Want to use Google Business Pages but Spam Reviews are putting me off
-
Not sure if I am missing something here...I have phoned and asked Google business how they deal with reviews which are potentially fake and damaging to a business reputation, it seems there is very little a small local business can do about them other than report the review with no guarantee of anyone helping ...Has anyone else had this issue as I would really like to use this service to assist with rankings on google? It is hard to convince (and to be honest I don't want to have to convince!) a local business that this is a good service at the same time as informing them they will more than likely have to spend extra time fending off fake reviews...Not seen any good answers anywhere else, ignoring the reviews, adding more positive reviews or replying/managing reviews are not an option.
Hope someone can help with this, thanks
-
Thanks Miriam, much appreciated. I'll check it out see how I get on
-
Hi Ian,
I can understand how you feel about this, and yes, these policies do often seem to favor the reviewer over the business owner, which really isn't fair. Some platforms are better than others at listening to spam complaints. With Google, it has been such a long haul to get them to the point where they've started to understand that they needed to offer some kind of support for their local product (at all!), that I am not surprised that you are getting generic answers to your queries about a spam review.One other thing you might try ... check out Joy Hawkin's post about Twitter-based Google support: http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/38665-new-google-my-business-support-via-twitter-tweet-ghelp.html
If you could prove to them that the user was not a customer, perhaps you might get a more custom response from the support staff. Just a thought.
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for the reply.
Yes by "this service" I meant I am looking at setting up Google Business pages, Facebook etc for my clients...getting social !
It is difficult and I have noticed that, as you say, there may already be "profiles out there with your business name on them" The review one of my clients has received is from 5 months ago even though the google page has only been live 2 weeks?...maybe there already was a profile in existence. I asked google if there are any checks carried out on reviewers locations as if the reviewer is not local to my client i.e. lives on the other side of the world, it is obviously fake due to the content. They said they operate an equal rights policy, which I did not understand how that was an answer to my question. In any case the rights are definitely heavily waited towards protecting everyone except small local businesses. Many businesses are simply doing their day to day job which is more than enough, without having to come home jump on a computer to see someone attacking their livelihood without them having any real fear of getting caught.
If there was a clear route to appeal and a specific timeline as to when issues with reviews will be dealt with (i.e. that day, not 4-6 weeks later when the damage is done), I think I would feel a lot more at ease.
Genuine negative reviews I understand, but then if it is genuine the phone number is on the website on the google page, pick up the phone/send an email direct, talk to someone, no response, go right ahead write a bad review.
Fake/Spam/Competitor driven, there should be some way of dealing with this, which isn't so difficult. Responding to spam I fear would invite more, so I guess ignore and get more positive reviews is the best option.
Thanks again for your response
Ian
-
Hi Ian,
Thanks for starting a good topic. I would like to ask for clarification as to what you mean by 'this service'. Are you saying someone is offering a some sort of review service, or are you simply talking about setting up profiles for your clients on sites like Google, Yelp, and Facebook in order to earn some reviews?
If the latter, then common advice here is going to be that fear of negative reviews should never deter a business from building the citations and review profiles necessary to achieving local search visibility. And the fact of the matter is, even if you don't actively build citations, they can get automated for you, meaning that you may already have profiles out there with your business name on them, and with reviews on them, that you'd be ignoring if you don't investigate and take an active part.
Yes, it's reality that a business is likely to get negative reviews, at some point, and yes, you are totally correct that fake and spam reviews do happen. Most review platforms have a TOS which, if violated, can be grounds for getting a review removed (for example, a review containing a racial epithet or discussing illegal behavior) but, in many cases, no, platforms will not remove negative reviews, in which case, you can either respond to the negative review and explain why it is fake, seek legal council, or, do the thing you've already mentioned which is to try to overbalance the negative review with many more positive reviews.
It may be helpful to remember that all of your direct competitors are in the same boat. They, too, are all at risk for receiving fake reviews. And, if that doesn't help, there have been highly publicized cases in which raising enough of a fuss in the right places has caused the big players to take down spam, because they are responding to the publicity.
Hopefully, that last thing wouldn't be something you'd ever need to do, but, it does exist as a last resort in an egregious case of review spam that you've been unable to address by any other method.
I hope you'll get more feedback on this!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Any Success Getting Fake 5 Star Google My Business Reviews Removed From Competitors?
Hi, I am working on a competitor who is obviously building up fake reviews using a 3rd party service. I need to build more evidence. A majority of his reviews on Google My Business, they are done by reviewers with very few reviews (no profile pic), and that seem to review 3-4 companies in the Chicagoland area the exact same day. This happens again and again. It started about 1.5 years ago. Before that everything looks normal. Any idea how much proof I need to actually get those reviews and/or his company removed? I am working on getting access to a private group on Facebook where he talks about it. Thanks in advance!
Reviews and Ratings | | vetofunk1 -
PPC: How do we get our reviews into AdWords?
Hi there, I know that Google have sadly discontinued ratings extension in AdWords but does anyone know a get-around for this? If possible, we'd like to show off the good reviews we have from Google My Business' Knowledge Panel in our ads. We're an online product/service so I don't want to link GMB through the location extension if possible (it doesn't make sense for anyone to pay us a visit in real life). Is there a better way of linking our AdWords to our GMB or is there an alternative extension/ AdWords feature we can use to get review ratings in our ad? Thanks 🙂
Reviews and Ratings | | Fubra0 -
What is the best online reputation management software for generating legitimate Google (and other online) reviews?
Hello! Does anyone have a good experience with using an online reputation management tool to help generate online reviews for a Google My Business listing, Facebook, etc? The reason I ask about a review software is because of my client's age demographic (50+), so we need to have an automated system to request reviews from their clients and to make it simple for them to leave reviews.
Reviews and Ratings | | eport122 -
Rich snippet not enabled, on aggregated review pages
We have a website where you can book on restaurants, and afterwards you can review the restaurant you visited. So we have this page: https://www.r2n.dk/restauranter/restaurant-bonjour-vietnam (We have one for each restaurant). English version https://www.r2n.dk/en/restauranter/restaurant-bonjour-vietnam The page is marked up in microData, and when I test the site in google structured data it shows no errors https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.r2n.dk%2Frestauranter%2Frestaurant-bonjour-vietnam . But the page does not show up on google with a rich snippet (The review stars). I am thinking it might be one of the following things. Either it is because there is multiple "Restaurants" on the page, where the others appear in recommended restaurants, where we also marked them up as much as possible. Or else it could be because the reviews are hidden behind the "Anmeldelser"(Reviews) button, where they are retrieved via a ajax request, but if this was the case I don't get why this other site where the reviews does not appear is working fine: https://www.just-eat.dk/restaurants-bonjourvietnam Also it is a week since we finaly correctly implemented the structured data on the page, so I don't know if I should wait a longer time(Though the page has been cached by google multiple times since we updated the code)
Reviews and Ratings | | Christian_T0 -
Different results & page layout in Google local for plurals?
I realize that the general results websites can rank differently for singular vs plural keywords, but today when checking local rankings for a client, I noticed that not only does the client rank differently for "church in San Diego" vs "churches in San Diego" but the layout and info of the local results pages are different. "Church in San Diego" (screenshot) shows the phone number and has links for Website and Directions "Churches in San Diego" (screenshot) doesn't show any of that instead has an image. If you click on the image, it brings up a card almost like a popup with info, reviews, and links for the organization. Anyone ever noticed that before? Anyone know why the difference? And if there are different optimization strategies?
Reviews and Ratings | | Kurt_Steinbrueck0 -
Does advertising on Yelp help a business get more Yelp reviews?
I've gotten this question from a few clients. There seems to be a correlation in some cases between paying to advertise on Yelp, and the volume of reviews received. Of course, correlation does not necessarily equal causation. And I can attest to the fact that other clients who have at times advertised on Yelp did not even see a correlation. Has anyone else seen this correlation? And if so, can you speak to the possible causation or lack thereof?
Reviews and Ratings | | irapasternack0 -
Using structured data for reviews - for negative or warnings.
We all use review markup today and we use it linearly as only a vote up or down. My question is around a site that will judge the negative impacts of given chemicals introduced into certain waterways. (Sorry, I must protect the client so I cannot give out all the info; I hope this is enough for a reasonable understanding.) Is there anyone who has ever used or is aware of any markup that does not result in a star? So, if we use the current system, we end up where a bad chemical gets a ton of single stars. In essence what we are measuring is degrees of Positive. With four stars there is no zero positive, but 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% (Ok unless it is aggregated). I want to be able to show degrees of negative and obviously stars would be confusing. So, have a symbol that connotes a negative (skull and crossbones, X, !!, etc.) and the more of these someone marks shows more displeasure or more danger. Are there any ideas for this or any occurrences already on the Internet you may be aware of? Preference would be to be able to at some point have search engines show them as snippets. Thanks to all you Mozzers, Robert
Reviews and Ratings | | RobertFisher0 -
Blocking Reviews by Blocking Words?
A client sent me an email this week, stating that you could block bad reviews on social media sites by "blocking" certain words from comments such as "I", "you", "them", "they"......she heard it at a conference from some other CEO's that had some problems with bad reviews. Essentially these CEO's blocked these words making the pages read only pages so no one could leave a review on social media sites. Now, I have never heard this tactic, nor think this is a good idea in any way shape or form. And I know that you can't block bad reviews from happening (without looking at the bigger picture and encouraging some look at internal processes and customer service). Has any one heard of this tactic? Or better, know of anywhere online that documents this idea of blocking words? I have to get back to her, but I have beaten the drum about how to acquire good reviews so much, I feel I am not getting through! Help! Thanks
Reviews and Ratings | | cschwartzel0