Protecting Your Business from Fake Reviews

Word of mouth is the most trusted and effective form of marketing. When you’ve enjoyed exceptional services from a business, you want to tell the world about it. The viral nature of the Internet also allows your ‘ravings’ to spread like wildfire.  

If you read positive reviews on washing powders or the amazing services at a restaurant, these sorts of reviews can spur you on to use the products and services. But a business has to protect itself from disgruntled, malicious staff or customers, who, for whatever reason, want to ‘get back’ at a business and bring them to their knees.  

They use fake reviews to give consumers the wrong idea about products or services, and they’re often written by people who haven’t even used their services.  

Get positive reviews 

Every business wants positive reviews, it’s what brings in more business. If you have customers who have become your friends, let them know that if they have experienced something good, to ‘voice’ it by writing an honest review. 

You can even let them know that these positive reviews protect your business and keep it up-and-running. Fighting for and protecting a company is hard going, but it has to be done because a company’s entire reputation can be ruined with negative fake reviews.

It becomes imperative to find ways to fight online defamation, and if your loyal customers can put in a good word for you, why not? 

Be clued up

Businesses have a responsibility to recognize- and be clued up with fake reviews. These reviews can be done through a variety of means, including automated submissions. 

A business needs technologically savvy people who can look at the written review content as well as the submission process and understand the tell-tale characteristics of fake reviews. They need to understand technology so that they can make use of all the ways there are to prevent fake reviews from being published. 

Allowing a lawyer to handle fake reviews 

When a fake review is put on your website, you can look at litigation. As the owner of a business, you can look for legal action against the person perpetrating the act.  

You don’t want to take matters into your own hands and post a lot of retaliatory remarks on your website in response to the fake reviewer. Rather put the matter into the hands of an experienced lawyer who can guide you on how to react.  

The right lawyer can actually find a reviewer guilty of defaming a business if they just willy nilly post incorrect accusations online. If the person refuses to remove the fake review, the case can go to court. USAttorneys.com offers you a quick and easy way to find a reputable lawyer in your city to take on your fake review and defamation case.

The review requires a response  

Can you identify the reviewer? Ask the reviewer questions such as ‘which room did you stay in?’ or ‘which waiter served you?’ Of course, if you are sure that you have never had contact with the reviewer, you should respond to the review and say that you can’t verify them. 

This will at least alert any potential customers on your website that this is someone malicious who has written a dishonest review as a revenge tactic. The cool, calm response-style you use in reply could, in hindsight, prove to be beneficial for your company – let them see that you have confidence in your business and aren’t ‘ruffled.’  

Having the review removed 

Ok, so you can’t always have the review removed even though you might have read about so-called review-removal companies. On the other hand, if you want to flag, dispute, or remove a review, Google does allow you to flag fake reviews so that they can remove them. 

Adam Richards

About Adam Richards

Adam Richards is a semi-retired business professional originally from Bangor, Maine. He spent the majority of his career in sales and marketing where he rose to the marketing lead of a Fortune 1000 company. He then moved on to helping people as a career counselor that specifically helped bring families to self-sufficiency through finding them rewarding careers. He has now returned to Bangor for his retirement and spends his free time writing. This blog will be about everything he learned throughout his career. He'll write on career, workplace, education and technology issues as well as on trends, changes, and advice for the Maine job market and its employers.