Reviews are a great source of free advertisement. Ask any consumer where they head first before purchasing a product or service and 9 out of 10 will say a review platform. But, what do you do when you are hit with a negative review that is completely false? Take this one left on our Google Maps for example:
Who is James? We have no idea! We had never spoken to this person and certainly never worked with them, however, they decided to leave a negative review on our page. James has also been busy spamming other companies too:
We can only assume that this guy has got it in for small businesses or just has way too much time on his hands. And herein lies the problem. Reviews are great for individuals and businesses because they can provide an exchange of feedback that is open and honest whilst allowing consumers to make informed choices about where they shop or select their services from. It also encourages businesses to ‘do better’ in terms of providing excellent service and products.
Circling back to the original problem; what do you do when you are hit with a fake review and the person is someone you’ve never dealt with before? You can respond with something similar to what the businesses above wrote, you can ask Google to review the comment and delete it (very difficult and success rate is very low!) or you can access our new review management service!
For the majority of businesses there are five platforms that are commonly used to leave reviews. They include: Google My Business (encompassing Maps), Facebook, True Local, Product Review and Wordofmouth.com.au (WOMO.)
Most of these review sites don’t even require you to set up a verified account before posting anything so reviews like the ones we demonstrated above can leave damaging effects on your overall quality score and ranking.
While you can’t always remove the bad review you can take steps to counter it. As internet specialists (self-coined) we can work with you to efficiently and cost-effectively review your reviews and report back with general advice, recommendations to any escalations and support with the process of removing bad reviews.
You can see that you can’t always remove the bad review but you can respond to it in a way that helps others understand that it is a fake.
And if you feel like this is something you could benefit from, give us a call or send us an email.
Yours in good and bad (reviews.)
Mel @ Cultivate Digital
P.S If all this review talk has got you thinking – feel free to leave us one. We LOVE them!
