"Coming Soon" locations and reviews

[Annika Neudecker]

Hi all,

My company has fully embraced the ability to add locations to GMB ahead of their opening dates with the coming soon option. We build a good amount of new locations and it's useful to be able to get everything up ahead of time. Unfortunately, some of our locations which aren't open yet are attracting random one-star reviews. Obviously these aren't real customers. The fact that Google even allows reviews to be posted to businesses that aren't open yet is mind-boggling and it definitely hurts our locations when they start out on the wrong foot because of some jerks leaving fake reviews. Has anyone had notable success in contesting and removing these kinds of reviews? Has Google given any signal as to why they allow this or stopping it from happening in the future?

Thanks!

 

[Yan Gilbert]

If the business was still marked as closed then it should be simple enough to get the review removed. Have you tried removing any yet?

 

[Annika Neudecker]

If the business was marked as closed then it should be simple enough to get the review removed. Have you tried removing any yet?

Do you mean mark it as closed now to get it removed? It wasn't previously marked as closed but set with a future opening date (May 2019). I've reported them and responded with an answer indicating that they were left before the store was opened in hopes that might help, but since neither have any text, my expectations are low.

 

[Yan Gilbert]

No, sorry for the confusion. I meant 'Future open date' when I wrote 'still marked as closed'. Don't edit the listing.

When did you flag the reviews? I think sending it to GMB Twitter team would be the best way.

 

[AllanDanilo]

Hi,

Yan is right, if you report those reviews to the help center and proof about not being open yet are solid, they should remove them...

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I second Yan and Allan. The only thing I'll add is make sure you are flagging the reviews from within your GMB dashboard and not on the live review. This way is more effective and suggested by Google.