Competitor Republishing Old Reviews as New?

[kristina@digitallys]

Hey! So I am facing a situation where TWO of my competitors are doing the following: they are republishing their old reviews as new, thus allowing their review number double if not triple. Just to give you an example of one competitor, ProSkill Services.

If you look closely at their reviews, you will notice that some of the "fresh" reviews have the answer from the owner up to a year ago: Screenshot. Then, when we look at the reviewer page, we can see that he initially left that review 10 months ago, but it is published as 14 hours ago: Screenshot.



Has anyone come across such a situation and what can I do? I've already reported this to Google but they take ages to do anything...

 

[zach.todd]

I hope someone will correct me if they've seen this happen before, but that looks like a software bug. I'm not sure how a user could control the timestamps. My hunch would be that something has gone wrong with the release of the queued up reviews that were backed up while reviews were locked.

Again, that's just my guess, and I hope someone that knows better can correct me.

 

[Yan Gilbert]

Just tested to confirm. The original reviewer edited their old review, which resets the date.

I inserted an extra space character (between nice & school) in my review.

Original:

After editing:

 

[kristina@digitallys]

Just tested to confirm. The original reviewer edited their old review, which resets the date.

I inserted an extra space character (between nice & school) in my review.

Original:

After editing:

Hey! Yeah i thought about this. But then there are hundreds of such reviews in a matter of days, I am afraid that it is impossible that all users have edited their reviews at the same time.

 

[Yan Gilbert]

Hmm, ok. Yea, I checked out the listing and there are tons or reviews like that. You mentioned that it is pushing the review count higher, but I didn't notice any duplication. I've asked for clarification from Google support on the listing to see what is going on.

 

[keyserholiday]

I was personally contacted about this business and situation. I am not able to go into full details as I am under NDA with Google, but they told me it is a technical issue and not anything fraudulent on this businesses part.

 

[kristina@digitallys]

Hmm, ok. Yea, I checked out the listing and there are tons or reviews like that. You mentioned that it is pushing the review count higher, but I didn't notice any duplication. I've asked for clarification from Google support on the listing to see what is going on.

Please let me know if you have received a word about this. I've just spotted another business doing the same thing...

 

[keyserholiday]

Google has not shared with us anything that we can publicly share. The businesses I asked Google were not republishing old reviews.