Google's AI Overview Has Been Sending Me the Wrong Customers for 6 Months

Six months ago, I started receiving urgent support tickets demanding subscription cancellations and refunds. The tone was unusually hostile for our customers, but I rushed to help anyway.

Problem: I couldn't find these people in Stripe. No account, no payment, nothing.

This kept happening. Angry emails, transaction logs, vague product descriptions–but no matching records on our end. I suspected a major bug, but our systems were fine.

Eventually, I pieced it together: these weren't our customers. They were looking for an entirely different company-one with a bright pink and yellow brand (we're dark green). The names are similar, but the products aren't even close.

What I couldn't figure out: How were so many people confusing us?

It became a daily occurrence. I created a Reddit post and an Intercom snippet to redirect people.

Then last week, one particularly persistent customer insisted we owed them a refund. When I asked why they were so confident, they sent a screenshot:

It was Google's AI Overview. Not our website. Google was displaying our support email as the contact for the other company:

To contact Glam AI, use their support emails: support@glama.ai...

Hundreds of frustrated customers over six months–all because of a hallucinating AI summary.

And yes, it works both ways. Search "contact Glama AI" and sometimes Google returns their contact info.

I'm now mashing the 👎 button on every bad AI Overview I find. No idea if it'll help, but here's hoping I don't spend another six months starting my day with someone else's angry customers.

One interesting observation from this experience: Google AI Overview is differerent for every country. While writing this, I've used VPN and was able to replicate both bahaviors (consistently) in some territories, but not others. Many had correct details (where I smashed 👍). So that's something that's worth trying if you end up in a similar situation.