The Definitive Guide: How to Remove Bad Reviews from Google
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ReviewVio assists businesses from the US to UK remove defamatory reviews, generate new positive reviews and manage their online reputation in one easy to use application. From Home Services to Healthcare, businesses all over the world are using ReviewVio to better their online reputation. As the first technology of its kind, our mission is to help businesses clean up false and defamatory online review from Google, Facebook and more!
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So, How Can You Delete a Google Review?
You have two options in removing a bad review:
- Win over the customer
- Challenge the review with the review site
Option 1: Win Over the Customer
Addressing an upset customer’s issues and reaching out to them can go a long way. The best practice here is to comment on the review, and email or call the customer (if you have their contact information, that is).
When responding to the review, the review site will notify them that someone has responded to their review. First, address their specific issues raised and let them know that you’re committed to fixing it. Always thank the customer for their feedback and allow it to point you in the right direction and help improve the overall customer experience. Then, reach out to them and ask them to edit or delete their review. Here are step by step instructions on how to do that:
- The customer should open Google Maps on their computer or device.
- In the top left, click Menu (3 horizontal lines).
- Look for Your contributions, click, and then choose Reviews.
- Next to their review of your business, click More (3 dots).
- Choose an option (edit or delete) and follow the instruction
Option 2: Challenge The Review
Here at ReviewVio, this is where our specialty comes in. We built unique software that helps us identify negative reviews that can be removed in this way and our AI-assisted review challenge process (assisted by our on-staff attorneys) automated this review challenge process to ensure the highest success rate. But, if you’re not having us do this for you, which we highly recommend and you can Schedule a Call Here with one of our Solutions Specialists, then this guide should help.
If the review is fake, respond to the review and Ask Google for Help
Most often, these are spammers, direct competitors or disgruntled former employees. The goal is to determine the authenticity of your Google reviews and try to identify the reviewer.
Google has an algorithm in place to help fend these off but it does NOT work on every review and you’ll find many spammy reviews, fake reviews that are inauthentic, irrelevant and downright not useful
Analyze the Reviwer's Contributor Profile
This is a good way to determine if it’s a legitimate Google reviewer profile. In doing so, we look at 42 different data points including location, name, friends and more.
Identify Spam, Fake or Duplicate Content
Google reviews should reflect a customer’s genuine experience at your business and should not be posted to manipulate your ratings. Duplicates (reviews posted for multiple locations or from multiple accounts) are also not allowed.
Find a Conflict of Interest
You cannot review your own business or your competitors in order to manipulate ratings.
Off-Topic Content
Reviews should be based on a customer’s experience at your business location. “General political, social commentary, or personal rants” are not allowed and serve as grounds for a Google review being deleted or removed. This includes reviews about COVID! So, how do you do it? Well to start, you can…
Flag the Review and Contact Google Business Support
f you’re sure that its contents violate the Google review policy, make attempts to delete the Google business review by flagging it:
- Sign into Google my Business
- Choose your business location and click Reviews from the menu.
- Find the review you’d like to flag, click the 3-dot menu, then click Flag as inappropriate.
So, will that work? Well, it really depends on the review. Part of this process will be done by an algorithm at Google and part by human intervention. The goal is to craft a compelling argument and the more data you have an understanding of this process the greater your chances of success.
At ReviewVio, we have an initial challenge phase, and multiple escalated challenge phases where our legal team works directly with Google on your behalf – well beyond the scope of simply flagging a review for removal.
Schedule a Call
Schedule a call to learn how ReviewVio can help you!