Do CTR bots still have an effect on local ratings?

[GreenDust]

Hello ladies and gentlemen.
I own small local service business and I see one of my competitors company name comes up when you search for the service near me or service in town. I mean his logo and his NAP comes up in google suggestion - not knowledge graph. I checked his link profile and it's a garbage pbns. So the only one way to have the NAP showing in google like that that I am aware of is click bot that makes local searches using air proxies. I am wondering if those type of black hat bots still a thing or is there another trick to have your company come up as a suggestion in a search box?

 

[zelch]

last time I tested it a number of months ago it worked, but not with a bot, with hiring microworkers to search and click. have to keep the clicks going for a long time for it to work. might not work anymore though

 

[fstopeight]

Chris Palmer is the guy you want to check out. I believe it still works and yes it is with micro workers

 

[Twinkey]

Yes, it can still give a boost. But, this is a dirty game where there are pros and cons. You should not do this if you are a beginner and have not figured out how it works.

 

[UFO]

I tested this with a service about a year ago (Serpclix if I remember correctly). They claim to use real users but I didn't realize any benefit. Could've been that it was in a low comp home service and area, or that it wasn't sustained over a long period of time. Could be seen as red flags or look unnatural to Google in my guess.