Google\u2019s response<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve recently become aware of a scam targeting businesses on Google with the threat of 1-star reviews unless they send money via gift cards. Our\u00a0policies<\/u><\/a>\u00a0clearly state reviews must be based on real experiences, and our teams are working around the clock to thwart these attacks, remove fraudulent reviews, and put protections on business profiles that may have been affected.\u00a0<\/p>\n If your business is being targeted by these scammers, please do not pay them. Instead, please flag the reviews\u00a0here<\/u><\/a>\u00a0or reach out to Google support via our\u00a0Help Center<\/u><\/a>, so that our team can review and remove policy-violating content. If you haven\u2019t yet claimed your business profile, you can do so\u00a0here<\/u><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Negative reviews.<\/strong> This restaurant in Houston<\/a> posted on the Google Business Profile community asking for help after being hit with five negative reviews.\u00a0They were sent an email that stated:<\/p>\n \u201cWe sincerely apologize for our actions, and would not want to harm your business, but we have no other choice.\u00a0 The fact is that we live in India and see how other way to survive.\u00a0 We are begging you to send us google play gift card worth $75 [\u2026] After selling this gift card we can earn approximately $50, which is three weeks of income for one family.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n As of July 18, 12 days after they posted for help, Google has removed the original five reviews yet there are seven new ones that have been posted within the last week.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Using the GMB Everywhere Chrome Extension, you can easily tell this pattern is not natural. Their normal average rating for new reviews is between 4-5 stars in any given month. This month it has a sharp drop to 3.13 due to this attack.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n While this concept of holding businesses ransom to get gift cards is new, the concept of fake 1-star review attacks happens all the time.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Curtis Boyd<\/a>, owner of The Transparency Company states:<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately in today\u2019s business world, fake negative reviews are a daily commonplace that business owners struggle with. They can come from competitors, and even more frequently \u2013 extortionists. I believe that these extortion artists have a sophisticated process in finding and vetting communicative and emotionally distressed business owners, and identifying them as easy targets who will quickly pay their ransom fees. These negative fake reviews are easily detected and are also part of a much larger fake review network, here\u2019s an example. If we audited any of the 5 businesses, we would discover the victim dentist in the United Kingdom, who is currently being blackmailed for 1000 pounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Google is bad, but Facebook is even worse.<\/strong> While Google isn\u2019t removing reviews as quickly as we\u2019d like, at least they\u2019re removing them.\u00a0Here is an example of a business that has loads of fake reviews from June<\/a> that are still live with zero response from Facebook.<\/p>\n Why we care. <\/strong>Managing the reputation of an online business is hard for small business owners. The added stress of being blackmailed with 1-star reviews makes it even more difficult.\u00a0The good news is that whenever things happen at a scale like this, Google has historically acted faster at coming up with solutions. Maybe, someday, Facebook will follow suit.\u00a0<\/p>\n The post 1-star review attacks plague restaurants on Google<\/a> appeared first on Search Engine Land<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Restaurants around the U.S. are under attack from negative reviews. The New York Times covered the newest scam, where people are leaving 1-star reviews for restaurants and then emailing saying that they have to send them a gift card before they\u2019ll remove the reviews. Google\u2019s response: \u201cWe\u2019ve recently become aware of a scam targeting businesses on Google with the threat of 1-star reviews unless they send money via gift cards. Our\u00a0policies\u00a0clearly state reviews must be based on real experiences, and our teams are working around the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"h5ap_radio_sources":[],"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-seo-blogs"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":false,"author_link":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/author\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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