How to maintain your reputation and to remove Fake Reviews on Google, Facebook, Consumers pay more attention to what their peers are saying than to what a corporation says, and this is often what makes reviews and testimonials so powerful. Positive reviews build trust, which generates profit. Fake reviews, however, threaten your company's reputation.
What Are Fake Reviews?
Fake reviews are blatant untruths a few products or services, driven by malicious or self-serving intent.
Sometimes high emotion drives negative fake reviews. An angry reviewer won't be ready to see their own bias, making a review untrustworthy. Sometimes hired writers will create negative reviews to wreck a competing brand.
Not all fake reviews are negative. Some companies will buy positive fake reviews in an effort to create trust. The image below shows a sales email offering a corporation fake positive review service.
In the email, the salesperson offers fraudulent “reviews in bulk” to influence customer decisions. These sorts of fake reviews are deliberately misleading and may damage your reputation.
The two main sorts of fake reviews are:
- Positive reviews
- Negative reviews
1. Fake Positive Reviews
Fake positive reviews are positive reports of a product or service that don't reflect reality. Companies create these to inflate users’ expectations of those products and drive purchases.
Let’s say a corporation tries to urge an individual to download an e-book. the merchandise page is filled with glowing, and develop positive reputations and reviews; therefore, the person enters their email address and agrees to receive more content from the web site in exchange for the e-book.
When that person opens the e-book, however, the writing is poor and therefore the content isn’t valuable. this means that a lot of the positive reviews were actually fake because the merchandise did not meet expectations.
2. Fake Negative Reviews
Fake negative reviews are deployed against rival businesses to drive potential customers away.
In the example below, a corporation has posted a fake negative review against a rival on Google, claiming the rival may be a “sketchy firm with a nasty reputation.”
The company skilled to remove the negative reviews by acknowledging that they take reviews seriously. the corporate also confirmed that the reviewer didn't match the identity of any past clients, and reported the fake review to Google.
For example, a corporation affiliate – an individual who makes a commission by selling a product or service – writes a fake negative review about five local PR companies. within the above real-life example, “Lisa Ross” leaves defamatory reviews for all competitors in an attempt to discourage or influence the choice of prospective clients.
Why People Leave Fake Reviews
Fake reviews are a risky and unethical business practice – so why do businesses invest in them? a number of the explanations fake reviews still populate the web include:
Monetary gain: Some review sites offer financial incentives when people leave reviews. There also are companies dedicated to providing fake reviews, and that they hire people to write down reviews for his or her less ethical clients.
Human error: Sometimes people leave reviews supported incentives instead of a deep understanding of a product or service. Without negative intentions, the person leaves incorrect details which negatively impacts the product’s reputation.
Emotional responses: Bad service experiences, like feeling unheard or rejected, spark powerful emotions in consumers. If a corporation fails to deal with unsatisfied customers, those customers will go elsewhere to voice their frustrations.
Upset employees who want to retaliate against a former employer, for instance, may leave an angry review on Glassdoor, a review aggregator for employers and job seekers. this could concern employers when the review hasn't supported the truth of things.
Envy: Competitors jealous of your success may plan to damage your reputation with negative, untrue reviews.
Media: When the media slanders a private or company, they might be fulfilling an agenda set by their owners.
Laziness: Fake reviews can spread like wildfire when people simply copy and paste someone else’s review.
Removing Fake Google Reviews
First, determine to the simplest of your ability that the review is fake. within the example below, a corporation skilled to remove the fake review on Google and mentioned their failure to verify the identity of the reviewer.
Removing Fake Facebook Reviews
According to Facebook’s community standards, moderators will only remove spam or “hate speech,” not what they perceive to be a real review.
Because the review doesn't violate Facebook’s community standards for spam or hate speech, Facebook may choose to not remove it.
After you identify the fake Facebook review, you should:
1. answer the review
2. Report it to ascertain if Facebook will remove it
It’s easy to report fake reviews on Facebook. First, attend your Facebook business page and identify the reviews you’d wish to remove google negative reviews.
Options for locating support or reporting reviews are shown by a little icon showing a dialogue box and exclamation mark.
Once you inform Facebook that you simply would really like to report a review, a dialogue box will appear that asks for more details about what makes that review fraudulent or offensive.
Removing Fake Glassdoor Reviews
Most fake Glassdoor reviews are made by the businesses themselves, not current or former employees.
Many former employees, however, write skewed reviews supported how the corporate made them feel. Some leave on bad terms and feel intense emotion as a result
If you identify a review clearly violating Glassdoor policies, however, you'll contact Glassdoor about flagging the review. Glassdoor's fraudulent review guidelines can help determine if the review you identified qualifies as a Glassdoor policy violation.
You can also hire a web reputation specialist to plan a Glassdoor review strategy and improve your ratings to 4-stars and above.
To combat negative, emotionally-charged Glassdoor reviews, you ought to create an idea beforehand in order that any fake reviews are going to be outdone. to attenuate the impact of negative Glassdoor reviews, you should:
1. Follow Glassdoor's employer guidelines to optimize your profile
2. answer all reviews thoughtfully for potential employees who read Glassdoor reviews
3. Encourage employees who currently work on your company to go away reviews
4. Develop an indoor branding strategy to interact with employees and boost morale
Negative Glassdoor reviews can impact a company’s hiring process, but with the proper strategy, businesses can maintain a positive image of their company culture by push down negative reviews.
Businesses Can Manage Fake Reviews with the proper Strategy
Marketers understand the facility of reviews. Shady companies will use fake reviews to their advantage, creating challenges for reputable businesses. To develop your reputation many companies are push down negative search results.
Most consumers won’t recognize fake reviews, however, so businesses should treat every review as if they're legitimate. this may show your audience that you simply will take their feedback seriously.
Fake reviews on Google and Facebook are easier to review. On Glassdoor, however, businesses should invest in an authentic positive review strategy to outweigh negative reviews.
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