Want to use Google Business Pages but Spam Reviews are putting me off

[imoprojects]

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

[MiriamEllis]

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!

[imoprojects]

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

[MiriamEllis]

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.

[imoprojects]

Thanks Miriam, much appreciated.  I'll check it out see how I get on