For a business owner, dealing with a fake negative review is a growing concern. In the age of the internet, people can set up an anonymous account and leave a review for a business that can affect the businesses’ reputation, even though the user never engaged with the organization before.
Although Google has introduced numerous policies and updates to deal with posting fake negative reviews, however, until now, they haven’t introduced to catch those users who regularly violate the review policy. It is therefore crucial that you keep a keen eye on your Google My Business listing, your social media pages and any place where people can write about you to ensure fake reviews are dealt with as fast possible.
In this blog, we’ve laid out a few processes for how to deal with fake negative reviews of a business, including how to report fake reviews and what to do when removal isn’t possible.
Flag and remove a fake Google review: Alright, you have found a fake negative review and now you don’t want it on your Google My Business page. Before removing it, you must flag it and report it and the best way to do this is by using Google maps. Here’s how to do it:
- Find your business listing on Google Maps and go to reviews.
- Identify the review posted by the fraudster.
- Click the three vertical dots(hamburger menu) on the right side of the Google business review.
- You are almost done, select “flag as inappropriate” & that’s it, you are done for now. Respond on your Google My Business page Users are often read the way a business handles a negative review to see if you genuinely care about your clients. Make sure you reply to the review in the right way without letting your emotions overpower you. Build a well throughout and professional response to a fake negative review, if you don’t have any plan, consider taking help from a digital marketing company that deals with these types of reviews regularly. If you want to deal with your own anyway, here’s what Google proposes to do when leaving a response:
- Respond timely.
- Thank your reviewers.
- Be honest about mistakes if any.
- Be a friend, not a salesperson.
- Apologize when appropriate.
- Stay nice and abstain from getting personal.
Take help from your customers: Finally, if you have spotted a fake review, you can take help from your existing clients. How? Well, you can share the fake reviews to your social media channels and ask them to be the judge of your business policy and services. You will be surprised by the number of responses you will get and to help you, even more, your customers can post positive reviews about your business which will diminish the credibility of fake reviews.
Though the above steps seem simple and easy to execute, however, it’s much trickier to get rid of a fake review. Keeping a constant sharp eye on Google my business page is necessary to fight bad reviews. However, running a business and constantly hunting for a fake review is a daunting task. This is much worse if you don’t have experience in SEO or digital marketing. To have a great review page you can take help from a professional digital marketing company who can keep a sharp eye on your page all the time to fight fake reviews.
Unicode Solutions is an expert on all the things SEO, Google, and social media. If you have been looking for a digital marketing company in Delhi to fight fake negative reviews, it is time you pick up the phone.