Why We Fired Our Marketing Agency Over Fake Reviews

What Actually Happened

Early on, we brought in a marketing agency to help with SEO — the technical, unglamorous work of getting a small local business to actually show up when someone searches "window cleaning Sarasota." Some of that work was legitimate, and it helped.

Then came the pitch: they could get us a lot further, a lot faster, if we were willing to post reviews under names that weren't real customers, claim service in locations we didn't actually work in, and list business hours that didn't match how we actually operate — all framed as normal "optimization."

We never let them touch any of it. Every time one of those tactics came up, the answer was no. Nothing fake was ever posted under our name. Eventually we ended the contract entirely — not because the offer wouldn't have worked (that kind of thing often does, for a while) — but because a rating built on lies isn't actually a good rating. It's a liability waiting for someone to notice, and it means a homeowner would be choosing us based on something that isn't true.

Why This Actually Matters to You

If you're hiring anyone to work at your home — window cleaning, pressure washing, roofing, anything — you're trusting reviews and ratings to tell you something true about a stranger you're about to let onto your property. Fake reviews break that completely. A company willing to lie about who its customers are is a company willing to lie about other things too: what products they use, whether they're actually insured, how the job really went for the last homeowner.

This isn't a hypothetical problem specific to home services. It's common enough that Google actively fights it, and common enough that most homeowners have unknowingly hired a company propped up by reviews that were never real in the first place.

How to Spot Fake Reviews and Fake Listings

A few real patterns worth watching for — on us, or on anyone else you're about to hire:

• A sudden spike of 5-star reviews in a short window, especially with few or none before or after that burst.
• Reviews that are vague and generic ("great service, highly recommend!") with no mention of what was actually done, or reused phrasing across multiple reviews.
• Reviewer profiles with only one review ever, no photo, and no other activity — a sign of a purchased or incentivized account.
• A listed service area or address that doesn't line up with where the company's actual job photos and reviews come from.
• Business hours or contact details on the listing that don't match what happens when you actually call.

None of these alone proves anything. A few of them together is a real signal.

What We Did Instead

We fired the agency and rebuilt the site and our SEO ourselves — real content, real job photos instead of stock images, and reviews that only ever come from actual Cleansy clients. Every review behind our current 5.0★ rating from 103+ homeowners is from someone we actually cleaned windows or pressure washed a driveway for. We'd rather earn a slower 4.8★ honestly than a fast 5.0★ that isn't real.

We still want to rank higher — that part was never the disagreement. We just believe in getting there through hard work, consistency, and dedication, not shortcuts. It might take longer this way, but we're patient, and we can feel our breakout moment is on the horizon.

One honest side effect of untangling everything the old agency had touched: cleaning up our Google Business Profile ourselves meant a lot of changes at once, and Google flagged the listing for a temporary review — what's sometimes called a soft suspension. It's not a reflection of our work or our real reviews, and we're working through it directly with Google. In the meantime, the fastest way to reach us is still by phone or through this site.

FAQs