Troll Control 101:
Few things are more frustrating for a business owner than a negative fake review. People trust other people more than anything else when they are looking into a restaurant, product, company — whatever. Although fake reviews aren’t really that tricky to spot, they still impact your star rating, which is all many people need to make a decision.
If you’re dealing with a negative review brigade, don’t panic! All is not lost, and this likely just a speed bump on your road to success. Here’s what you should do if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of dealing with tons of fake negative reviews.
Be Vigilant.
No matter what type of business you own, you should be constantly looking for reviews about you, whether they are positive or not. Michelle Stansbury, CEO and founder of Little Penguin Public Relations, recommends that you set up Google Alerts for your business name and regularly check your social media accounts and review sites like Yelp. You should show off any good reviews you receive, but this will also warn you about something possibly going wrong so you can take action as quickly as possible. The longer a fake review sits on Google+ or Yelp, the more people will be exposed to it.
Relax.
If you have identified one or more fake negative reviews, the absolute worst thing you can do is start a flame war with the reviewers. It makes you look immature, unprofessional and angry, which is an image you definitely don’t want to convey to your customers. Just look at what happened to Amy’s Baking Company after they were featured on the television show “Kitchen Disasters.” Viewers flooded their pages with negative reviews because they didn’t like what they saw and the owners lashed out. The business has recently closed according to their Yelp page, which is still littered with one star reviews.
It’s also useless to try and threaten the review site with legal action. They probably didn’t do anything wrong and you definitely don’t have enough money to hire lawyers that have a chance of winning. Threatening to sue will only waste your time (and money if you choose to go through with it).
Check If The Reviews Are Fake
Before you go on a crusade against the fake reviews, make sure you’re actually dealing with fake reviews. Nobody’s perfect, and sometimes customers have an unpleasant experience and will leave a bad review because of it. Here are a couple things to look for that signal that a review is fake.
- They have never left another review. This is a good sign that the review was a targeted hit. The account was probably created just to attack your business
- The places they review are all over the world. This usually indicates that the account gets hired out to leave negative reviews on pages. Make sure that they don’t have a bunch in one place and then a few scattered around, they probably just travel a lot in this case.
- The wording is vague. Vague wording usually suggests that the reviewer has never patronized your business. If they don’t have specific gripes they are likely just saying negative things for the sake of hurting your business.
- All their reviews were written in a short time frame. This is another sign that the account gets hired out to hit businesses with negative reviews.
If the review or reviews you are looking at don’t have any of these traits, then chances are someone actually had a bad experience and left a bad review because of it. These things happen, and there’s a lot you can do to fix it, but you’ll have to wait for our next blog post to find out. Plus, sometimes people are just jerks. Fortunately, jerks can’t help but put their personality in their writing, and the vast majority of people will be able to see the reviewer is an unpleasant person and may not have the most accurate impression of your business.
It’s Definitely Fake. What Next?
Once you’re sure that the review is fake, it’s time to take action. The first thing you should do is try to get the review removed. Keep in mind that this may not be possible. Many larger review sites like Yelp or Google+ won’t take down a review unless it violates their TOS or you can prove that the customer did not patronize your business. If there’s racist language or personal insults you can probably get it removed as a TOS violation, but chances are whoever attacked your company is smarter than that.
The best way to get a review removed is to prove that the reviewer has never patronized your business. Are any of their descriptions of your location inaccurate? Do they mention the name of someone who doesn’t work there. Do they mention a time during which you aren’t open? All of these things will help you prove that the review isn’t honest. Again, larger sites, especially Yelp, may still refuse to remove the review, but this gives you the best chance of having it taken down.
They Won’t Take it Down.
Remember the second section? It’s really important now. If you are confident that the reviews are fake and the review site won’t take them down, the best thing you can do is write a level-headed response to their review. Your tone should be apologetic and compassionate. Here’s an example of what your response may look like.
At the Business Company, we make customer satisfaction our #1 priority. We take reviews like this extremely seriously. However, we have no record of anyone with this name placing an order with us. Additionally, we looked into their account and saw that they have written ten 1-star reviews in three different countries today. We believe that this review was written specifically to hurt our reputation.
This response states that you take customer satisfaction seriously and proves it by showing that you looked into the incident. It calmly says why you believe the account is fraudulent and lays out the evidence that led you to this conclusion. No name-calling. No curse words. Just a genuine sentiment followed by some concrete facts. If the website refuses to take the fake review down, a response like this will minimize its impact on your business’ performance in the future.
The Best Defense is a Good Offense.
The best way to counteract a negative review brigade is to have such a good reputation that the reviews stand out as ridiculous. If you have 100 5-star reviews and 15 1-star reviews popped up in the last day, it will be fairly obvious to your customers what happened. Plus, the low reviews will have much less of an impact on your overall rating if they are negated by many more positive reviews.
While reviews on sites like Yelp and Google+ have a huge impact on whether someone will patronize your business, word-of-mouth recommendations matter even more. If you already have a strong customer base, chances are the negative reviews won’t have much of an impact on people who already love what you do, or how often they recommend you to their friends.
Conclusion
It’s hard to imagine a more-alarming situation for a business owner than waking up and finding that you have been hit with dozens of fake negative reviews overnight. It’s enough to make you want to go out and pick a fight with whoever did it. Don’t! While they are incredibly maddening, most fake reviews can be dealt with swiftly by staying calm and following these tips. We hope you never suffer an onslaught of fake reviews, but if you do, we hope this helps you get back on the right track.