You have probably seen them. Messages in your Facebook inbox, someone offering to load up your Google Business Profile with five-star reviews for a flat fee. It sounds like a shortcut, especially when you are heading into your third or fourth season and your profile still shows three reviews while a competitor down the road is sitting at forty.
But buying reviews is one of the fastest ways to damage a business you have spent years building. As of 2024 it is a legal issue, not just a platform one. And the people selling them are not always who they say they are.
The FTC Made It Official
In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission issued a rule making it illegal for businesses to buy or sell fake reviews. The penalty is not a slap on the wrist. Fines can reach more than $53,000 per review.
That is not per campaign. Per review. The FTC adjusts that number for inflation each year, and it has already moved up since the rule took effect. The agency also sent its first round of warning letters to businesses at the end of 2025, so this is not a rule sitting on a shelf. It is being enforced.
Do the math on a stack of purchased reviews and you are looking at exposure that could end a small paving company. No amount of fake five-stars is worth that.
Google Is Already Hunting These Down
Even if the FTC never came knocking, Google is. In 2025, Google blocked or removed over 292 million policy-violating reviews, up about 21 percent from the year before. Their detection runs on AI now, and it is looking at patterns, not just individual reviews.
Think about what a bought review looks like to that system. A burst of five-star ratings landing within hours of each other. Accounts with no real history. Reviews from places nowhere near your service area. You do not have to know exactly how Google flags it. You just have to know that they are very good at it, and getting better.
When they catch it, the reviews come down. Sometimes a warning banner goes up on your profile telling everyone who visits that fake reviews were removed. In the worst case, your whole profile gets suspended and you vanish from the map entirely. You paid money to end up worse off than when you started.
The Part Nobody Warns You About
Here is the angle that should really stop you. The person selling you reviews is not a partner. They are a stranger who just proved they will manipulate Google for money.
Some of them come back. Not to say thank you. To demand more money, with a threat attached. If they can make a five-star review stick, they can make a one-star review stick. Now you are being squeezed by someone who has leverage over the reputation you were trying to protect. You handed it to them.
What Actually Works for an Asphalt Contractor
Here is the good news, and it is better than it sounds. You do not need forty reviews to win. You need to outpace the contractor down the road, and most of them are barely trying.
One to two real reviews a month puts you ahead of most asphalt and paving competitors over the course of a year. That is a completely achievable number. It comes from doing the work you already do and then asking the customer while you are standing in their freshly paved driveway.
Three reviews going into your season is not a failure. It is a starting point. Real reviews build slowly, but they hold. They do not get wiped out in a Google sweep, they do not come with a federal fine, and nobody can hold them over your head later.
Ask your real customers instead. Build it the right way. It takes longer, but it does not collapse.
The Bottom Line
Buying reviews is a legal risk, a platform risk, and a personal one. Real reviews are the only ones that actually compound in your favor. Get a simple system in place for asking every happy customer, and within a season you will be ahead of most of your market without ever taking the shortcut.