Google Business Listings are excellent tools for local SEO and Digital Marketing. Customer reviews and ratings are prominently used by Google search algorithms to display Google Listings on top of search results. Having a good number of positive reviews on your Google Listing is a great way to tell your customers that your business offers good products/services and can be trusted.
More and more people have started reading reviews before making a purchase and this is changing the way business is done. As businesses have started paying attention to Google Listing reviews, the scenario is slowly changing. Those which were on top ranks are no longer there. The competition forces people to post fake/negative reviews which poses a great problem for online business marketing. Lower ratings on Google Listing not only drops a business ranking on Google Search results but also reduces credibility hitting a business below the belt. Fake Negative reviews are unethical, but hey, its competition!
Managing Negative Reviews on Google Business Listings is neither easy nor convenient.
There are different kind of Negative Reviews:
- Its a Fake Negative Rating. You don’t know the person and have no clue why this was done. Sometimes it is just a blank review with only a rating.
- Its a Fake Negative Review. You don’t know the person but he/she has rated your business down as well as written a load of lies.
- Its a Negative Review. You know the person. He is your customer and is writing the truth.
While the 3rd type is genuine and appropriate, you need to get this Negative Review converted into a Positive. You can reach out to the customer and do what all is required to solve his concern. Remember, One dissatisfied customer will share the experience with 10 others, so it is better to follow best business practices and focus on customer satisfaction at every level of service delivery to avoid such reviews. If you feel that the customer is wrong and his perception can’t be changed, then be open and honest on your response to the review and put across your position in black and white. State why you can’t do, what is expected, and remember to keep it all positive without criticizing or blaming your customer. You can ask the customer to update the rating if he is happy with the resolution or ask him to remove his negative review by offering a full refund.
For type 1 and 2 reviews, there is a different approach. If you come across a Fake negative review with only a rating or a one word/line review, you can flag this review as inappropriate and after selecting the reason, send the report to Google for followup. However, on the basis of my experience, I can say that these reviews are almost never removed by Google from the Google Listing as Google can’t find any policy violation with them.
They are fake, they are negative and yet they are there to stay, thanks to Google. So what can you do about such a review? Write a carefully worded response like “This person is unknown to us and has posted this fake negative rating/review for reasons unknown to us”. You can try to see this person’s other contributions by opening his profile and get some clues about what all places he is posting reviews for. However, it seldom helps.
In the above case, we flagged this review as inappropriate, but Google reverted that it can’t be removed as there was no policy violation. We then decided to track the review writer on Google and found him after a detailed search. He is himself a digital marketing professional and when we called him to question regarding his fake review, he agreed to remove it. It took only a minute and this fake negative review was deleted by him. But, does this work every time? No. Most people who post such reviews use false names and have little or no online presence, so they can’t be traced.
In the 2nd type if you see a fake rating with a strongly worded negative review which is an attempt to hurt your business reputation, you can flag it and report to Google. This review will be removed if it carries abusive language, but if does not, it will also remain on your Google Listing for all to see. Mostly people who have experience in digital marketing methods post negative reviews on competition’s Google Listings posing as their customers and write fake reviews to reduce their ratings and destroying their credibility. They post multiple fake negative reviews and up vote each review among themselves to highlight these negative reviews in the Google search results. If you are a target of such reviews, then understand that it is a well co-ordinated planned campaign to hurt your online business reputation.
Such reviews damage business reputation and hurt the most. The best way to damage control is to respond in simple yet effective language highlighting your business ethics, good practices and reliability/trust. Keep it in good spirits. Use your writing skills to demonstrate that the review is written by some one who is neither a customer, nor anyone linked to your business, but someone working for the competition, with an objective to lower your business ratings. So, even though the fake negative review stays on your Google Listing, its impact is blunted. People can read your response and understand the real picture.
Remember, you can’t control who submits reviews on your Google Listing and neither can you remove reviews on your own – no matter if they are fake or negative. You can flag these reviews and appeal to Google to have these removed. If Google finds the language abusive, it may remove, however all the rest of reviews or ratings are there to stay. To stay on top of the ratings, you need to ensure that there are way more positive reviews than negative ones. This is the only way forward in real world scenario.
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