One of the problems is that Google won’t remove the review unless it actually breaks their review policies, which they claim hasn’t happened in this case. Secondly, he doesn’t have many Google reviews to begin with (he focuses on a different review platform) so it’s not easy to bury the bad with the good. My client takes his business reputation very seriously, and, needless to say, was absolutely fuming about the review he received.įirstly, it brings down the overall/aggregate rating. It’s possible the competitor were themselves trying to make similar local firms look bad by creating libelous online anonymous reviews. It makes one wonder if my client had been caught up in backlash crossfire on account of operating in the same industry as those that got stitched up by the hidden Watchdog camera crew. So, did this person have an axe to grind? Was it a jealous competitor?Īround that time, a local competitor had been nationally named and shamed for serious malpractice on the BBC TV consumer affairs programme Watchdog. I removed the name of the business to spare my client any further hassles: The best part (and the big indication their review was a fake) is that the reviewer used the alias “Cheesy Wotsit”. There were six total reviews according to the user activity history, but I couldn’t for the life of me find a way to view the other five.

I looked at the activity history of the reviewer’s Google account to try and discover any mucky digital fingerprints, hoping to piece together a bigger picture. Short story: my client received what was clearly a fake Google review from a fake Google account. The Google business review system is suffering from fake negative comments commissioned by competitors or published by trolls acting alone.

Fake reviews on google