Having a Google Page is not a choice but a must for the business owners. While online space gives business a place to thrive, it opens more sources of digital contradictions leading to negative reviews.
If your page receives 3 negative reviews, around 36% of the website visitors won’t trust your business. Businesses quite often post fake reviews on their competitor website and if your business is under this knife, this article is definitely for you.
Fake Google business reviews need to be removed or deleted as soon as possible but before you take any steps there are certain aspects to be taken care of. How to delete a Google review is a doable task. Google business team is smart enough and they identify and delete eight types of reviews as you approach them. So if there is a review of this type, you need not worry about it, Google business team will do the job for you.
- Illegal or racist reviews.
- Closely timed reviews that seem to be of the same type.
- The profile that leaves negative reviews on a website and lots of positive reviews on a competitor website.
- Wrong business review due to the same business name.
- Same profile leaving negative reviews for different business locations.
- Leaving negative reviews for an employer.
- Negative reviews due to media incident.
The negative Google business reviews have a massive impact on your online revenue capabilities. As per studies conducted in 2017 with just 4 negative reviews, around 70% of potential customers may turn their back to your products and services.
With 2 billion Google users, my Google reviews are becoming more influential. Let us get everything straight here, Google will not allow you to delete the reviews but you must be aware they can delete it for you if it matches certain set criterion.
There are both qualified and non-qualified negative Google reviews that this article will help you to delete. Before that we want you to understand the gravity of the negative reviews lying around on your websites.
Why do you need to know how to delete a Google reviews?
The online consumers approach towards making buying choices has changed. With the advent of smartphones, buyer runs through reviews, information guides and product descriptions on the basis of which they make a purchase decision. A review is taken as a word if mouth by the online buyers so it is bound to impact the sales dramatically.
Google is the most used search engine and it works ethically enough to offer its users a research platform that they can trust. Trends have changed as online buyers do not visit the Help or Glassdoor reviews for business and take an easy route to Google business reviews. So, let us probe deeper to understand the scenarios and methods by which we can get rid of negative Google reviews.
Can you remove a review?
Google doesn’t allow anyone to remove or delete Google review. Only if the review qualifies, the team would go ahead and delete it. The qualification criterion generally is:
- If it is a spam, competitor ad or fake
- If it is irrelevant to the business
- If the review content is violent
Although it’s not so easy to delete a Google review, but Google has answer to your question of “How to delete a Google review”. You must flag these kinds of reviews to the Google Business Plan team. Some of the businesses have tried hard to get the actual negative reviews to be deleted and that is why Google policies have gotten strict about them.
Generally speaking violent and irrelevant reviews have very vague boundaries and it is a herculean task to answer the question “How to remove a Google review?” Spam, fake and fraud negative reviews have a clear criterion of detection and you may not face a lot of friction getting it removed. Recently Google has made it open that any previous employee reviews will be deleted as it wants the reviews to be a landscape of customers only.
What is the right way to get the negative reviews removed?
Probe
Your instincts may be right about a review being a fake one, but it’s better to have substantial proof ready to make sure your effort doesn’t go down the drain.
Make sure you have the screenshots or details of your sale records or a CRM data that makes it clear that the review content is not legitimate.
Let us say your business records have no indication any kind of purchase recently or past customer. It is advised not to go out in open and just put down your acquisitions as a response. Act like a responsible owner and ask the reviews about purchase details so that you can look into the issues. If the review is legitimate, you may save yourself some embarrassment but if it is definitely fake, you know you are on the right track.
Notify Privacy violation
Google allows business owner an easy option to flag the reviews they find inappropriate. The initial process is quite simple where you actually can see a small flag icon on the review and flag it to indicate to the Google team that the review seems to be inappropriate and its deletion is required.
Step 1
Step 2
Once the review is flagged, you need to report the review, provide your email id and select the type of violation the review brings around.
Knock the Google’s door
Google has a specialized Google My Business team to cater to reviews issues directly. To get in touch with the team all you need to do is launch the dashboard of Google My Business Page.
Under the reviews section, you need to select the channel using which Google team can get in touch with you. A phone call is the most preferred mode of communication as it gives you a platform to talk about the review in person. Ensure you have all the proof and justification ready to convince the Google team.
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At the time Google may consider a review as legitimate and would not take any action against it. In such a case you do not need to be disheartened.
It is the time you turn to your loyal customers and ask them to write a review on Google about the products or services. Not only will this bring your online presence in a positive frame, but it will also diminish the impact of the negative reviews too.
Getting engaged into an infinitely long battle of how to delete a negative review might not be fruitful always but if you have a strong positive feedback presence, you do not even need to worry about the negative reviews Google. If you feel strange to ask your customers for reviews, just try it for once, you will be startled how responsive they are to this request. Be open to your customers that the positive reviews will help you build a stronger online presence and just see how your positive review count soars up.
Warnings – To Abstain From These Practices
Some business owners indulge in practices that are not ethical enough and may lead them into deep seas. You must always abstain from the practices below:
- Say no to fake positive reviews. The fake reviews are evident and are an unethical means to garner attention as per Google and Government policies.
- Do not offer your customers offers or discounts in exchange of positive reviews as it may create a negative impression on them.
It is a good practice to not wait for a negative review bombshell to drop and then you go looking after positive reviews. Engaging with your customer’s right from the beginning of the relationship and encouraging them to drop positive reviews online is a good practice that must be followed right from the start.
To Wrap
The methods we talked about above to get the negative Google business reviews deleted or removed are tried and test but will work only when they qualify the bracket of violation and you have enough proof to flag them.
While every negative reviews scenario may vary and the removal would be completely on the discretion of the team, negating its impact is possible by having a lot of legitimate positive reviews online. It is a very good practice to keep a check on negative reviews that can be handled by either getting them removed or as we talked about handling the legitimate reviews with the response that turns the tables around in one of our blogs recently.
While it might be a tough game to get the negative reviews deleted or removed, it is still possible and can be achieved. Wishing you all luck!