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How To Deal With Fake Online Reviews of Your Business

Oh no, one more fake review on my business. These fake reviews will kill my business one day.

These are a few words that you may be familiar with if you are involved in the business. Everyone who is part of the organization, either CEO or just an employee, works hard to maintain the business’s positive reputation. You must be familiar with word-of-mouth marketing. You can consider online reviews as word of mouth marketing. Anyone who buys the product or service leaves reviews about the product to make purchase decisions better for others.

Review market is a powerful choice to address your local consumers that your business will be the right choice. In addition, these reviews are public, and anyone can see them easily. But whenever you get any notification that is not in favour of your service, you should not get tense. It happens with every business, and you get option to control them.

Drop Down Negativity With Positivity

In an online survey, it is found that negative comments or reviews about any product convince 90% of the customers to avoid that particular product. We also check the review section before buying any product; thus, you should keep checking your review section.

Drop Down Negativity With Positivity

Positive reviews hold strong power to drop down the negative reviews. You should always ask your customer to leave a comment or remark on your product so that others find it useful. The positive response from users encourages others to buy the product without any question in mind. And negative responses work as the improving factor to make users experience much better.

How To Identify That Review Is Fake

It is quite important to identify that reviews on your product or services are fake. After analyzing them, you will be able to remove them from your webpage. You can check the below-described points to identify if the review is fake or true.

How To Identify That Review Is Fake

1. Shortage Of Data

It is quite hard to describe the effect and actual experience of the product before using it personally. So you will notice that reviews or comments done by such individuals will only be using general words, not any specific details. For example, a real review of the product will include its image, price at which you bought, its side effects and other things. However, the fake review will lack the details about the product. 

2. Mostly Use Of Verbs Not Noun

A real reviewing person describes every situation by using nouns, whereas fake reviews accompany mostly verbs. They think that their review will sound real in this way, but in reality, its opposite occurs. 

3. They Mention One Or Five Star In Review

Not all one or five-star reviews need to be fake; some of them will be real too. However, suppose you see that there are excess positive or negative reviews on any specific product or service. In that case, it must be done by any fake reviewer that aims to increase or decrease the rating of the product. 

4. Spotty History Of Reviewers

If the reviewer does not have any reviews or is loaded with various reviews and uses the same language across all reviews, then it is most probable that he/she is a scammer. Again, you can investigate these issues by opening the reviewer’s profile.

Ways To Respond Towards Your Positive, Negative Reviews

For Positive Reviews

It is not compulsory that you should reply to each of the positive reviews. But you should try to reply to some of them so that they also get to know that you remain active and respond to their queries. They will appreciate your work.

You should start responding to such reviews by thanking them. Then, you can add that it feels good to hear that you enjoyed our product or service.

It is a good chance to explain your new product to them. In addition, you can ask them to join the customer loyalty program.

You can insert keywords and business names to help customers to find you easily.

For Negative Reviews

Anybody will scream if they are giving their best to upgrade their business and also achieving the same but receive negative reviews for that. In that scenario, when someone criticizes the business, then you should treat it with patience. You should never attack such reviewers as it will hurt your business image.

You should never get personal with the comments of the users. Your response should be in such a manner so that you are ready to fix the problem associated with them. It shows that you care about your customers. You can include thanking words for recognizing the bad side of the product and assure them of doing their best to improve that.

You should not act as a salesperson with your customers, only committing the integral deals and not concerning the worries of the consumers.

You can apologize even though it’s not your fault. For example, you can say, “We are sorry if you experienced less than expected one”, Or you can say that “it looks like you caught us on the wrong day”.

You can give an example of positive comment to such a negative reviewer to inform them what is the standard of quality you follow. 

Process To Remove Fake Reviews From Google

Along with responding to the negative reviews, you should also check the process to remove them from your business. You can reply to your client in such words- “We are considering this matter very seriously. But for making your experience pleasant, we are looking for your contact details in our record, but we are not getting that. We need to verify your identity as per our business rule. If you have used our service, then you must have details about that. So we request you to contact us at info@marketingsweet.com.au to get a solution for your query. “

You will find a couple of ways to get rid of these pesky fake and negative reviews. You should report the fake reviews as soon as possible.

Flagging Reviews 

Go on the review that you would like to report. There you will see a flag icon at the very top of the review. Click on the icon, and you will see a new web page named- “violation”. Now you have to write the email address and what type of violation you find in that particular review. After completing these, press the submit button. You should only do this once you are sure that it is fake. If you do this action on multiple reviews and Google finds that reviews legitimate, then Google will penalize you for that. 

After submitting the violation request, you have to wait for the response from Google My Business. If it gets a little longer, then you can contact the support team. You should keep some data with you as the support department will ask you for that. 

Flagging Reviews

  • Prepare the records of users’ experience with your business. 
  • Name, address, and contact number of your business
  • Reasons to remove the review.
  • Screenshot of the review

Collectively send all this information to the support team as a direct message and wait for a couple of days to get a response. But only reporting the review is not enough. You have to respond to that negative review in a good manner after reporting it.

Best Practices

You should keep in mind some of the best ways to respond to online reviews.

  • Try to thank the reviewer for contacting you even if comments or reviews are the worst.
  • You should never lash out even though you are right because it will not make the situation favourable for you. You should aim to defuse the situation anyhow.
  • You should reply with the logic that you are doing a face to face conversation. 
  • Try to resolve issues offline because once it gets online, then issues get longer and permanent.
  • Don’t respond when you are angry, as it will make the situation worse. 
  • Try to address the legitimate concerns of the reviewers.

Over to You

It is quite important to weed out the negative reviews before they start killing your business. You should remain active with the review section if you are operating any business. It is the way by which you will be able to know the experiences of users, and you get a chance to make improvements. You should not get frustrated by seeing negative reviews. These are the parts of the business.

You should keep working hard to improve your business. But if it is not giving the desired outcome, then wind down Marketing Sweet professionals are here to grow your business. We have an experienced and skilled professionals SEO team with us. Our specialists work according to the demand and requirements of the client. You can have a discussion with our SEO associates at 08 8337 4340 for further information.

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