Look… Bad things happen to good businesses all the time. I’ve heard it a million times from our customers; they received a bad review from someone they’re not even sure ever patronized their business. In fact, they suspect it’s a competitor. And a lot of the times they’re right. Mind you, I’m sure that they’ve also received their fair share of bad reviews because one of their employees was having a bad day and maybe didn’t treat a customer as well as they could have.
So, now you have a bad review; what can you do about it? First off, you can take the easiest route and reach out to the customer who left the review and see if there’s any way you can remedy the situation. A lot of review sites give users profiles and you can contact them through those profiles. So, the next time you have a bad review pop up, immediately try to remedy it with the customer. If you’re successful, they might go ahead and remove it for you.
But what if the review is from a competitor? These are tougher situations to fix. Often times you can contact the review sites and try to argue your case. I’ve seen very low success rates with this method, however. The other option is to try and drown the negative review with good reviews. This is also a difficult task since most review sites have complex algorithms that are intended to stop companies from bolstering their own reviews with artificial reviews.
There are many methods of removing a negative review from Google. The most common way is to simply push it from the first page. There’s a saying in the SEO community; “if you’re not on page 1, you don’t exist”. Therefore, if you’re able to push the review to page 2 or 3, then it really doesn’t exist to 99% of your customers.
This can be a very complex and time consuming process. And if done incorrectly, can get you into a lot of trouble with Google. That’s why I always suggest that a professional firm be consulted when it comes to reputation management. They’re often much better and quicker than your average business owner.
Have you ever gotten a really negative review? Tell us about it in the comments below.
Much success,
Looking for more great reads? Check out these related articles:
