How to Deal with Fake or Negative Comments on your Business on Google

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What Does It Mean?

Negative comments or fake reviews are a part of every business. Some are genuine reviews while some are fake.While genuine feed backs help in improvisations, fake feedback refers to the practice of using black hat and unethical techniques to sabotage a competitor’s rankings in Google search engines.

Why it Matters?

No business can escape from negative reviews and comments on Google. Even the leading business is going to get negative reviews quite often. Not responding to negative reviews can cost you!

If you are a restaurant owner, and a prospective customer searches you on Google and comes across various kinds of negative feed backs, do you think he will want to visit your restaurant? NO!

Negative SEO

Negative SEO attacks can take a number of different forms like:

  • Building hundreds or thousands of spammy links to your website,
  • Copying your content and circulating it all over the internet,
  • Creating fake social profiles and hampering your reputation online,
  • Hacking your website.

How do you know if a negative review is false and malicious?

  • Anonymous profile;
  • The reviewer is not willing to have a dialogue when offered to discuss possible solutions;

How To Deal With Fake Or Negative Comments?

There are a number of constructive ways listed below, as to how should one deal with such encounters:

DO NOT WRITE fake reviews EVER. Period. :

The primary aim of reviews is to make it as useful as possible for customers. By posting fake reviews, you are misleading the masses. Working hard and gaining some really well deserved appreciation is any day better, as compared to posting fake or negative reviews of competitors.

Respond to the Review:

If you have received a negative comment or a fake review, then you cannot get it removed, but can definitely respond to it. Google lets you respond to negative reviews. Responding to negative comments in a professional manner can show the customer just how professional you are.

For example, by responding to the fake review, you will let the reviewer know that you know it is fake.

Flag the Review:

Click the Flag icon which will lead you to the page where you can report the review as a violation of Google’s Terms of Service. You need to fill the form and use your company’s email address in the contact information.

Develop a strong reputation:

You may often come across negative or fake comments that you can’t do much about, but if your reputation is otherwise strong, you don’t need to worry. Businesses with a long standing history of positive reviews and a good online reputation will continue to stand out as credible, and trustworthy.

Winning fake reviews with an avalanche of real, positive reviews:

Encourage users to post positive, real reviews through promotions or rewards. Offer your customers incentives for creating reviews. You can share coupons and discounts on your sites.

The take away lesson:

Respond to every review irrespective of whether it is positive or negative. If someone sat outside your actual store and told people coming in to the store about your bad service, you would obviously do something about it, right? Similarly, don’t let people sit outside your virtual store on Google, telling people about your bad service without doing anything about it.

After all, addressing complaints is just another form of good business.

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