NEW Ready to Take Target Practice on Businesses with Fake Reviews?

[Colan Nielsen]

Every once in a while a new tool comes along that is extraordinarily innovative. The Transparency Company has accomplished just that. Have you ever wondered if your competitors are engaged in deceptive review practices, but you can't nail down exactly what they are doing in order to prove it to Google? Or they just have so many darn reviews that it would take a billion years to go through each one to determine which are fake? This is the problem that The Transparency Company has solved.

The starting point with this tool is to install the Chrome Extension. Make sure that you sign in!

Let me run through exactly how I have been using this tool so far to give you an idea of how it works. Once I've installed and logged into the Chrome Extension, I simply pull up the Google Business Profile of the business I want to scan for fake reviews. You will now see a "Scan This Business" badge that you click on.

Once you click the "Scan This Business" button the tool starts the process of going through all the reviews and putting a report together. Once the report is complete, you can access all your scanned reports by clicking on the Chrome Extension and selecting "My Business Scans". Locate the report once it has completed running and it will tell you if the businesses reviews are "Verified", which means they are not suspicious, or it will label it as "Suspicious" if the tool finds signs of deception.

You have the option to "See Listing" which pulls up a customized directory type listing for that business that highlights all the reason for the "suspicious" label. You can also download the report which will give you a comprehensive report that you can share with Google when reporting the reviews. So far the Transparency team has seen the following actions taken by Google:

• Listing removals/suspensions
• Complete review swipes

Here's a sample report:​

How cool is that!

You can also manage the reports and folders in your dashboard by simply dragging and dropping them.

This is important because they recommend you have a folder for:
- Your company location(+ your competitors)
- Your clients (+ their competitors)

Friday Target Practice​

The Transparency Team also hosts a free weekly review takedown meeting.

Bring red/suspicious competitors reports to their Friday Target Practice meetings for free review-takedowns https://community.askfortransparency.com/events

Additional Services​

They also have services for companies/agencies that don't want to do their own review spam fighting, and their Spam Fighting Captain Jason Brown would be happy to go after your competitors.

More details can be found on: The Transparency Company | Learn more about our available services

Special Offer for Local Search Forum Members​

- Free Indexed Listings (for clients)
- Free Verification Video (for clients)

Feel free to ask Curtis and the team any questions you have on their website or start the conversation right here at the Local Search Forum.

 

[Phil Rozek]

Very cool. I look forward to trying it out. A couple of questions for Curtis & friends:

1. How does the extension approach no-text, ratings-only reviews by someone with no other reviews?
2. What's the best way to convey the finished report to Google (in a way they find actionable)?

 

[askfortransparency]

Very cool. I look forward to trying it out. A couple of questions for Curtis & friends:

1. How does the extension approach no-text, ratings-only reviews by someone with no other reviews?
2. What's the best way to convey the finished report to Google (in a way they find actionable)?

Hey Phil, thanks for your questions!

Our technology works by analyzing behavior, and content. When there's no content, we're left with just behavior.

Let's say there are 100 reviews.

If there are 4-5 reviews left by these profiles that's no big deal, but if there's 80 - then we've identified a trend that we considered suspicious. Then - we provide the links of each contributor that fits that suspicious pattern.

The best way to convey the finished report to Google is by 1 of 2 ways:
1. Spam Listings with fake reviews - Redressal Forms (you add the CID's
2. Real Businesses with fake reviews - Google My Business Support

Here's a 20 sec video that will show you how to do the redressal. We make it point + click, copy/paste.

We do live training on Fridays called Target Practice your welcome to join!

 

[askfortransparency]

Quick question

Why on Earth would anyone waste time outing someone's reviews? They have ZERO impact on rankings.

I can see creating a tool that outs bogus business addresses, etc... You know. Useful.

I say this as someone that has been doing this for over 25 years.

The last thing upcoming SEO's need is another useless subscription fee.

Hello Brandon,

My name is Curtis Boyd, I'm the Founder of the Transparency Company.

I should start by stating that I didn't create this tool to help people rank better or for SEO.

I built this tool to protect consumers from unethical business owners. I built this tool to bring truth to the local marketplace so that consumers could know whether a business had earned or purchased their positive reviews before spending thousands of dollars with them.

While building this tool, a colleague showed me that the data in our reports were actionable with Google Administrators. What used to take hours of documenting, now takes minutes with our software. The outcomes were also fantastic, they were getting their competitor's fake reviews removed, and fake listings suspended faster.

He happened to belong to the local SEO community, and so I started advertising here.

What I found, were other Google Product Experts, who really love the data that we provide - and wanted to purchase it. Now I've found a community of marketing experts that have been purchasing subscriptions because fake reviews mean something to them. It also means something to their clients too!

So here I am, advertising my tool because honesty and truth mean something to people. I'm finding this especially to be true overseas in Europe, they REALLY care about truthful reviews.

Real reviews might not mean anything to you, and that's ok.

You might be fine with fake reviews, but for many of us, fake reviews aren't acceptable.

In regards to outing fake addresses, I've just added that to our roadmap! Thanks for the suggestion and take care.

 

[JoyHawkins]

We've been paying for and using the Transparency company at my agency. So far I'm finding thusfar it's helpful for the following 2 things:

1. Clients often want us to "look into" what their competitors are doing when it comes to reviews. This gives us a nice report to come back to them with to see if they are competing against someone that's playing by the rules or not.

2. I use fake reviews as further evidence for lead gen listings to get Google to remove them. For example, I just ran one that showed me that 100% of the reviews were left by users that all had their profiles blocked, and all had only left a single review. I'm using that evidence when showing Google this isn't a real business.

 

[StephenF]

Well,

This looked very interesting, so I added the extension and used my free credit.

24 hours later, still says "in que"

I will login a few more times to see if it ever shows anything...I am very curious to see the "score" I know fort a fact that the company I input bought reviews.

 

[askfortransparency]

This looked very interesting, so I added the extension and used my free credit.

24 hours later, still says "in que"

I will login a few more times to see if it ever shows anything...I am very curious to see the "score" I know fort a fact that the company I input bought reviews.

Hey Stephen, thanks so much for letting me know!

Sounds like the report got jammed up - which happens to about 10% of our reports.
(especially businesses with over 1000+ reviews that have fake reviews)

Our biggest tech/UX goal for 2022, is implementing Kubernetes so that all new users get their first report within 60 seconds!

Anyways, please email us with the Google Maps Business URL and I'll run the report through the backend for you - and push it through for you.

We're crazy about user satisfaction, and data quality. Can't wait to get your feedback.

 

[StephenF]

Hey Stephen, thanks so much for letting me know!

Sounds like the report got jammed up - which happens to about 10% of our reports.
(especially businesses with over 1000+ reviews that have fake reviews)

Our biggest tech/UX goal for 2022, is implementing Kubernetes so that all new users get their first report within 60 seconds!

Anyways, please email us with the Google Maps Business URL and I'll run the report through the backend for you - and push it through for you.

We're crazy about user satisfaction, and data quality. Can't wait to get your feedback.

Will do, thank you for the speedy response!

 

[WilliamGMBE]

Great tool. Totally see how end customers can use this before making decision on a vendor.

Have seen similar review analysis tool for Amazon Reviews and stuffs, good to see a similar concept getting implemented for Google Review. Great work Love the idea.

 

[askfortransparency]

Great tool. Totally see how end customers can use this before making decision on a vendor.

Have seen similar review analysis tool for Amazon Reviews and stuffs, good to see a similar concept getting implemented for Google Review. Great work Love the idea.

Thanks William, for the prouct validation! Yeah Saoud is doing a great job with FakeSpot, we're hoping to change the reputation currency for local businesses on Google Maps and other review websites.

 

[andykuiper]

I WILL be checking this tool out

 

[keyserholiday]

The point of this tool is to protect consumers from working with businesses that fake reviews. I see a lot of complaints from consumers that wish that they had looked at the reviews prior to contracting with the business. The badges are now showing up on Google searches, so it will be easier to protect businesses from shady businesses. Also, I see a high correlation between fake businesses purchasing fake reviews. So this tool will in fact hinder fake businesses from scamming consumers.

 

[Mikek86]

I’m pretty sure the Transparency Company has gone out of business. I hired them to fight spam in my area. A month later when I didn’t hear anything back I was told they were going to stop billing me until I had the report and was satisfied with services. Curtis said he would do the report personally by the next day. Now it’s been another month and I haven’t heard from them.

I’ve sent emails and texts directly to Curtis. Still no answer.

 

[keyserholiday]

I’m pretty sure the Transparency Company has gone out of business. I hired them to fight spam in my area. A month later when I didn’t hear anything back I was told they were going to stop billing me until I had the report and was satisfied with services. Curtis said he would do the report personally by the next day. Now it’s been another month and I haven’t heard from them.

I’ve sent emails and texts directly to Curtis. Still no answer.

Please message me the name of your company and the spam we are working on. I will follow up with Curtis. I want to see what is happening because it’s not like hkm to ghost anybody.

 

[keyserholiday]

I’m pretty sure the Transparency Company has gone out of business. I hired them to fight spam in my area. A month later when I didn’t hear anything back I was told they were going to stop billing me until I had the report and was satisfied with services. Curtis said he would do the report personally by the next day. Now it’s been another month and I haven’t heard from them.

I’ve sent emails and texts directly to Curtis. Still no answer.

I sent you the report earlier today. Let me know if you have any questions.

 

[Mikek86]

Sure did. Thanks!

 

[LocalZoom]

Hi, is the Chrome Extension still available? Interested in using this tool. I tried also on the website.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Didn't realize that last question never got a response. @askfortransparency ?

 

[askfortransparency]

Didn't realize that last question never got a response. @askfortransparency ?

Google took it down. We're going to relaunch soon and see if they will allow it.

 

[JoyHawkins]

So @askfortransparency without the chrome extension, is there a way for someone to scan a business if they aren't looking for an ongoing managed service? Is that something they just order directly from the site (I think it's $99 right)?