Introduction: For small business owners, fake reviews are a growing problem. It is all too easy for someone to create a new account and leave a positive or negative review.
Although Google has extensive policies for users leaving reviews, the reality of them actually spotting these violations tends to be a bit non-existent. Of course, you can get these fake negative reviews removed by contacting Google on Twitter (X), Facebook, or the Google forum, however, this does require you to put some effort into tracking the user’s reviews to build-up a case for why these reviews go against Google’s guidelines.
It can be even more challenging when the reviews that have been left only contain a 1-star rating and no actual review with them. In most cases, Google will state that these do not technically go against their guidelines as there is nothing to go against them.
The Difficulties with Negative Reviews
Aside from the issues highlighted above, the other challenge is that Google doesn’t know who your customers are, so they cannot simply accept your word that “this wasn’t a customer”, especially as Google allows people to create accounts with anonymous names – making it even more difficult to identify who the person is.
Another challenge is that a reviewer does not even have to be a real customer, as Google only stipulates that a person has to have a “customer experience”, which could mean anything from an attempt to contact you or your business, or even just browsing online or in the shop with buying anything.
How to Respond
It can be incredibly frustrating when all your hard work to build your business reputation can get completely ruined by a random person leaving a fake negative review. There are, however, some useful tips that we can provide which can help to alleviate the situation and actually help demonstrate to potential real customers that you care about your business and that these reviews are, in fact, fake.
Share Your Situation
Posting these negative reviews to your social media channels can actually garner a great response from your loyal followers. People who follow your business and are fans of your business are highly likely to rally around you and provide support, be it in commenting and resharing your post, or even providing their own 5-star reviews (if they haven’t written one already). This organic reach and the subsequent responses provide your business with an even more authentic edge to potential new customers, and you can also have fun with it by creating memes or jokes off the back of it!
So…How Do I Remove These Negative Reviews?
Although there are some instances where Google has refused to remove fake reviews for some businesses, they do normally remove them in the end…but it may take some time. In the meantime, what you can do is respond to these negative reviews by either asking for further information, or even offering a 100% refund. As these reviews are fake, the likelihood of the reviewer responding to you is very low, and even if they do respond, they cannot actually receive a refund for something that they never purchased!
On the other hand, even if you do end up with the occasional 1-star review but you have an overwhelmingly positive rating, it can actually be more beneficial, as studies have shown that businesses with an average rating of 4.2-4.5 are actually more likely to improve purchase probability.
