Fake reviews are a growing problem for those of us that own small businesses. In the online world, it's extremely easy to create a new account and leave either a positive or negative review for any business — regardless of whether you’ve ever tried to hire them.
Google has tons of policies for users that leave reviews. But in my experience they're terrible at automatically catching violations of these policies. At my agency, my team spends time each month carefully monitoring reviews for our clients and their competitors. The good news is that if you’re diligent at tracking them and can make a good enough case for why the reviews are against the guidelines, you can get them removed by contacting Google on Twitter, Facebook, or reporting via the forum.
Recently, my company got hit with three negative reviews, all left in the span of 5 minutes:
Two of the three reviews were ratings without reviews. These are the hardest to get rid of because Google will normally tell you that they don’t violate the guidelines — since there's no text on them. I instantly knew they weren’t customers because I'm really selective about who I work with and keep my client base small intentionally. I would know if someone that was paying me was unhappy.
The challenge with negative reviews on Google
The challenge is that Google doesn’t know who your customers are, and they won’t accept “this wasn't a customer” as an acceptable reason to remove a review, since they allow people to use anonymous usernames. In most cases, it’s extremely difficult to prove the identity of someone online.
The other challenge is that a person doesn’t have to be a customer to be eligible to leave a review. They have to have a “customer experience,” which could be anything from trying to call you and getting your voicemail to dropping by your office and just browsing around.
How to respond
When you work hard to build a good, ethical business, it's always infuriating when a random person has the power to destroy what took you years to build. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the least bit upset when these reviews came in. Thankfully, I was able to follow the advice I’ve given many people in the last decade, which is to calm down and think about what your future prospects will see when they come across review and the way you respond to it.
Solution: Share your dilemma
I decided to post on Twitter and Facebook about my lovely three negative reviews, and the response I got was overwhelming. People had really great and amusing things to say about my dilemma.
Dear: Whoever spammed my listing this morning with fake reviews. You probably should have gone with more believable usernames. #StopCrapOnTheMap pic.twitter.com/9Nat163d93
— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) January 16, 2018
Whoever was behind these three reviews was seeking to harm my business. The irony is that they actually helped me, because I ended up getting three new positive reviews as a result of sharing my experience with people that I knew would rally behind me.
For most businesses, your evangelists might not be on Twitter, but you could post about it on your personal Facebook profile. Any friends that have used your service or patronized your business would likely respond in the same manner. It’s important to note that I never asked anyone to review me when posting this — it was simply the natural response from people that were a fan of my company and what we stand for. If you’re a great company, you’ll have these types of customers and they should be the people you want to share this experience with!
But what about getting the negative reviews removed?
In this case, I was able to get the three reviews removed. However, there have also been several cases where I’ve seen Google refuse to remove them for others. My plan B was to post a response to the reviews offering these “customers” a 100% refund. After all, 100% of zero is still zero — I had nothing to lose. This would also ensure that future prospects see that I’m willing to address people that have a negative experience, since even the best businesses in the world aren’t perfect. As much as I love my 5-star rating average, studies have shown that 4.2–4.5 is actually the ideal average star rating for purchase probability.
Have you had an experience with fake negative reviews on Google? If so, I’d love to hear about it, so please leave a comment.
A good friend of mine has his own Mexican restaurant and he also had some really bad experience with fake negative reviews. They would even mention some dishes which were bad, even though he does not even serve them!
My friend addressed the bad reviews with a fun response and also offered that next time they should come over and try a dish that they actually did serve with a free margarita on the house! The best thing you can do, as my friend did, in such a situation is addressing it with a fun response! It will have other customers laugh and probably even want to go to your restaurant because you showed you got some great sense of humour (which is always a big fat plus).
A good solution. A friend happened and put it on their social networks to see that it was a lie and could verify that they had never even bought in the business.
Google should take note of this and try to control false accounts.
Putting it on social networks is also a great idea! Completely agree with you that google should take note of fake accounts, but they are probably already working on it... (at least I hope so)! Unfortunately I think it is not always that easy to control/identify fake accounts as some of them actually really put a lot of effort into them. And even if they would look at people that have an account that only shows a one-time activity it does not always necessarily have to be a fake account. Some might just create one because they actually really had a bad experience. I think there is much more that plays a role/that shows that it is a fake account...
Hi Joy, Thanks for this post..but I want to inform you that you are one of the top contributors of Google, that's why your fake removal request was considered very quickly. From the last few months, one of my friend business getting many fake 1 star rating without any reviews, even the review person was not a customer. My friend did DM to GMB team and complaint this by using the flag option too, but still issue is not fixed. (As you know the first priority of GMB team is removing duplicate listings and purification of GMB locations).
As you know that I am following you on Twitter. You are doing really great.. But Joy, In India, many business owners are not using Twitter and not aware about the flag option as well. Google should create a review policy, according to customer reaction (call, action, clicks) or the insight of a business.
Just wanted to clarify that my TC status had nothing to do with the outcome of this because I didn't send them through the forum. I used GMB chat support and they have no clue who I am there. I've found it's the best way to get reviews removed quickly because they get back to you in about 24-48 hours whereas the forum takes about 1-2 weeks.
I do think my experience with dealing with these types of problems helped a lot because when you've dealt with hundreds of cases like this, you start to get a good idea of what Google will and will not accept as evidence. In my case, I mainly used a few things as evidence:
So were you able to remove the 3 spam ratings?
Yep - I mentioned that that at the end of the article.
i'm agree with the Kuldeep's reply. Because joy it can be done by your competitor side who wants to make bad reputation by putting these negative reviews.
Google should be work on this review policy like there should be ask 2-3 more question.
1. The reviewer availed the services from you ever If yes then what type of service like Capterra
I hope google will be also think about this process.
If you have an active AdWords campaign running with the location extension, then you report the fake reviews through the AdWords support. It's normally a lot faster and more responsive than the GMB support team. On the other hand, there are no exceptions for AdWords customers, so they won't remove negative reviews just because you spend money with them.
If it doesn't work, then send an EDM to recent customers with a thank you message and kindly ask them to submit a review. Make sure you add a direct Google review link in the email. Normally you can quickly burry one negative review with 4-5 good ones.
Responding is also highly recommended to both good and bad reviews. If you can't write a funny response (due to brand guidelines), you can offer more support or go the hard way and simply discredit the reviewer (e.g. obvious spam account, competitor's account, one review account, etc).
Solid advice Joy! Definitely agree with focusing on what you can control and thinking about "how future prospects will read your response to the review" is a great way to handle this. Hopefully Google will tigthen up on "fake reviews" in the future or maybe take a few notes from Yelp's book in this manner. Thanks for writing!
IMO the best defense is a good offense regarding negative reviews. If are consistently "review farming" from your happy customers, the 2-3 negative reviews will not ding your rating as much if you "pillow" them with the positive reviews. Bright Local had a great 2017 blog about reviews effect & are perceived by consumers:
Original Source: Local Consumer Review Survey by Bright Local
Good post, Joy. What method do you think led to the reviews’ removal in the end, or is it tough to say? Did you flag them the ‘official’ way or did you go the Twitter or Facebook or forum route (or some or all of the above)?
Like Kuldeep, I too wonder if your Google Top Contributor status helped to contribute in their removal. I don’t know the in’s and out’s of the programme, and it might be the case that you don’t have any access to any extra privileges or favours, but I think it’s fair to be a little cynical (sorry)... you might have an advantage over 99.999% of other Local SEOs and business owners.
Plan B sounds like it could’ve been a good move, but could backfire with future genuine clients. If your agency were to have a bad experience with a future client, they could hold it against you. “You offered that other client a 100% refund - I want one too!” It could get very messy, especially if they didn’t believe your story about them being fake reviews. I’d advise others to proceed with caution if they go down this road - once you tell one client you’re open to giving full refunds, they may all expect it.
In my view, Google need to sort out a ‘proper’ review removal process ASAP. One of my clients had an ‘incorrectly given’ review recently (i.e. the reviewer named the company he was reviewing in his review, and it wasn’t my client) - despite being obviously wrong, reporting it by flagging it 3-4 times spread out across a month did absolutely nothing. I had to go down the Twitter DM route in the end, eventually leading to its rightful removal. It’s an absolute farce though. GMB Support need to get their act together, otherwise the problem is only going to get worse - a lot worse.
Hey Steve,
I just posted a reply to Kuldeep that answers most of your questions. I would always put together a well-documented explanation when contacting support that highlights the proof that it wasn't a customer. It's all about discrediting the person that left you a review (kinda like a court case). I haven't used phone support in years so I would avoid that at all costs and stick with social media or chat.
I wasn't honestly worried about Plan B backfiring because I was going to word it in way that clarified they would get one if they didn't get what they paid for (which isn't something a real customer would experience).
I haven't found flagging reviews multiple times to make any difference but have heard others say that it does. From the cases I've seen where Google wouldn't act on it, it's usually because it was a single review that had no evidence from the user other than them stating "this wasn't a customer", which Google won't act on.
Thanks for explaining - yeah I just saw your reply to Kuldeep before seeing this one. It's a shame that the standard flagging option (which I'd wager is the most commonly-used form of reporting reviews) doesn't give you the option to explain/clarify.
Sorry if I'm being dense, but how/where do you get the chat option? Is there a specific link for it, or is it one of those pop-up things that appears on the screen when browsing GMB Support more generally? I'm gonna have to give that a try next time as it sounds like the most direct and quickest method for communicating issues to Google. Thanks!
It's one of the support options that is available in the GMB dashboard along with phone support and email.
Fab - thanks!
Hey it's Joy! I love how honest you are about mentioing how "infuriating" you felt when you got these spam reviews LOL but also, the fact you got 3 additional positive reviews just by sharing your dilhema, is genious!
We've got one client in the real state business with a fake negative review, I'll have to test out your little trick. Thanks!
I will be keeping this in mind the next time this happens. The small business I work for has gotten a bad review from someone who never shopped from us (he said so in his review). He just read all the negative reviews we had and decided that the small business must have deserved it.
Be careful! Unless the new 3 reviews you generated are from your clients, they can also be "flagged" by your unethical competitor as "fake"
Here's why:
You can complain all you want, but until google finds a way to verify reviews, this will always be a problem to deal with.
I completely agree that if you get friends to review you that had nothing to do with your business, Google can remove them since they violate the guidelines. I just wanted to clarify that wasn't the case in this example and that's why I clarified you want to ask "Any friends that have used your service". I definitely don't want to promote just going around and asking friends to review you. I wrote about that topic over here: https://searchengineland.com/law-firms-spamming-go...
The bigger issue we are seeing is 5-star reviews by employees, or the business owner him/herself.
Hey Drake,
Google will remove these if you report them. I'd suggest you post a thread on the GMB forum (https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Google-My-Business/ct-p/GMB#) and make sure you include how Google can verify the person works there (Ex: they're listed on the company website).
Thanks for sharing this Joy. This is a great way to deal with fake reviews. It is a big problem for any company that receives a bad review. and we are getting more and more questions around this topic from our own customers.
I can see, there is a huge problem with these negative reviews on Google. I have a friend of mine who good dissed for not helping someone to drop in some flyers on her counter. She was so upset, even mad at him for "paying her back this way!". We both studied all kind of possibilities - well, there are hardly any! Now, I see, there is no real solution to this problem! I guess, there should be one, somehow. But then again: This is Google. Often you get to think: Hey, they really MEAN sandbox when they say sandbox. Google often seems to be a huge playground where they hardly ever consider the disaster they are bringing upon people on the internet.
My guess would be: Why should any service be just 1 star? It NEVER is totally rotten, most of those times, we all get carried away, "paying them back". Maybe, there should be some kind of "hey, there is only 1 star, I guess there could be something wrong with this review".
Great thoughts, Joy.
I love that solution: share your dilemma and let your supporters and friends come to the rescue. A great reminder that being a legitimate business who treats people well and offers a quality service will always be your most valuable organic asset.
Ugh, same thing happened to me! Was from a guy that I declined to do an investment/affiliate program with. I was so confused why he was so angry with me and then all of a sudden we got 2 bad and fake reviews. Google would not budge on them even though you could tell they were random and fake. What did you do to convince Google to remove them?
If he used his real name in the review, there might be something you can do. It also depends on what the review said. If the review makes it obvious it was related to an employment experience (I think an investment might fall into this arena) and not a customer experience, you might be able to get it removed. You can post your example over at the Google My Business forum (https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Google-M...) and list all the details of how you know who it was (if they didn't use their real name).
As far as what I did, see my response to Kuldeep. I didn't go into details about that in the article because the point of the article was more about how to engage your existing customers when you have a bad review as a way to combat the negative impact.
Joy,
Your post nails how important it is for brands to have a process in place to active garner positive reviews. If you wait until you need it, you're way behind in the game. People will ding you/your business, whether out of spite or justifiably so.
RS
The worst review experience (on Facebook) I had was from an old person who wrote a positive comment and then put one star... It seems just because she didn't really know how to use the interface.
This happens for us occasionally on other selling platforms. Some of which are helpful about this matter, taking context into account as well as our general standing. Others just ignore the request or ask you to ask the customer to go through the hassle of contacting their customer support in order to change their incorrect rating.
To get a review is one thing but, to then request for a customer to go through additional tasks to update it is something else indeed.
The customer wanted to put a good review and put a bad one? If this happen often Google should think of change the inteface...
Yes you are right Joy..!!
Fake and negative reviews affect our business and we have to deal with these type of reviews very cleverly otherwise they can be damage our reputation in the market. If I tell you seriously about this review feature of google My business I like it because I have long time experience to handle these type of negative reviews on my business site. Lots of Time I have seen negative reviews but I know very well that how to give the answer of that reviews.
Thanks...!!
Plan B is really very good and it will definitely work for people who are suffering from fake negative review issue. I think Google should male policies more strict for people to review any product or service like person must have LinkedIn profile, Facebook Profile and many more so that people can find about that person whether he is genuine or fake.
Goog article Joy, you've managed to turn something negative into something positive. The problem comes when a company has been short of time and hasn't got enough followers on social networks.
There are also cases where negative reviews are "more credible" and Google doesn't agree with you. In that case, the company is a little helpless.
Anyway, you can learn from your case and put it into practice if you have a good community.
We actually used a similar tactic and asked our friends for help with reporting the problem, and though the review in questions hasn't been removed yet, we got three new reviews that offset the bad rating.
Awesome! That was definitely the point I was trying to make with the article :) When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Yes, don´t think about the bad critics too much. Consider them but move on. You only get to work harder, afterwards. And while addressing it to others, they can - of course - "pay you for your good work with a great review". Stick to the ones who like your work and appreciate it. Ditch the others over time.
I liked the point that you were very selective and would know if a client was unhappy, etc. You're right! We would certainly know and try to resolve it to preserve our reputation.
The comments in google are read by hundreds of people and the negatives will affect our business, whatever it may be, talking to people who have made negative comments and trying to solve the situation, I think it is the best option. Very good post Thank you very much for the contribution
Nice post Joy! Both actions are really interesting and you took advantage from a bad situation. In my case, I´ve never had fake bad reviews, but I have some real (just one) bad reviews. At that time, all my loyal customers wrote a lot of good reviews supporting me. And that feels great ;-)
Es verdad. Muchas veces los comentarios negativos son hechos por personas que no son clientes. Esos mensajes son para dañar la imagen de la compañía.
La respuesta de devolver el 100% es una gran respuesta. Me gustó mucho el artículo
Buen artículo este, es agradable encontrar alguna respuesta en español, saludos.
It has never happened to me (I cross my fingers, although everyone is happy) but if I have thought about it and my friends have passed, what they do is simply publish it and give it to them so they can see that it is nothing more than a lie. The followers give the reason to the business. In fact, I think Google should somehow revise these accounts that later have no more activity, for the company it is a serious problem if they see that you have bad reputations
It takes a lot of hard work to get those reviews from customers and a few negative reviews can spoil all the hard work. Google definitely need to police the false accounts. I suffered a negative SEO attack some years ago which I had no control over, this is similar in a lot of ways. Great read, thanks for the article.
My hope is Google addresses our needs re fake reviews sooner than later - TRUST in reviews is important for Google :-)
It's a sad news for us.I was looking for a dentist in google.I have most of the reviews was FAKE.Really I was totally socked what the hell is happening here.I don't understand how to solve this problem.sometimes local marketer hire freelancer to post fake reviews on google map.It's a sad news for us.thanks for your post.
In my opinion Google Local Guides has done a lot of damage, has encouraged people to leave reviews and evaluations meaningless and that in many cases hurt businesses
Hi! tmwebs,
You are right. The guy who given me the one star I know him and called him to know the reason of the review. He asked me a good amount of payment if I want to improve my star rating now you can understand what these local guides are trying to do.
Google should somehow control this.
Finally my issue has been sorted out. I just called GMB team using Google Adwords team and choosing option 2 Google my business and explained the the issue to the customer care representative. It was a very nice experience as I explained the issue he checked and maped for Google policies and agreed to remove that comment and the comment has been removed within 24 hours. I am happy for the services I have received from Google team.
Had a vacation rental company contact me about fake reviews. They had to ask a group of under aged renters to leave early because of several justifiable reasons (one included police reports) and the college students waged war. Had their sorority and fraternity friends unleash 30+.
Google did remove several that came in back to back that fit the obvious fakes, 1 star, ridiculous comment, and no prior google history/new account (I'm guessing), did remove a couple 1 star with no comments but only a small portion. We did canned responses trying to make right (knowing we wouldn't get responses) and on those that did respond, typically buffoonish, we followed the only 3 public response rule.Google removed some of those too. We waited for the dust to settle to avoid mixing good reviews with bad before we began the public sharing. Because let's face it some of those good, may not have been 100% fake they weren't necessarily 100% legit. How many of our mom's think we're all 5 stars? But with incredible supportive responses and reviews that helped revive the score a little. Couldn't really push any reviews down to the shadows because of sorting etc. We also started a heavy review request campaign.
All emails had "how are we doing" links in the signatures. We incorporated a process similar to Grade.Us. Anything 3 or below sent the individual to a form asking for more info. Anything 4+ was sent to Google to add the review. All transaction emails (high open rates) asked the same questions. All orders were followed up with. We upped the live customer support, even implemented zendesk lite to help organize missed chats, emails, vmails, and implemented online chat.
Took the students less than 24 hours to bring a 4.9 to less than a -3.7. Took almost 60 days & $ to get it back to a promising number.
This company could be crushed by negative reviews so my top priority was helping fix the bleed and then incorporate the tools and processes so they could rebuild and maintain. Wouldn't stop the next attack but definitely helped rebuild.
Hi,joy
Thanks for the article as a beginner for a long time i searched in google about this topic but yours is special. I thankful for all person who comment your article because they shared their experience too it help a lot.
Thanks
Great article, One of my friends had issue with fake reviews he ended up deactivating his google account as he failed in his endeavor to remove the negative review. I suggested him to reactivate it and try to take it in a positive way. But I now see there is another way to counter negative reviews
I would like to think, given Google's sophisticated machine-learning algorithms, that they'd be able to spot fake spam reviews faster. At the very least, penalize when multiple reviews that show red flags are posted within seconds of each other.
Hi Nikola Yap,
I don't think that Google had ever thought abut the abuse to this review system. Just I came to know now that these review selling and buying is a business as well. I am a google guide for last two years and while I visiting somewhere just upload some images from there if I visit some business provide an honest review. I came to know now as someone gave me a bad review due to its jealous and then asked for money to improve it.
May possible now they will be able to implement something like that but again there would be a cost involved to implement sophisticates machine-learning algorithms. Let's see what happens?
Very good article, i'm a new seo and i need some help to do this. Thank you so much, Please like this comment.
Nice article !!!
Can you please share some positive script on such negative reviews? It will help me lot
Thank you Joy for this conversation!
Yes recently I have received a negative comment from a person who was studying one year behind of me in the university. He never used any service from me. Once he visited my office to see me! After looking at the things with em & how the business going on he become jealous from me and my business. After all he is also output of the same university with masters degree and working as a parking attendant. Finally due to his internal jealous he left a negative review saying "I do not like that businesses". Even it is off topic. I had replied immediately to the comment that "How can we help you? What services did you used from us. Can you please elaborate the reason of this comment. Even I am unable to find which business you are talking about. Thank you." I was thing that after my reply he will say something else or Google will see that it is inappropriate in the context but nothing happened.
Now I have an idea that what I should do.
I have already flagged the review but could not find the chat option yet. I will try again. If you don't mind could please post that link here so that everyone can use it.
Thanks again
Average 4.2 to 4.5 Still Good ratings..But its a good idea sharing on social media sites for getting more reviews.
We've had similar issues, but with Amazon. We've spent hours trying to get the fake reviews removed, but with little success. (We knew they were fake because every single one gave our product a 1-star review, as well as another product that our main competitor sells against).
Anyone have any stratgies for getting fake reviews removed on Amazon?
Great way to handle this Joy!
Thumbs up. I'll keep this in mind in case I am confronted to this situtation!
Thanks
I also follow google recommendation links...
HI,
Great blog, thanks for sharing the insights! I have come across a few of our customers who recently got approached by someone offering a magical solution to no longer show bad reviews on Google. Most of our clients who got targeted are hotel/motel owners. Has any heard of this before? Scam?
Thanks :)
I heard of one service that does this that only charges you if they're successful in removing it. If that's the case, you have nothing to lose. If not, I'd be really skeptical.
Hi Joy!. Its a very nice and helpful guide. Many time I also noticed that some of review come from so far means not real customers. I hope these suggested steps will help enough.
Hello Joy,
Thank you so a wonderful article and well described. Yes, negative reviews on Google can really harm your overall ranking and gives your website a very bad impression. There should be strict rules, especially for customers who really bother to write these reviews.
Thank you.
How did you address this issue to Google and did they removed the spam entries in a timely manner?
I contacted Google My Business via chat and they removed the reviews in 48 hours because they found they violated the guidelines. This has only been my experience with cases where you had supplementing evidence to prove the reviews aren't legit.
That's a great idea, leverage your community to reduce the effects of fake reviews! Love it:)
Although people gripe with Yelp (and rightfully so) at least they do not let a person leave a comment anonymously. I hope one day soon Google will decide they have enough user engagement that they no longer need to allow anonymous reviews and reviewers.
I totally understand why they originally allowed it this way so that they could get their large foot in the door in a Yelp saturated market but they have a good presence now on the review side - please make people stand by their reviews good, bad or ugly. If Google was about a good user experience then make sure people reading reviews have some sense of authenticity by at least making people have a legit profile, pic, etc.
Great informative article :)