Fake Reviews Best Practices

[natgas2017]

Do you all see better results flagging potential fake reviews or having asking a contributor to funnel it upwards to Google?

I am looking at this business which a lot of reviews have the same place and 6 contributions:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/I...38a75e!8m2!3d33.0528423!4d-89.6029714!9m1!1b1

Example 1:
https://goo.gl/maps/LXr7MGXbSF92

Example 2:
https://goo.gl/maps/BVnCfeSpoBm

Example 3:
https://goo.gl/maps/57u6JvqFP2n

 

[James Watt]

I mean... they're all in the same city in Florida, but that city happens to be the same city as the business in question.

So here's my take as one of the TCs on the Google forum. Flagging isn't hugely likely to get you anywhere, but neither is reporting... unless you've got quite a bit of evidence in your favor. As Joy has pointed out, fake reviews are a huge problem, and none of the roads you can take are great. With something like this though, you wouldn't get anywhere anyway. If you happen to see a review that's obviously for the wrong business, or contains hate speech, or has reviewed 6 iphone repair shops in the past few months, etc. then by all means, post it to the GMB forum. Something like this isn't worth posting, unless you see something I'm missing.

 

[Tim Colling]

What about flagging or reporting google reviews that are clearly written by EMPLOYEES of the reviewed company. Such reviews are a violation of Google's review TOS, right?

 

[Dave]

I'm accumulating evidence on faked reviews. I've seen 2 smb's add respectively about 15-200+ reviews in the last several months. The 2 are on opposite ends of the nation. Many reviewer profiles review both smb's. There are a healthy additional volume of smb's that have received reviews from these profiles.

Additionally many of the profiles of the reviewers will show something like 6, 18, 20+ contributions, virtually all end up having been reviews, but currently only 2,3,4 or 5 are showing.

If anything that indicates that google previously NUKED reviews from these gmail accounts and then just stopped.

What good is that???

What and where is the best way to get this stuff seen or should I just publish with the screen shots to show how absurd, sick, and clearly fake this is, let alone identify that google must have filtered reviews and then simply stopped.

I seriously don't get that last part. Once they have identified profiles with fake reviews why isn't google tracking them, analyzing them and accordingly nuking them.

BTW: These smb's are in California and NY, states where fake reviews have been prosecuted.

 

[James Watt]

Tim - it needs to be fairly obvious, but if they're foolish enough to post a review that makes it clear it's not from a legitimate customer, then you shouldn't have any trouble getting it removed. You can try flagging it, but you'll find the best traction posting on the GMB forum. If one of the TCs takes a look and is also convinced, they can escalate it to the Google engineers in charge of reviews. If they agree, they'll remove it.

Dave - I'm sure Google's review spam algorithm is fairly complex at this point, but it's got a long ways to go to be anywhere near as robust as it could be. Given Google's commitment as of last May to being an AI first company, I think it's likely we'll see some pretty crazy changes in how Google handles spamming rolling out over the next few years, but for now, unfortunately, a lot falls through the cracks. You're welcome to make your case on the GMB forum, feel free to flag me down if you do.

 

[David Feynman]

Do you all see better results flagging potential fake reviews or having asking a contributor to funnel it upwards to Google?

I am looking at this business which a lot of reviews have the same place and 6 contributions:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/I...38a75e!8m2!3d33.0528423!4d-89.6029714!9m1!1b1

That's absolutely hilarious. Being an energy company is one of those things where no matter how good you are a lot of people are going to hate you, yet this company averagres 4.8 out of 5 and has endless raves as if they were a Mercedes dealership giving an owner concierge service with free car delivery to their home while they pick up the one for service. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt and think perhaps they encourage people to review them, if it weren't for the obvious fakes you found.