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Waking up to positive reviews are amazing. But many local businesses fall victim to fake reviews, often from competitors. Some competitors even pay money to do so. Whatever the case, should you run into fake reviews, there are a few things that you can do.
Your first course of action should be to try to resolve any negative reviews. By replying to the customer you should be able to address concerns or be able to take the conversation offline to help make things right. If you determine it is in fact a fake review, you would attempt to report it.
When looking to have what you consider a fake review being removed, keep in mind that you should not submit a request just because you disagree or don’t like the feedback that someone posted.
Also, most review sites will not get involved when it’s a case of when a business and customer disagree about facts, mainly because there isn’t a suitable way to identify who would be in the wrong when it comes to the customer experience. You should also realize that fake and inappropriate reviews are two different things.
For the most part, you mainly want to focus on negative reviews for Google, Facebook and Yelp, which would have the most visibility and influence overall. But if you're seeing considerable traffic coming from other review sites that are now host to negative reviews you'll want to see what you can do there as well.
Removing Fake Google Reviews
What's worse than your Google reviews not showing up? Getting fake Google reviews that you need to remove.
By flagging the review in question, you’ll be taken to the Report a policy violation page. Enter your email, select the violation type and you’re done. If more info is required after you've reported the fake review from Google, they’ll be in touch.
If the above procedure hasn’t taken care of things, and if the review is in clear violation of their terms or guidelines, you could try a support associate through Google Business Profile (GBP). Simply log into your GBP dashboard, go to the section for Reviews, click on the home menu and choose Support, then select a method of contact (Phone or Email) and provide details. You should probably hear something in 24-48 hours.
More info for reporting fake reviews to Google:
https://support.google.com/business/answer/4596773?hl=en
Also see;
https://support.google.com/business/answer/2622994
Removing Fake Facebook Reviews
With Facebook's extensive reach, especially among small businesses in local communities, its reviews play a significant role in managing a business's reputation.
If you need to remove a fake review on Facebook, you need to report the issue. Fake reviews on a product or service are a conflict of the community standards guidelines at Facebook.
If you’re only dealing with one and you have several
An option to consider while taking care of reputation management is to temporarily turn off the reviews on your Facebook. select the “Edit Page” option in the drop down menu and choose “Update Page Info". Next, scroll down to where it says "Address" and click "edit". From here, unclick the map checkbox under the map on the left where it says “Show this map on your Page” and click "save changes".
Follow the same steps but click the checkbox for “Show this map on your Page” to have your star ratings appear on your page again.
More info for reporting fake reviews to Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/help/439579999521224
Removing Fake Yelp Reviews
If you're wondering how to delete Yelp reviews, you’ll need an account to get started. Flag the review in question to begin the process and provide the necessary details. Alternatively, if you find this doesn’t work, you can try contacting them at feedback@yelp.com. That’s it.
More info for reporting fake reviews to Yelp:
https://www.yelp-support.com/article/How-do-I-report-a-review?l=en_US
Related: https://get.nicejob.com/resources/what-you-need-to-know-about-responding-to-yelp-reviews
The following can help you with some of the other more popular online home service, professional service, and restaurant review sites when it comes to reporting or removing fake reviews.
TripAdvisor - https://www.tripadvisorsupport.com/hc/en-gb/articles/200614937-How-do-I-report-an-inappropriate-review-
Merchant Circle - http://merchantcircle.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/283634
Yellow Pages - Click “flag” next to review at https://www.yellowpages.com
Angie’s List - https://www.angieslist.com/faq/how-do-i-delete-review/
Trust Pilot - https://www.trustpilot.com/trust/combating-fake-reviews
City Search - email customerservice@citygrid.com with your profile link, date/text of review
Insider Pages - same action and email as City Search above - http://www.insiderpages.com/faq
SuperPages - Requires a SuperPages or Facebook account. Click “flag abuse” link associated with the review and fill out a short form.
Zomato - send details to help@zomato.com
Judy’s Book - https://www.judysbook.com/Help/Report-a-review-id23
Houzz - see details at https://support.houzz.com/hc/en-us/articles/217393907-Customer-Feedback-and-Reviews
Kudzu - https://register.kudzu.com/popup_help.do#faq3
Avvo - https://support.avvo.com/hc/en-us/articles/209975343-What-if-I-get-a-negative-review-
Zillow - https://www.zillow.com/advice-thread/Is-there-any-way-to-report-fake-zillow-reviews/618595/
Turn your positive reviews into your best marketing assets!
NiceJob’s set-and-forget review software automatically gets you reviews and shares them on Facebook, Instagram, and more so you can become top rated.
See how it works
You should be aware that many review sites are not in the habit of removing reviews unless it crosses the line on some issues. These can include defamatory remarks, advertising, spam, copyrighted content, confidential information, profanity, personal attacks, offensive material, and other issues.
Each vary per review site and you would want to check info such as content guidelines or policies to help determine what is deemed acceptable.
Since each review site has their own terms and policies, it isn’t always possible to even have a fake review removed. There’s nothing worse than a 1-star rating without a comment to bring down your overall rating, and the review site to ignore removal requests when you believe that it must be fake.
But since it’s their platform, and moderation on the larger review sites involves thousands of daily reviews, it would clearly be a challenge. Many use algorithms to detect what could be a fake review, along with a manual review process, and another mechanism many use is crowd source reporting from the community.
While it’s inevitable that you won’t have a 5-star rating forever, this isn’t always a bad thing. Many are skeptical when a business only has a perfect score. How you go about responding to negative reviews can also influence potential users, as it demonstrates a genuine concern and interest in their satisfaction.
Part of effective reputation management is to monitor. If you continue to track your reviews, you can stay on top of the situation before they accumulate and become much more difficult to handle.
