Google Reviews & How To Spot The Fakes

MICHAEL:
Hi guys, Michael here. Do you want a second opinion on your SEO? Head to theseoshow.co and hit the link in the header. We'll take a look under the hood at your SEO, your competitors and your market and tell you how you can improve. All right, let's get into the show.

INTRO: It's time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now, here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

MICHAEL: Hello and welcome to the SEO show. I'm your host, Michael, and I'm joined as always by Arthur. Hello. Hello. All right, let's get into it. We are talking Google reviews and how to spot the fakes. And this is a little bit of a, what would I say? A little pet peeve of mine is the amount of fake reviews on Google reviews. So it'd be good talking about that today, but we are basically going to walk through why reviews are important, how to set your profile up and then how to collect them and then how to spot fakes. So. Let's jump into it without any further ado. So Arthur, got a question for you. Shoot. Why are Google reviews important?

ARTHUR: Google reviews are important. Well, I guess first and foremost, because they're like a trust marker, trust symbol. So, you know, if anyone's researching your business or restaurant or whatever it may be, they're probably going to want to see some reviews. People, I guess, now in this day and age are just so accustomed to seeing reviews pretty much everywhere they look, that if you don't have reviews set up, then it could be a deterrent.

MICHAEL: It sort of looks like the business isn't legit or it doesn't exist.

ARTHUR: Yeah. So yeah, the reviews are important because they play a huge part in driving customers to your business.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Trust markers, builds trust. It's social proof. It's like the analogy, not even an analogy, but you see a restaurant and it's got a big line at the front and heaps of people in it. You think, well, I'm going to go eat at that restaurant one day.

ARTHUR: Exactly. Like the one that we walked past. Japanese one.

MICHAEL: Oh yeah. That normally has a massive line. Exactly. It makes you want to go there and think that ramen must be off the hook. Exactly. I think that about the Japanese place up the road, never been there, but I know I want to go there. Having your Google reviews set up and showing with a good score is like the online version of that, so to speak. So it helps convert customers, builds trust, social proof. It also gives you feedback you can act on. If people are giving you constructive feedback in their reviews, You know, I like this, but I didn't like that. You can go and fix the stuff that people don't like and improve your service, you know, acting on customer feedback.

ARTHUR: It's very basic. And I think legitimate reviews that outline concerns like that, they just make it seem like real. for lack of better words. I mean, if you look at a profile that has just five star reviews, I guess, you know, me personally, I kind of think it's a bit sus, you know, how does someone that's got hundreds of reviews or get five star reviews?

MICHAEL: I mean, it's not impossible, but very, very unlikely. Let's, let's chat about that when we get to spotting fakies, cause I reckon it's good to go into that one a bit. But, um, Yeah. Just people might leave you a bad review. Like, you know, people aren't always constructive with their reviews, obviously. No. So you can sometimes they're just total dickheads basically in their reviews, but the ones that are constructive, you can put that into action, that feedback and improve your business. Yeah. But another one from an SEO point of view, this is the SEO show after all, it can help you improve your Google maps rankings or presence in your local SEO. You know, it's a ranking factor for local SEO purposes. So the more reviews you have, the better chance you have of showing in those first three results in the maps that are in the search results when you search for some local terms. So it's important that you have your business set up on Google to get reviews. But it's also, what were you going to say? And I was going to go on the next point.

ARTHUR: So I was just going to say, it's also quite challenging to get reviews. Yes. Especially positive reviews. Yes. Because knowing from my experience, I, you know, if I have a good experience, rarely do I go on and leave a review. It's only when I have a negative experience that I go and start rage typing and.

MICHAEL: being a keyboard warrior, but- That is a massive problem. I've tried to leave good reviews now when a place I go to is good. When I was in Melbourne recently, found this little cafe, was going there every morning, it had like off the hook cheese and tomato toasties.

ARTHUR: I used to go through your reviews, I used to enjoy doing that, finding a profile and seeing the reviews.

MICHAEL: Yeah, well, look, I saw that they'd been hammered, like people, blasting them for something about like they did in a pandemic and just being really unfair on a business that probably did it tough in a pandemic. So I said, you know what, I'm going to leave a good review here. Like this place is good. Unfortunately, most people don't do that. No. So, um, you do need to try and encourage people to leave reviews for you, which we'll get to in a sec. Um, yeah, moving on, like where are these reviews being left? Like how do you even control it? And where do you send the people? Well, it's basically based on your Google, my business profile, which is a profile you can set up with Google. Funnily enough, it's pretty much in the name. And it's where you basically go in and enter all the details about your business. And it's what controls what shows about your business in the maps. Also, if you search for your brand, the stuff that shows on the right hand side of the search results. So at a minimum, you know, you should be claiming your profile or setting it up and just filling it all out. So stuff like naming your business, the category of your business, address, opening hours, phone number, description, all that stuff. Yeah. You can put photos of your team, just make it look like a active cared about thing. Not something that's just gathering dust. That's all you really need to do to get it all set up.

ARTHUR: And that's where you verify it, which can be the tricky part.

MICHAEL: Oh yeah. I did forget about that. I know how. So there is like Google want to make sure that people aren't just creating listing after listing after listing, you know, for let's say you're a locksmith and you want to have a, like a Google, my business in every suburb, you can't because the way Google verify it is they will send you a postcard in the mail. Yeah. after you set your profile up with a code on it that you have to enter in. These postcards are notorious for not turning up or taking months to turn up or an absolute pain. Very, very hit and miss. Yeah. And like it can get to the point where you might request it three or four times and then eventually they will verify it without you ever even having used the postcard because you just try over and over again. Exactly. Yeah. But it is painful, but it's part of the process, unfortunately. But let's say you have your profile set up. It's all good to go. How do you collect reviews? How do we collect reviews? How does anyone collect reviews?

ARTHUR: Well, I guess there's a number of ways you can do it. One, I guess, strategy would be, you know, if you have a happy client or, you know, if you have a happy client, sending them a link to the review. So we used, I guess, URL shortening websites to shorten the actual link that points to the review, cause it could be quite long. And just asking for, you know, if you had a good experience, just, you know, if you have a few moments, if you could leave us a five star review or just a review in general, it doesn't have to be super in depth. but you know, it helps us get business and yeah. Yeah. So the point is you've got to, yeah, you've got to actively try to find, I actively try to encourage people to leave a review. So whether that is by emailing them or chatting to them, it is quite hard.

MICHAEL: Like you got to ask and people will say, yeah, sure. I'll do that. And then they don't. And then you're going to follow up and then you don't want to harass them because it's just a review, you know? Yeah. We've, we've harassed people and, We, yeah, it is tough. We've been in business seven years. We've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients and we probably only have like in 50 something reviews or something in our Google profile.

ARTHUR: Yeah. People can be weird about it as well. They don't want to leave their name. They don't want other competitors knowing who they work with. So we have a lot of clients that we could have potentially got a reviews from that just don't either don't want to be known or don't want to be seen.

MICHAEL: So yeah, they say, I love your work, but like, no, I'm not going to. Leave a review. Which is fair, I guess. It is what it is. But if you ask enough people, you will be able to get some. That point you made about the URL shorteners before, now with Google- You can do it with a- If you click into, so if you search your business in Google and then on the right-hand side, it will show like how many reviews you have. Like let's say you got 10 next to the stars and you click that. The box pops up that shows you what all the reviews are, you know, the profile picture of the person, the comment, that sort of stuff. Yeah. Now in the top, right, it says, get more reviews. You hit that button and it has a little link ready to go sort of already shortened that you can just copy. And then that's what you use. That's what you share with people. So they've made it easier because before you used to have to go in and copy the URL, big long thing, shorten it yourself. But it was a pain. Yeah. Little, little tactic there. So, um, yeah, as we say, straight up ask people. So, you know, they've had a good experience, reach out to them. If you're dealing with like a high volume of, of customers, then you can probably add some sort of automation to it.

ARTHUR: So to your signature.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Put it in this. Yeah. Say like the biggest compliment is you can give me as a review and then a link. Add to your automated email follow-ups with customers, send SMS blast out to your list, send an email out to your list. You just want to be constantly asking for it. You don't get if you don't ask. That's pretty much all there is to it. There's not much more to it than that. But we want to talk about fake reviews because they're bloody rampant online. And you'll find like, well, I see it a lot, like when businesses Well, in the digital marketing agency space, if they businesses get bad reviews on their profile or in comments on their Facebook posts or their ads, they'll often say, nope, that's fake. That's a competitor, you know, but I feel that competitors leaving fake reviews, bad reviews on, on other businesses might happen a little bit, but not every review. Yeah. What is more rampant is fake positive reviews. I feel. So a business is leaving heaps of positive reviews for themselves. So what they'll often do is, you know, try and combat authentic negative reviews. So let's say a business gets three or four or five negative reviews in a row from real customers. They might blame competitors, you know, in inverted commas, and then go and publish all these positive reviews about themselves to combat it. And Google doesn't really do anything to prevent this. And so, like you said before, even like if a business has a hundred reviews and there's just all five stars, that's a bit sus as well. Yeah.

ARTHUR: So I was going to say, it also depends on how you manage it. If they are getting reviews, negative reviews, then they should be replying to those people trying to figure out who they are and seeing if they can rectify any problems. Yeah. That's a good way to figure out whether or not that's a real or fake review.

MICHAEL: Yes. Not just saying, Oh, it's a competitor. Yeah. So, um, but here's how, like, let's say you're in the market for a lawyer or we'll go with a lawyer and you're looking at a few different options and you're looking at their reviews. Here's how to spot, or at least suspect that they might be putting fake positive reviews in there. So as we said, just a huge number of reviews, let's say they've got 500 reviews, 400 reviews, and their star rating is 4.9. There's just very little negative reviews. It's very likely that they have had some hand in manipulating that. Um, if it's just constant positive reviews and very few negative experiences at all, you know, that's just us. It doesn't mean that it is untrue because there's a lot of businesses that are really good, but it could be, you know, all of these things start to add up for me, like reviews left by people with just one review to their name. That's it. And like, let's say it was two years ago and it's never left a review before or after. Yeah. red flag, red flag.

ARTHUR: Let's not like all of these by themselves don't mean fake, but together it starts to be quite sus for me personally is have a look at the actual review, have a look at what they've written and just go on your gut feeling to see whether it's, or does it sound organic or not? Yes. Does it sound like this person's, you know, made this up, typed it out and send it across. Or if it's something that sounds legitimate, you know.

MICHAEL: Cause there's little patterns you can look for on that topic. Yeah. Like if there, if every review is following a very similar, similar formula, that's suspicious. Like it's a writing style, the same, are they, Are they being super specific about certain things?

ARTHUR: Calling out certain people in the company, which could be legitimate, but at the same time, it just feels, you know, how much effort has gone into the review? If it's super in depth, I find that perhaps it's fake. Yeah, because I didn't, you know, it's hard enough to get a review. I feel like if you manage to get someone to leave your review, they're probably just gonna do it. Bang out like, great job, love working with you, bang, send it off. That to me looks legit. But if someone's going into full detail, you know, I love working with Michael, you know, he's done a really good job on my keyword research and my link building, and he's only getting great DR 50 links.

MICHAEL: Yeah. If they got really technical and in depth about things.

ARTHUR: Yeah. You should definitely get in touch and speak to Simeon or whatever. Like, you know, that, that to me, again, another red flag, someone's taking the time to make or put all that together.

MICHAEL: And it is a red flag. We're not saying that it's totally guaranteed that they're fake, but all of these added together as we're saying. All of them are like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, some companies might say when they reach out for a review, look, if you could just say who you work with results, whatever. So, you know, again, there's no surefire way to prove it, but you just need to use your gut, use your detective, put your detective hat on when you're, when you're looking through the reviews and.

ARTHUR: Do you know what would be good? Maybe jumping the gun here, but. I think Google would know whether or not like a Gmail or Google profile is legitimate or not based on its activity. Sure. So they could, they could potentially find a way to verify profiles. Like, yeah, do you know what I mean? I just don't care. I know they don't care, but I mean, people care, businesses care. So if you were to, you know, if it's an inactive profile, just created to leave one review, have that kind of marked.

MICHAEL: Yeah. That would be good, but they just don't do that stuff. They wouldn't do that. I'm just thinking out loud. There's tons of stuff they could do to make their reviews more because of legit. Yeah.

ARTHUR: If you think, if, if you think about someone creating a profile just for the purpose of leaving one five star review, they're probably never going to log into it again. Yeah. So even if, if they don't log into it for a certain amount of time, deactivating it and removing the review. Yeah. It would be, I don't know.

MICHAEL: Yeah. I'm just rambling. It would be no like it's yeah.

ARTHUR: Because people go to like different platforms like Trustpilot or whatever, because they know that they can verify the reviews.

MICHAEL: Well, that's the thing with like, if someone has a ton of positive reviews on one platform where it's very easy and then often you can, if you search like their name and reviews, there'll be all sorts of other platforms like product review, for example, where they're getting absolutely hammered and you can sort of get a feel for the truth of the matter. Um, so that is one thing, like, I guess if you're trying to suss out, like, let's say you suspect, uh, businesses, Google reviews are a bit, Ify, go look at the product reviews or the Womos or the, what is it? Jabber, I think it is, or as you said. There's a whole bunch, yeah. And just see if they're out there, even forums, Reddit, Whirlpool, maybe there's people talking about stuff on them. Whirlpool. I know it's been a while since I've been a Whirlpool. I know me too. And it does pop up in the search results from time to time. Yeah. The other thing is if there is a ton of negative reviews in a row followed by a ton of positive reviews. Yeah. That's us. Absolutely. Cause that's obviously they're, they're being hit by negative reviews.

ARTHUR: So then they go and manipulate it to try to push the star rating back up.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Um, what else would I think is something like the reviews, like profiles just left by generic names, like Bob Smith and like the avatar is just the, you know, like the orange with a letter in it. Yeah. A lot of accounts that people don't fill out their profiles on their Gmail account. So that happens. But again, little red flags going off or combined can mean you can probably discount a big chunk of whatever they're saying their, their review rating is and their number of them schools, that sort of stuff. Yeah. Um, that's about it really in terms of spotting them, unless you have any others.

ARTHUR: Not off the top of my head. I'm just trying to think what I do when I'm looking at like a restaurant. It's pretty much everything we've said. Yeah. I think for me personally, it's yeah. The biggest red flag is they've only contributed once and if it's super detailed and there's a pattern of, you know, if there's a whole bunch of people that have only contributed once writing out very similar reviews, then it's likely that they're fake. Yeah. I feel that, yeah. Not every business is perfect. Not everyone's going to have a perfect experience. So, you know, and it is natural to see some negative reviews in there.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Because we know people love to leave negative reviews. Exactly. Not positive ones. Yeah. The other thing would be reviews is one thing, but of course, when you talk to businesses, look at case studies, look at, um, testimonial videos. Yeah. Even, um, can I speak to someone that's, you know, been in my shoes before it's worked with you that, you know, I've got the results or that has built a good house that was done in time. Like you say, it's going to be like, you know, a legitimate business is going to be fine with giving you that. So, yeah, look, that's it. These reviews are important for trust, social proof, converting customers, ranking well in the search results. So you want to be on Google My Business, you want to have your profile set up, you want to push people to leave you reviews. Don't go and leave yourself positive reviews to try and, well, look. Maybe you need to if your business is getting hammered, but I guess if that's the case, you probably want to look at your business and your operations, not leaving positive reviews for yourself. Like take that feedback on board and improve things would be our recommendation. But that is all for today's episode of the SEO show. I hope you enjoyed it. As always, it would be great if you could give us a review or a like or a follow up. A real one? I want a real one on, you know, Google reviews have, no, sorry, Spotify. You can leave reviews now. So Spotify, Apple podcasts, subscribe, all that stuff goes into getting this show in front of more people, which would be good. But if not, Hey, we don't mind. We're not going to go there and fake it. Not yet anyway. Not yet. It'd probably harder to fake reviews on like Apple podcasts. I wouldn't know. I've never done it. I've got an Android phone, so. Well, okay. Let's leave it at that. Yeah. We'll see you next week. Happy SEOing until then. Bye bye.

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