Google review bot 1 star

AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File

Nội dung chính Show

• You Just Got Attacked By Fake 1-Star Reviews. Now What?
• More from Forbes
• Scrolling Is The New Smoking
• Let's Bring Humanity Together, One Conversation At A Time
• Not Technology But A Business Model Makes A Startup Dominate A New Industry
• The Hard Chasm Of Growth, And How Small Strategic Steps Beat Rushed Scaling
• The Thin Line Between B2C And B2B Hardware Startups, And Why Both Is Never A Good Option
• Raising Money Or Making Money: That's The Question!
• Bootstrapping Secret: Spend Every Day Trying To Make Money, Not Save Money
• The Key To Increasing Your Brand's Reach By 561%? Your Employees.
• How Top Brands Are Using Employee Advocacy To Rebrand Themselves And Recruit Top Talent
• Video liên quan

For all the attention fake news has earned over the last year, fake online reviews have managed to stay mostly out of the spotlight. But that tide is starting to shift as review sabotage reaches new heights.

Take the CNN mobile app for example, which suffered thousands of 1-star reviews at the hands of Trump supporters and others hellbent on systematically tanking the apps rating after the networks treatment of a Reddit user. Or take the Boca Raton Resort, a Florida hotel that got slammed with negative reviews after a Youtube star angry at his treatment rallied his fanbase to retaliate online.

These attacks can have huge consequences for a companys bottom line. Eighty-five percent of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation and every one-star increase can lead to a 5 to 9 percent increase in revenue. Online reviews are also an important ranking signal in Googles algorithm.

Given the impact online reviews have on consumer buying decisions, its perhaps unsurprising that some unscrupulous business owners looking to get a leg up will coordinate similar attacks on their competitors review platforms.

Imagine that for a second. What would you do if you woke up one day to find you have dozens or hundreds of 1-star reviews all from a competitor?

Cameron Woodsum is still trying to figure that out.

Woodsum is an e-commerce entrepreneur who owns a bill reduction company called Bill Slasher. They renegotiate customers phone and cable bills to save them money.

In early 2018, Woodsum launched a Google Adwords campaign targeting the leading competitor in the space, Billshark. When people searched for Billshark, they found Bill Slashers advert at the top of search results.

Billshark wasnt happy. Within 12 hours of launching that advert, Woodsum says the Bill Slasher Facebook page was flooded with 1-star reviews. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that they came from Billsharks executive team, employees, and family members. Even the CEOs wife was involved.

As Woodsum watched his companys review average plummet from a 4.9 to a 2.5, he realized he had a full-fledged crisis on his hands.

Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Bad Solutions To A Horrible Problem

Most review platforms have guidelines prohibiting reviews that dont reflect true business transactions. When asked to comment, BillSharks CEO Steven McKean who maintains that theyve done nothing wrong pointed out that this guideline is not prominent or noted at all when leaving reviews on the Facebook page.

I tried leaving my own Facebook review (and even reviewed Facebooks Community Standards) and found that McKean is correct, though there are Help pages online that suggest You can report reviews thatdont focus on the product or service offered by the Page.

Woodsum tried reporting the reviews but Facebook didnt reply to his requests.

Its definitely an area where Facebook could improve, said Jenny Biller, a freelance Social Media Strategist who specializes in Facebook management.

Some larger Facebook advertisers have direct access to Facebook support, Biller explained. But people that dont advertise on Facebook might have the hardest time getting fake reviews taken care of since they dont have that option.

Woodsum actually does advertise on Facebook but not enough to get him access to ad support, and his multiple attempts to report the reviews have gone unanswered.

He finally decided to take down his Facebook reviews entirely. Its an option unique to Facebook, where business owners can choose to hide all reviews, both good and bad, from their Facebook pages.

Turning off the platforms review feature entirely does technically help you avoid the fake content, but it also means you avoid the real content too. And for consumers that rely on online reviews as a prerequisite to purchasing, those missing reviews can be as damaging as a low rating.

Woodsum admits it wasnt a great option, but it was the best he could do while he scrambled to come up with another solution.

(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

Review Sabotage: A Spreading Disease

The size of the fake review problem is hard to gauge. At the end of 2017, it was estimated that as many as 267 million Facebook users were fake or duplicates, though its unclear how many were involved in fake review schemes. To make matters more confusing, that number also doesnt take into account fake reviews from real accounts, like those of the Billshark team.

Of course, Facebook isnt the only platform suffering from this affliction. Fake reviews on Google is a massive problem, according to Joy Hawkins, a Google Top Contributor and local search expert. Hawkins penned an open letter to Google last year, asking that they get serious about addressing the issue.

When asked for comment, a Google spokesperson admitted that, Spammers and others with negative intent are a problem for consumers, businesses and technology companies that provide local business information. Were always working on new and better ways to fight these issues and keep our information up to date.

Hawkins is skeptical though.

Google tells you its a priority and that its working on it, Hawkins told CNBC in April. But at the end of the day, based on the progress Ive seen in the last couple years, I just dont think it is.

Even Yelp, a platform known for its aggressive and proactive filtering system, cant seem to put an end to review sabotage. For those that remember the story about Cecil the lion, check out Dr. Walter Palmers Yelp page to see the fake review aftermath that remains and continues three years later.

Photo by studioEAST/Getty Images

Making the Most of a Flawed System

Of the dozens of experts I polled for this article, one suggestion was nearly unanimous: be proactive about earning positive reviews from happy customers. Dont wait until you have a crisis to start making those requests its much easier to deal with a handful of negative fake reviews when you already have hundreds of real positives to mitigate their impact.

Woodsum eventually followed this advice. He turned Bill Slashers Facebook reviews back on and responded to the competitors reviews openly, calling them out for what they did. He also encouraged his existing base of happy customers to leave positive reviews.

It wasnt a perfect solution, but the loyal support of Bill Slashers happy customers did get the companys review average back above a 4.0.

Admittedly, this advice only goes so far. For businesses that suffer larger-scale attacks than Bill Slasher did, existing happy customers may not be of much assistance.

In either case, reporting the fake reviews is the next best step. The trick, however, is finding the platforms guidelines that those reviews violate. Its a tedious process but one thats well worth the effort if the reviews are removed. The time and expertise required has encouraged the growth of online review management services, and there are even tools like Objection.co that claim to find Terms of Service violations for negative reviews, both real and fake.

More often than not, if you can prove that the review violates their policies, then these platforms typically remove the review, said Jacques Hart, co-founder of Roar Media, a communications firm based in Florida.

The problem is that these platforms severely understaff their review monitoring departments, Hart continued, and it is sometimes very difficult and time consuming to get them to respond and take action.

Woodsum is finding that to be true nearly two months after the original incident.

Even trickier are negative reviews with no text at all. Those are the hardest reviews to get rid of because most violation guidelines relate to text, Hawkins explained.

Even so, you can make your case if you have supporting evidence of foul play. Classic examples include multiple negative reviews all posted at one time or reviewers that post reviews of companies in various locations in a short period of time.

If youre dealing with Facebook, you can take the extra step of reporting the profiles that left the reviews too. This isnt super helpful if the accounts are real as in Woodsums case but it can work wonders if youve been attacked by hundreds of bot-like accounts.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Where Do We Go From Here?

In speaking with Biller, Hawkins, and other experts, it became clear just how ill-equipped review platforms are to handle review sabotage.

Make sure you have access to all of your social media and review site profiles and listings. And make sure you claim any duplicate pages, Biller told me among a series of other steps businesses ought to take to improve their chances of removing fake reviews.

If you dont, and a fake reviews crisis happens, then youll have more work to do before getting the situation resolved.

It made me wonder: why should the burden to defend against fake reviews be on business owners? We look to Zuckerberg for a solution to Facebooks fake news problem, so why not when it comes to fake reviews? We expect Google to protect us from spammy search results, so why not expect the samefor spammy reviews?

Review platforms want businesses to use them. And in my experience, businesses want to use review platforms too. But online reviews will never achieve their full potential until the platforms that police them get better at catching and addressing policy violations. Until then, the trust of both consumers and businesses hang in the balance.

Ryan Erskine is Manager of Client Services atBrandYourself. Visit hiswebsite,follow him onTwitter, andread hisbook here.