Someone is spamming reviews with the last 3 hours. How do you get them removed.

[justinherring]

Someone has been spamming reviews on our Google Business Profile for the last 3 hours. How do you get Google to remove them? I have already submitted them to for Google to review. Someone must have purchased these bad reviews, as they just keep coming.

Here is our google listing: https://share.google/nreNe8OHj00vNqOn2

 

[fisicx]

I'm not seeing any new reviews. The latest is from Lauren 3 months ago.

 

[Glass]

I'm not seeing any new reviews. The latest is from Lauren 3 months ago.

That is very strange. I saw the negative reviews yesterday when he posted this and now that I click on the link I see even more reviews left since yesterday. Maybe it’s because you’re across the pond that you’re seeing something different than us over here?

 

[justinherring]

You have to click on "newest" reviews. It looks to be a review scam where the person is asking for money through WhatsApp to remove them. Has anyone dealt with this, or can escalate it to Google support? Since posting this we have received another 10+ 1 star reviews.

 

[Glass]

I didn’t know that review ransoming was a thing. At least this should be pretty easy to get Google to remove.

 

[fisicx]

Maybe it’s because you’re across the pond that you’re seeing something different than us over here?

That could be the case.

I didn’t know that review ransoming was a thing. At least this should be pretty easy to get Google to remove.

Except Google isn't really interested in removing reviews despite the thousands of reports they receive. Millions of reviews are posted each day and huge number are fake, false or spam. There is a limit to the resources Google will allocate to this task. And even then it's only every going to be a bot. The chances of a human getting involved are close to zero.

When Google My Business was launched there was a drive for businesses to create a Google business page and then promote this using adverts (we were awash with adwords vouchers). It was a money making effort that didn't really work.

 

[JayT]

Same thing happening to us at PersistSEO - just started last night and into the early hours. I've already reported the reviews and got a "Decision Pending" message for each one. We went from 5 stars to 3.8 stars over night with 17 1-star reviews.

 

[justinherring]

We actually got a lot of them removed this morning, and our rating is back at 5.0 with 61 reviews. There are several 14 one star reviews still showing but not affecting the score.

Not sure what worked but we submitted a redressal form https://support.google.com/business/contact/business_redressal_form, disputed the reviews here https://support.google.com/business/workflow/9945796 an also submitted a missing reviews case. I would try all three if you haven't done so.

 

[JayT]

Our 3.6 rating has remained unchanged (after the attack) but there are only 6 visible 1-star reviews to the public. It seems progress has been made - we also just found another SEO this happened to in Atlanta as well. So far, there are at least 3 of us.

 

[grace_cline_sitemap]

@justinherring Curious how long the issue went on for you?

One of our client sites has just started having some fake spam reviews coming through. Google removed them all very quickly. It was only a handful but spread over a few days. Now we're on watch to see if this continues.

 

[JayT]

Our 5.0 rating was restored after about 24 hours. I disputed the reviews through the standard link and redressal form. A few other agencies were also attacked the same day.