We Are Cheating in Local Search. And it’s Working.

November 1, 2025 | Robert Campbell

I confess to Keyword Stuffing the Name Field in our home builder client’s Google Business Profile.  

Changing the name field in your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) to include a popular search term does seem to make a difference.

If it’s a close race*, having a direct match keyword in your name could help your business get displayed in the local map pack where it will enjoy significantly more impressions, a higher click-through-rate, and eclipse competitors. This shouldn’t be true, but I can prove it’s the case, and I’m not happy about it.

• *Close race means, your on-page SEO + Domain Authority + Trust + Proximity are about equal.

Google’s local search display only lists three businesses; their names, addresses and their ratings, and number of reviews are featured beside a map in the Local Pack, of a Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Businesses will do just about anything to get listed in the Local Pack, and have their address pinned on the map, because the click-through rate is so much higher than in regular organic search.

So, what is this Local Search cheat, exactly?

The cheat is changing the name of your business in Google Business Profiles to more closely match the most popular search term in your industry. As an example, if your business is Acme Cupcakes, but everyone in the area wants ‘cherry tarts’, you might be inclined to change your name to Cherry Tarts by Acme Cupcakes. Believe it or not, this will help your firm appear in that coveted local search, because the Google Local Search algorithm must put a lot of weight on the Name field. Doing this will also however violate guidelines for representing your business on Google, because it is misleading.

Your business is not called Cherry Tarts by Acme Cupcakes. You are lying in the Name field, and that should in theory, ruin your Trust score. This cheat should backfire and cause your rankings to plummet because this name is not what appears in Yellow Pages, YELP, or LinkedIn, and it’s not what you’ve published on your website’s Contact Us page. This cheat should ruin you, but sadly, it doesn’t.

Why is it Wrong to Add a Popular Search Term to your Business Name?

To cheat on the name field of your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is to violate Google’s guidelines, a practice known as keyword stuffing. The screengrab above is the local search for home renovation contractors in Oakville, in August 2025. Here we see big construction companies have changed their names to win the local search for ‘Oakville home renovation contractors’.  

Why is keyword stuffing considered cheating?

Google’s policy states that the business name must be the real-world name used consistently on its storefront, website, and other branding. Adding keywords, location names, or taglines that are not part of your official business name is a violation.

“While this tactic may provide a short-term ranking boost, it is a high-risk strategy which can lead to penalties, including a profile suspension.” is what Google experts would say, one of whom advised me to report the situation, but under no circumstances copy these cheaters. So, I filed my first feedback report using the tools on page, but to my distress, the cheaters only grew in number. There were more every time I checked. There were just two companies doing it at first, but when next I checked there were half-a-dozen offenders. They were there violating Google’s Guidelines, risking the wrath of the search giant, with impunity.

Let me show you Eastview Homes, an Oakville area construction company, and introduce you to our struggle to stay atop Local Search results for Oakville home renovations, by doing everything in accordance with Google Webmaster Guidelines. We played by The Rules and were rewarded by being listed first in Local and Organic search results, for many years.

Eastview Homes is first in the Local Pack for ‘Oakville home renovations’ when everyone plays by The Rules

Ten years earlier I asked Keith Travers, the owner of Eastview Homes, to get an office in a low rent part of town, just so we’d have a proper mailing address from which we could solidify his business Name, Address, Phone number, (NAP) for his Google My Business listing. Once registered, and verified, Eastview Homes then secured all the basic NAP citations including Facebook, Yellow Pages, YELP, as well as many niche citations like Home Stars, Trusted Pros, and Houzz. Over the years, our blogs attracted some high end citations like Municipal World magazine, a recycling directory and a popular wood salvage resource page shared our details. So, we have the juice.

Why are we Cheating at Google Local Search?

From about 2017 to 2025, Eastview Homes had the largest ‘share of voice’ online in the Oakville home renovation market with as much as 24% Presence (as per SEMrush). We were personally recruited to join Houz in 2022, an opportunity we didn’t take, and we continue to receive phone calls and email outreach from handyman apps and other platforms looking to make inroads by extending opportunities and discounts if we join today. In summary, we were the biggest players in town and bulletproof, until cracks started to appear earlier this year.

In June 2025, I noticed that Eastview Homes was not on top of the ‘Oakville home renovation’ local maps listing, and the snack pack now included other players who had changed their names to better match this query. They’ve lied and altered their name fields to display, Oakville Home Renovation Contractors by So and So [Real name of Company]. 

Disturbingly, this cheat works because of the weight of the Name Field in Google Business Profiles (GMB) and its weight in the overall Local Search Algorithm.

My first reaction was to laugh and consider mocking the cheaters directly through email, or, on social media. I thought it was bad tactic because it’s so easy to do, and so obviously wrong. There are many factors affecting Local Search rankings, and streamlining NAP citations, matching everything with the Name, Address and Phone number registered on GMB, now called Google Business Profiles is the single most important action business owners can take. To change your business name simply to match a popular search, throwing all your existing NAP citations out of whack, is ludicrous, and a giant step backwards, or so I thought.

Two weeks later, Keith Travers the business owner noticed and emailed us with some concern. In reply, I outlined how perverting the name field was not best practice, and Google would in time catch these offenders, his competitors, and punish them accordingly. But that didn’t happen

So, I complained to Google myself. I flagged the page, and used the feedback form, twice. I used both of my Gmail accounts, one of which is recognized as a Level 7 Local Guide. It didn’t help. Another month passed.

Finally I said to heck with it; I’m going to cheat too.  It’s a relatively easy thing to go into Google Business Profiles and change the name field. Will it make any difference? 

It did it, and look now; this is October 30th, 2025. Eastview Homes is in position #3 in the Snack Pack.

The Oakville home renovation Local Search Engine Result Page is a virtual battlefield in which a dozen large construction companies and myriad independent handymen struggle for exposure.

Am I Scared the Google will Punish Me and Delist Eastview Homes?

If Google were to punish me and remove Eastview Homes from the Local Search results, we’d be right back to where we were before I cheated. In the two months that have passed while I complained and send feedback and watched as nothing was done, we were not listed in the snack pack, and thus we were defacto being punished.

In truth, I want to be punished as I need to believe The Rules still apply, and we are not racing to the bottom in terms of degrading Local Search and the importance of the Name field. 

What are the Consequences of Getting Caught Red-handed, Cheating in Local Search?

Suspension: The most significant penalty we risk is having the Eastview Homes’ profile suspended. This has never happened to me before, and so perhaps I’m in the FAFO stage of this journey. I hope so, honestly, because I’d like to see Justice and a return-to-law-and-order in this SERP.

According to Google’s own webmaster tools, a soft suspension leaves your business listing visible but unverified, while a “hard suspension” removes your profile entirely, including all of its content (photos, reviews). There is an appeal process, but if your profile is suspended, you will lose all visibility while your business goes through a potentially lengthy appeal process, which could take a month or longer.

Compliant Alternatives to Cheating in Local Search

Instead of resorting to the high-risk strategy I’ve adopted, we could and still can boost our local ranking with methods which do follow Google’s guidelines. We could for example file a DBA (Doing Business As) document, signed by a notary, to legally and officially include keywords in our business name. This makes the keywords part of our real-world business name, which is compliant with Google’s policy.

We could optimize other sections of Eastview Homes’ Google Business Profile to include the ‘Oakville home renovation’ keyword clause. If we were to fill out every section, we’d find plenty of opportunities to use those words. In the Business Description, Questions & Answers, Products & Services, and even in Google Reviews. We could also encourage keyword-rich reviews. We could ask satisfied customers to mention specific services and our location in their reviews. For example, Keith could ask a client to mention his home renovation services and detail our success using other commonly-searched words.

But instead of doing these perfectly acceptable workarounds, I wrote this tell-all blog post to voice my disappointment because it’s my hope this confession will provoke a manual action to correct the ‘Oakville home renovations’ SERP.