Negative Review Attack on Client GMB Page

[WAHamilton]

Around 2 weeks ago, my client received five different one-star reviews from various Google accounts. Four out of five accounts only have a single Google review on them. The fifth has a few more reviews, so it is somewhat problematic. Here is a screenshot of the reviews in question.

I've flagged all the reviews, spoken with Google Chat Support, and successfully escalated this -- not sure what the outcome will be. Anyone have experience dealing with something similar? Anything you'd recommend to help get these spam reviews removed?

 

[Phil Rozek]

@WAHamilton, there is extremely little you can do, sad to say. Those ratings-only "reviews" are the hardest to get taken down, because even if a person at Google looks at them, there's no clear indication (to anyone but you) that a given person was or was not a customer.

The good news is that, in my experience, those reviews often get filtered after the fact. It could be weeks, or it could be months. My guess is Google wants to see how those drive-by negative reviews fit into the larger pattern.

 

[Phil Rozek]

(Also, if you DM me the link I'll be glad to flag the reviews. For what that's worth.)

 

[WAHamilton]

Thanks @Phil Rozek , here is the link. If you sort by recent, they'll be the top five.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@WAHamilton, done!

 

[Cherie Dickey]

Flagging must have worked for a few. I'm only seeing two of the reviews in the screenshot. I've gone ahead and flagged those two as well.

 

[WAHamilton]

Thanks very much @Cherie Dickey! Looks like you are correct. Hopefully the other two will be removed as well.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I also just flagged the remaining 2.

 

[WAHamilton]

Thanks @JoyHawkins

 

[WAHamilton]

Quick update on the situation from Google Support. The first three reviews were removed because they did not make any reference to "service", but the support specialist claimed that we wouldn't be able to remove the other two. She recommended responding to them.

I brought up the idea of seeing whether the accounts shared an IP address (which I'd heard somewhere had worked before in removing spam reviews), but she claimed they would've already checked that.

Any thoughts on ways to escalate this further? If that's the final outcome, I'm not too unhappy. Three outta five ain't bad -- but I'm curious if people have other hacks for this.

 

[Yourname]

Hi @WAHamilton, sorry to hear. We have a similar issue, but no Google resolution after having flagged it once (since Google's submission page says don't flag it more than once). It's been 3 months.

Where did you get a hold of Google support for this particular problem? Surely not Google Ads support?

 

[WAHamilton]

Hi @Yourname, you can contact chat support via the Google My Business backend. It is a bit tricky to find at times, but here is a link to the form. Hope that helps!

 

[Yourname]

Thanks a ton @WAHamilton, getting on it right away!

It's absurd how Google takes forever to do something while the client just can't get the fact that Google is a billion dollar company with thousands of employees!

 

[Yan Gilbert]

It does take a long time sometimes. Had a client that received many bad reviews over the same incident by many different accounts. They all eventually got removed, even though I assumed one of them would stick, but it did take a few weeks.

 

[Tim Colling]

It's funny that way. Sometimes they seem to be removed almost instantly. Other times, not so quickly.

 

[SmallBizGeek]

I had the same thing happen to me. I even made an unlisted video of me tracking down the reviewer using their username, which I used to discover their YouTube channel, then their email address and forums to do with hacking they'd posted on.

Google are just not interested and say as far as they're concerned, the reviews are real. The reviews were posted by a kid from the USA who is into Minecraft. Not my audience, not a customer!

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I hate to even bring this up but there are services you can pay for positive reviews, surely there are services you can pay for negative reviews. Google needs to step their game up.