google reviews which you can use.

Own a garage door repair business? Here’s why you shouldn’t use lead generating companies:

Although some lead generating companies utilizing ethical advertising methods, many of them follow unethical practices which you should not want to be associated with your company. For instance, many of them authorize advertisements for fake businesses in the same space as your own, driving up the cost of your own campaigns. For instance, if a garage door repair company looking to create a PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising campaign, where you pay a search engine every time a potential customer clicks on one of your ads, then the lead generation company is incentivized to increase the cost of this “Payment” Per Click. On Yelp platform for example, fake garage door and home services companies make it look like you have more local competition, driving up the cost of your PPC campaign.

Yelp explains how the PPC algorithm works:

Cost-Per-Click ads are delivered in categories matching your specific business, as well as other similar categories that our ad delivery system has identified as relevant. The price you pay per click is based on competition and relevance , but you’ll always pay the least amount needed to win the click. We aim to maximize the number of clicks you get for your budget over the course of the month , and you should plan to have 100% of your budget fulfilled . Occasionally competitive demand prevents this, but you’ll only be billed for the cost of the clicks you received in that monthly billing period.”

Yelp uses algorithms which are designed to cause business owners, garage door repair suppliers and home services companies to spend their entire monthly PPC advertising budget, which is not necessarily a positive thing. For example, if you list your service area as Huntington Beach, CA, you’ll find that Yelp’s algorithm includes Long Beach, CA as your service area, even though it’s not relevant to your business.

Similarly, Yelp’s algorithm has many problems with relevance, whereby a customer searching for a plumber or a roofer will be presented with ads for garage door repair companies simply because they’re another kind of home services provider. These irrelevant results are annoying for the customer and can end up costing garage door repair companies a small fortune in PPC campaigns because their ads are shown to people who have no real need for their business according to their search terms and location.

Yelp explaining how their algorithm designed: “We aim to maximize the number of clicks you get for your budget over the course of the month, and you should plan to have 100% of your budget fulfilled”, which is another sign for advertisers to stay away. Yelp’s lack of transparency when it comes to their billing for their PPC system, fueling yet more suspicion that they trying to squeeze every last penny from their clients.

Generally speaking, lead generating companies compete with local, legitimate businesses on search engines and sell them leads or customers that they should’ve been getting in the first place. For example, a given, established, local business will most likely have a website and online listings on different search engine platforms. What lead generating companies do, with a big budget, they simply work to outrank that local business, create hundreds of fake map listings (spam) in their area, and ironically, taking their business and sell it to them.

How to locate the Best garage door company when searching online

With all this trickery and deceit going on, how can a customer find a garage door company they can trust online? Well, first of all, companies and businesses that listed on Yelp are not regulated and there is hence a bunch of fake garage door repair and home services companies.

Regarding online ads, you may be being targeted by a lead generating company which is trying to gather information about you and outsource it. Here’s a link to how the Google ads algorithm works. Note that the location targeting feature means that people can target your location no matter where they are themselves. For example, a person can advertise his garage door repair company as being set up in Fountain Valley, CA and target a specific location even though he’s based out of the Bay Area/San Francisco and by outsourcing your information to a local person in your area, they are able to provide you with the service.

As you utilizing the web for your needs, “Bing” and “Duck-Duck Go” show local search results from Yelp on their pages, thus, you may consider look elsewhere when searching for garage door repair companies and/or home services providers. On the other hand, when searching similar home services providers on Google, you should focus on the local results and local map listings. This happens when you type in something like “garage door repair Costa Mesa” or when you voice search for “garage door repair near me”. When you search for local businesses in this manner, Google provides you with 3 reputable local services, followed by an additional list of more entries. While these results being monitored and reviewed for authenticity, protected by Section 230, Google fails to deliver reliable search results to its users, therefore, you should always use common sense with these things: be sure to keep an eye out on the number of reviews. Look for a reputable garage door repair service providers who have 100+ reviews on their Google’s listing, as fake listings are often being removed before they are able to accumulate reviews. Also, be sure to keep an eye out for the business’s branding and brand name – is it consistent and do they have a strong brand across their website and social media pages, or does their branding and name change slightly from place to place? If their branding and name change depending on where you go, or if it simply looks cheap and suspicious, you might want to take your business elsewhere.