SEOs and webmasters have asked for phone support for webmaster related issues for a long time and I don't plan on Google to offer it anytime soon.
So when I saw a thread about someone from Google calling a site owner from a 650 area code, I was surprised. The Google Webmaster Help thread says that they received a call from someone who said they were from Google saying they have flaws on their web site that can lead to it being deindexed.
Here is what the webmaster said:
My boss received a phone call at the office today from the phone number 650-235-0000 warning us about a design flaw in our website that could cause us to be blacklisted from Google search in the near future.If this is in fact true, we will act immediately, and it could be an authentic flaw in our website design.
However, we are in a highly competitive business, and we are concerned that the call may not have been authentic as the phone number goes to a busy signal when we try to call back, no contact information was provided, and we are receiving no warnings via email or Google Webmaster Central that there are any problems with our website.
Google's John Mueller said Google does not call webmasters with web-search related issues. In fact, the only way they communicate with webmasters if via email, with a verified copy of the email going to their webmaster tools account. Google also does offer in person advice at conferences and in the forums, but not via phone.
John said:
To the best of my knowledge, no team at Google calls site owners with regards to web-search issues on their websites. From the web-search & search quality teams, we will sometimes contact websites with regards to technical, quality, or malware issues, but this is always via email, with a copy sent to your Webmaster Tools account for verification purposes.
This is not the first time people pretended to be Google in order to hurt a competitor. We had this issue come up with fake Google emails back in 2007 and several times since then.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
