Spot fake reviews on Google Maps

Pull recent reviews for local businesses and flag any that suddenly got a flood of 5 stars.

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   @Firecrawl Use Firecrawl Alexandria to find the top 15 roofers in Austin, TX on Google Maps and flag any that suddenly got way more five-star reviews than usual.

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   What came back

   Claude Code (Claude Opus 5.5) sent back, word for word:

   I pulled the top 15 Google Maps results for "roofers Austin TX" through Firecrawl Alexandria and up to 300 recent reviews for each, about 2,600 in total. Then I compared each roofer's five-star reviews per month against its own usual monthly number. Cool Roofs is the one that clearly stands out. Three others had real spikes that look more like aggressive review requests than fake reviews.

   Flagged

   #	Roofer (Maps rating / reviews)	Spike	Usual month	What's in it
   🔴 1	Cool Roofs – Austin (5.0 / 606)	99 five-star reviews in Dec 2025, then 30 in Apr 2026	~8	49 of December's reviews came on Dec 21–23. 17 start with the same words, "Cool Roofs is an amazing company and working with Daniel made things easy." Several are from people referring "my clients," so they're partners, not customers. On Apr 15, 16 reviews came in, nearly all within about an hour.
   🟠 2	LOA Construction and Austin Roofing (5.0 / 1,003)	66 in Jul 2025 (and 30 in Jun)	~14	About 4.5× normal, with 11 on Jul 24 alone. The reviews look real: 40 have photos, many mention hail damage, and each is worded differently. The burst lines up with hail season and a push by individual salespeople ("Jerry" is named 39 times in June, "Miriam" in July). Most likely they asked customers for reviews, not faked them.
   🟠 3	Texas Choice Roofing (5.0 / 215)	26 in Dec 2024	~4	About 6× normal. The reviews are long and distinct and name staff. Unusually, the owner replied to none of them, though they normally reply to almost every review.
   🟡 4	Austin Roofing and Construction (4.8 / 277)	19 in Sep 2025	~3–4	About 5× normal. 16 came in one week (Sep 22–29), and two start with the same words.
   🟡 5	HD Roofing and Repairs (4.9 / 343)	18 in Oct 2025	~6	About 3× normal. Reviews mention hail and repairs, so it's probably storm work.

   Not a spike, but worth knowing

   • Austin Roofing Company (5.0 / 78, the #3 search result): all 78 reviews arrived after Jan 28, 2026, and every one is five stars. The listing is new and built its rating fast.
   • Austin Roofing Company & Handyman (4.9 / 49): all 49 reviews arrived after Nov 2025, and 47 are five stars.

   No flag

   Kidd Roofing, WDR, Elite Roofing, Ace, Wilson, Clear Choice, Zilker, and Perry & Sons. Kidd, WDR and Elite do have busy stretches (up to about 3× normal), but they last several months and line up with storm season.

   Limits

   • Austin roofing reviews really do surge after hailstorms, so a spike alone doesn't prove anything. That's why I rank by the review text too, such as repeated wording, timing and who is writing.
   • For the busiest roofers (LOA, Kidd, WDR and Cool Roofs), 300 reviews only reaches back 8 to 18 months. Their "usual month" figures cover less time than the others.
   • Reviewer profile history isn't available through this tool, so I couldn't check whether the reviewers' accounts look genuine.

   This used about 250 Firecrawl credits. fetch_reviews.py in the project folder was never run, because the shell needed approval, so I fetched everything through the Firecrawl tool directly instead.

   Sources usedFirecrawl Maps250 credits · Oct 20, 2026

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