A Competitor With Too Many Perfect Reviews

The listing that filled up in a month

A competitor's Google listing had a handful of reviews at Christmas. By March it has dozens, every one of them five stars.

The reviewers have no photographs and no other reviews. Several posted on the same two days, and the wording repeats: great service, very professional, highly recommend.

Your own listing took years to collect its reviews, one customer at a time, and a few are four stars, because real customers are like that.

It looks unfair, and it may well break the rules. The useful question is what to do that actually helps your business.

What a manufactured review looks like

• No history: the account has never reviewed anything else.
• Bursts: a run of reviews within days, then nothing for weeks.
• Repeated wording across reviewers who supposedly never met.
• No detail about a job, a person or a place.
• Odd geography: the same accounts reviewing businesses in another country.
• Perfect scores only, with no three or four anywhere.

The fourth is the most telling. Real customers mention the job, the crew or the street, because they were there. A fabricated review describes nothing, because its writer had nothing to describe.

None of these proves anything alone; plenty of genuine customers write four words and have never reviewed anything before. Several signs together are what matter.

What the rules say

Every major review site forbids this. Google bars businesses from reviewing themselves or paying for reviews, and Facebook and Yelp have similar rules.

In Canada there is a second layer: reviews a business writes, or pays for, to promote itself can count as misleading advertising under the Competition Act.

That is general information, not legal advice. It explains why the sites take the subject seriously, not how quickly anybody will act.

What you can report

Any review on Google can be flagged from the listing on Google Maps, whoever owns the listing. The form asks for a reason; pick the one that fits rather than the strongest-sounding.

Flag only the clearest cases, once each. Flagging the same review every morning adds nothing but a lost morning.

For a wider pattern, post once in the Google My Business help forum with the listing, the dates and a few examples. The experienced volunteers there can pass a well-documented case on.

Facebook and Yelp let you report individual reviews too. And before reporting anything, take dated screenshots, since reviews move and vanish.

What usually happens

Often nothing visible, for weeks.

Some reviews disappear, sometimes because a filter catches them later rather than because of your report. Others stay, including some that look plainly fake, and you are rarely told why.

Reviews on a real business are hard for outsiders to judge, so the sites tend to leave them unless the pattern is obvious. Decide in advance how much time this deserves: for most businesses, an hour, once.

What not to do

Do not reply to their reviews or write about them on your own page. A public accusation looks petty to customers who cannot see the pattern you can.

Do not ask friends to leave bad reviews on their listing. That is the same fake engagement, aimed the other way.

And do not buy reviews to even things out. It is the one move that turns their problem into yours.

A worked example

A piano tuner working alone across the North Shore had built up about sixty reviews over seven years.

A new competitor appeared beside his listing in the map results with more than forty five-star reviews in two months, most from single-review accounts, several on the same weekend.

His first instinct was to post about it on Facebook and write to Google every day. Instead, he took screenshots, flagged the twelve clearest reviews once, and posted one factual report in the forum.

Over the following month a handful disappeared. Most stayed.

The real effort went into his own reviews. He began asking at the end of every visit, leaving a card with a short link to the review form.

The reviews that came in described real work: a church's grand piano tuned before a concert, an upright brought up to pitch after years unplayed, a school's practice pianos done over spring break. He answered each one by name.

The competitor still has more reviews. Anyone reading both listings now sees the difference in what they say.

Why your own reviews do more

Most people read reviews rather than counting them, and a row of identical two-line raves looks thin beside reviews that mention a job, a date and a name.

A perfect score can even work against a listing. Readers know real businesses have off days, and a four-star review with a calm reply can reassure more than another five.

Recent reviews say the business is still doing good work. Replies from the owner, addressed by name, show a reader how they would be treated if something went wrong.

Asking every customer

The routine behind those reviews is simple and dull, which is why it works when it is kept up.

Ask in person, when the customer is pleased, and make it easy with a short link that opens the review form directly, printed on a card or the invoice.

Ask everyone, not only the customers you expect to be delighted, since selective asking builds the same suspiciously perfect pattern. And never offer a discount or a draw in exchange; Google and Yelp both forbid it.

The counter-case

Reporting deserves more effort in a few situations.

If the fake reviews are negative ones on your own listing, you have more standing: flag them, reply calmly to each so readers see your side, and set out the pattern in the forum.

If the competitor's listing is itself invented, report the listing rather than its reviews, using the option on Google Maps to suggest an edit or a removal.

For most businesses, though, an hour of reporting and a year of asking your own customers is the right split.

This month

1. Screenshot the suspect reviews with names and dates.
2. Flag the clearest ones once each.
3. Post one factual report in the help forum.
4. Ask every customer for a review, in person.
5. Print a short link to your review form.
6. Reply to every review by name.
7. Stop checking their listing after that.

Step four is the one that changes the comparison, because it is the only item on the list that keeps working long after the reporting is done.

Finding the reviews other sites already hold about your business is covered in reviews on sites you did not know listed you.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.