Posting Fake Reviews For Companies on Services or Products

Google Local Search Results

Driving more reviews to your profile for a local listing has always been a great way and still is a great way to increase your local listing visibility. The problem with this is when people started trying to game the system by posting fake reviews. Some companies were posting so many reviews that Google had to place a cut off point of only so many reviews being allowed to be posted.

At one point Google even had complaints from certain companies that were review based. Some examples are Yelp, Mojo Pages and various others. Some of these companies started complaining because Google was giving precedence to specific companies. Remember when Insider Pages used to show under your local listing placement on Google, well this is one of those companies Google used to favor for reviews. After a few years these companies who were not getting listed on local listing profiles started to complain. This is when Google changed the way reviews and companies were being shown on local placement listings.

At times some companies were posting reviews to products that had not even been released or tested on the market yet. Granted getting reviews for a business is a great way to increase business and gain more visibility for a local listing, but posting fake reviews is completely unethical and should not be done.

There are ways to gain reviews for a company the proper way. Whether it is for a product, company or service you should make it easy for your customers to post a review.

Some simple ways to help you get more reviews:

 Place links to local listing in your e-mail messages.

 Print instruction and give it to your customers.

 Generate QR codes leading to your local listing.

 Send a special request to your customers.

 Ask the customer if you are face to fact with them.

 Provide assistance if needed.

 Directly call them on the phone and ask.

 Give the more than once place to post a review.

 Provide feedback to customers

Where Do We Go From Here?

You should try and get your reviews from more than one account. If you are trying to post reviews for your customers

Inspire Your Customers

with the same account, it throws a signal that you may be posting fake reviews since you are trying to use the same account when posting them. Try having each of your customers log in under their own credentials to post the review. This is the best way to make sure the reviews are going to show up. I know this from experience with a previous client who was trying to post Google reviews from an Angie’s List account to a Google local listing.

Although the reviews for this circumstance were real, they were still from Angie’s List and could not be posted by the same user logged into Google. Each review should be done on a separate account. I have even seen and heard of companies creating multiple Google accounts to post a single review because of these circumstances of only being able to post one review from one account for the same company. This of course has led to thousands of fake accounts being created and is still considered another form of spam.

Google E-mail Accounts

Now Google does have a timeline for accounts which remain dormant for a specified amount of time. Google deletes accounts that remain inactive for more than ninety days according to what I have read. After the account is deleted by Google the information no longer becomes retrievable by the user who created the account. Google then places the e-mail address in a non usable status. This means the e-mail address can no longer be used again for a specified amount of time. You can find out more concerning e-mail accounts on Google’s forum Groups.

Conclusion

If you spend the time and make every effort and option available to your customers for posting reviews, you will start to notice a gain in the amount of reviews being written and posted for your company. Help stop spam and fake reviews. Trying to game the system is only going to hurt your company in the long run. It is not suggested to buy reviews for a company either, but it can be done. There are lots of companies you can pay to post reviews for you, but really; is this right? No. It is also a good suggestion to acknowledge any review, whether good or bad. If it is a bad review try to use a re-buttle or offer the person or company who posted the review some kind of discount to show them you care. Do not ignore the reviews because reviews are used daily by people for research on products, companies and services.

“Gain more customers with local reviews.”

I am a web designer, SEO specialist, programmer and internet marketer entrepreneur. I attended Central Florida Community College where I majored in Computer Information Administration and Rasmussen College studying Computer Information Technology. I am the Founder and CEO of Link Worx Seo, played drums for almost 30 years, father of one daughter and enjoy everything life has to offer.

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