I posted recently about working on gaining a lunch crowd for a restaurant I run and got some pretty good ideas out of it. Now, I'm looking for some help on an absurdly annoying concept-most likely fake reviews, presumably from disgruntled former employees.

We had to let two employees go in November that basically thought they were the face of the place and we'd fail miserably without them. That hasn't been the case-sales are up 30% since they left (yes, they were probably stealing, no, they probably weren't stealing 30%). Recently, we've been hit by an onslaught of negative google reviews. I have reason to believe it was them-the verbiage, multiple days in a row where there were 1 star reviews at 4AM where it was the person's only review, mentioning these past employees by name, etc. All of the feedback that I've gotten from customers is that it was good riddance-and the numbers show that-but I'm worried that we are going to lose future customers if they keep this up.

Google does nothing about this. I've started giving my own reviews with new accounts, but I need to put in 5 five stars for every bad one they give just to get us to a 4.1, our current average, which is still low. I got a review tonight that I scuffed off a complaint and the customers are sick of dealing with me-I took 5 tables all night, I knew two of the tables, 2 of them said they had a great time and would definitely be back, and 1 never said a word about any issues and sat there for 2 hours sipping on a drink and a half apiece. There's a 0 percent chance this is a real review, but it's affecting us. Potentially worse, it's impossible for us to decipher when there's an actual issue, because it's getting clouded with all the fake **** at this point.

Any ideas on how to combat this? Because I'm not sure at this point.

This is a big fear for a lot of small business owners. Honestly, if I knew people were putting up fake reviews and google would not help, I would put up a couple good reviews to balance it out, I know its wrong, but people place big emphasis on reviews and you really can't have a bad rating. If you think you know who it is, talk to a lawyer and pay them to write a small letter to threaten them with, then mail it to them via postal service, not email. I don't know what the law is regarding employees allowed to review a place for being fired, but you should be talking to a lawyer about this either way. If you could spend a couple hundred dollars to get a letter to make these go away, it is definitely worth it.

You could take the bull by the horns and call them out but that's risky.

Another option is flood the place with good reviews. You need to get creative. Solicit your best customers. Ask in a nice way, don't be pushy, but let them know you need their reviews and that helping you would mean a lot. People can be very supportive. Be assertive about getting reviews.

Ahh, that sucks. Fwiw, I have seen a few businesses call out fake reviews, with varied success.

When they retaliate by fighting fire with fire and get combative, they look like dicks.

But when they challenge them in a fair and balanced way, I always have respect for them. I would recommend this approach, just be careful not to get drawn into a flame war.

Challenge them fairly, keep your cool, and don't acknowledge further responses, frustrating as that may be. They will soon get bored.

You could also go all in and try this guy's approach: https://www.cornwalllive.com/whats-o...icking-2581686

GL

If your primary complaint is fake reviews, it doesn't seem immediately obvious to me that the best way to combat this is by creating more fake reviews. Can you incentivize actual customers to leave real reviews? Or if you actually don't give a **** about the hypocrisy of fighting fake reviews with fake reviews, just hire someone to created thousands of positive ones.

He is doing the reviews to combat, but you can only make so many accounts. I offered to do one to do my share and help out because I know the feeling. I think we should all offer to help, but don’t post the restaurant name here. Through PMs...

Especially as a small business reviews can be very important. You expect to see bad ratings for all restaurants but I’m sure most of us know when you are in a new area looking for restaurants, you don’t look at the 3 stars or below. You can’t do too many though or it’s obvious. Maybe one or two over a week.

My car dealership had tablets everyone and encouraged us to sign up to do a review.

Usually I would tell my clients, who are almost always happy, that if they are satisfied it really helps small businesses to do an online review, then I tell them if they have gmail or Facebook how they can do it. I have 16 reviews for my service business which is more than any of my competitors, it’s not a large town. But with restaurants or car dealership with lots of new clients it’s not uncommon to see hundreds of reviews. Just don’t make it look suspicious

Legit question-what is "wrong" with is? Isn't it simply negating the original act? Say we have a 4.0 rating, and we get 2 one stars, lowering the overall rating-and then we combat that by making 6 five star ratings, yielding the same average score. What's genuinely morally wrong about attempting to give the same perception of the place as if the negative reviews were never there?

I'd LOVE to take the route of calling them out...but I feel like it just looks sketchy? and the off chance that I'm wrong we're ****ed.

We've got a great group of supportive people. I just feel awkward asking them for a review. Might be a route we end up going, though.

The link is amazing. It's taking a lot to not end up in that flame way, and that's part of what this post was-a way to vent without blowing up on a review ha.

Again, if the main goal is to just balance out lies-and to not actually gain anything outside of that-then what's the harm? I'm not sure.



I have made one or two fake ones out of what feels like necessity, but it's usually just rewording what people have said in house, but who didn't actually leave a review.

"Wrong" as in Google frowns upon it, but they don't seem to ever help small businesses who get hit with fake reviews, so I'm not against it. You can easily tell by the complaints they are being made by the same one or two people, bathroom and wait staff complaints... People will also leave bad reviews for ridiculous reasons which I don't think should stand either, "I called to see if someone could help but they were closed for the week after Christmas" is one I just read a couple days ago. Its too bad basically every business in North America is listed here and they would never have the man power to deal with this, although I assume they take care of any that involve personal insults, swears, threats, etc.

Yeah google reviews seem to be like the wild west, seems like anyone can leave one and there's no process in place to remove fraudulent or mistaken reviews. I.e, I've seen 1-star reviews that were directed at a completely different company, and the consumer mistakenly left a review on the wrong profile. Yet it still remains.

Best way to combat this is to have a process in place generate positive reviews, not just leaving it up to the customers volition. Could be as simple as leaving a thank you card at the end of the service with the candies with an invitation to leave a review. I would make sure that you don't just target one review source. At one company I worked for, I set it up so that a certain portion of customers would receive an invitation to leave a google review, another portion would get an invite to like on facebook, another portion invited to follow the instagram page...etc etc, make sure you are soliciting for a variety of different medias so that you can build up a reputation on several platforms simultaneously.

If you want to get even fancier, you can even solicit reviews through email. Yes, a lot of readers here might be puzzled that you can do this at a restaurant, but you can. There is a locar bar and grill near me that uses this strategy. To use their wifi, you have to input your email address and get on the mailing list. Of course, a certain portion will unsubscribe from your materials but you may be surprised how many won't. You then use this consent to send them promos, deals, and solicit reviews through email. It's actually really cool, the bar is close to my office so they're smart, they send me an email right at 4pm on a Friday when me and my colleagues are making happy hour plans, so if I get an email for $5 pints or cheap shots, or half priced apps, I'm there.

This seems like a good idea.

Also, since you're not opposed to using fake reviews Fiverr can probably help you out.

I really like that idea to grab emails-we're working on building an email list and I've only been using facebook ads so far, but with good success. We're paying about $.80/email....I've sent out 2 emails so far to ~120 people, but have gotten 5 people in specifically because of the emails. Not a huge conversion rate, but we're easily making a ROI on that before even considering residual income.

Thank you cards trying to get reviews is a good idea, as well. Appreciate all of the help, guys

What were you at before you noticed the fake reviews?? Too bad five 5 star reviews won't balance out five 1 star reviews if you were at a 4.5, but you will get there. Don't make too many from your own computer or google may catch on. Do them from your phone, your wife phone, ask parents and good friends etc to help out. Just don't make it too obvious.

Google has removed blatantly fake/misplaced reviews for me on a few occasions. The process is to contact support via GMB asking for an investigation. Asking people you know to flag fake reviews works as well, but if you have a legitimate case it's way easier and faster to contact support directly.