How to Deal with Fake or Negative Reviews on Google

Yes, people are out to get you! As dramatic as that sounds reputation management is becoming a hot topic for small businesses this year on the interwebs. Just think how easy it is to go online, create a new account and leave either a positive or negative review for most businesses – regardless of whether they even bought or used a service.

Of course, Google have policies in place for users that leave reviews for businesses, they don’t get it right every time and people are finding more and more ways to cheat the system. At Acme, each month we carefully monitor reviews of our clients and more importantly their competitors.

Okay, well now for some good news, if you’re switched on with tracking them and can argue your case well enough for why these reviews are against Google’s terms and conditions, then you can get these false reviews taken down by contacting Google across Facebook and Twitter or reporting them via your Google dash.

The challenge with Google
The thing is, Google doesn’t know who your customers are, and they won’t accept “this wasn’t a customer of ours” as a valid reason to remove the review. Google allow the use of anonymous usernames, in most cases, it’s extremely difficult to prove the identity of someone online.

Another challenge is people who do not have to be an actual customer being able to leave a review. Google also allow people who have “customer experience” to leave a review. What does it mean? It means someone could try and call you or even just drop by and have a browse, this all counts as a ‘customer experience’.

Our views
In our experience it’s always good to share your dilemma, places like Reddit and other social platform have many insightful users who have been through the same!

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