How to deal with fake reviews on your Google My Business listing

Having fake reviews put on your business’ Google My Business (GMB) listing can be more than just annoying – it can cause your target audience to distrust your business, and result in it failing to rank in the local pack (the map at the top of your search results).

Why might my business get fake reviews?

There are many reasons why you may get a fake review on GMB, but one of the biggest could be due to your competitors trying to drop your businesses listing in the local pack on Google. This would be an act of sabotage to help them to get to the top of the search results themselves, and in return get more traffic to their website from organic search.

Normally, fake reviews look like this, with a one-star rating and no review at all. If you don’t recognise the name of the reviewer from your list of customers, the next stage is to report it for Google to review.

How can you get rid of fake reviews?

Earlier this year, there was talk of a government proposal to make leaving fake online reviews illegal. Until anything comes of that though, we’ll have to leave it in the hands of Google.

Luckily, Google makes it quite easy to report or ‘flag’, as Google calls it, reviews from people you don’t recognise.

Firstly, you need to go to the Google My Business dashboard and then click on your business’ name, which will look something like this:

When you click this, you will get access to your business’ dashboard. The next step is to click the ‘Reviews’ section in the left sidebar.

Once you have clicked on this you need to find the review you want to report and then click the three dots on the right.

And then click on the ‘Flag as inappropriate’ dropdown.

This will then give you options to report the review to Google.

Once you have select the reason for reporting the review…

…you just need to click the ‘Submit’ button which will then report the review to Google for review.

At Engage Web, all our Fresh Start website package clients have a Google My Business listing set up for their business to help them to improve their online presence. Speak to our team for more details.

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Jonathon Roberts

Jonathon lives and breathes marketing, boasting a degree in Business Management and Marketing Management and a diverse list of experiences both professional and voluntary. Having grown up in the thick of the digital and social media age, he has been quick to dive into online marketing and search engine optimisation in his career and spare time, spanning such fields as academics, local business and sport.

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