Google Expands Options to Remove Inappropriate Reviews

Negative reviews about the company are a normal thing for every business. You simply can’t satisfy everybody. Obviously, the clients have the right to express their discontent and one way to do so is by submitting the review on Google. The important thing is to address the negative voice in your review section if your company gets one, always!

Ok, but how to respond to negative feedback on Google? Certainly, it’s good to contact the dissatisfied client, try to explain the situation and find out how you can improve your service so that it won’t happen again. You can also try asking the customer to delete the review (yes, the author can do that easily!).

If you want to address negative review, remember these few rules:

• address the comment as quickly as possible,
• don’t get carried away by your emotions,
• don’t attack the reviewer, don’t use foul language,
• try to put yourself in the customer’s shoes, be empathic,
• stick to the facts,
• try to turn the negative aspects into positive ones.

But, what to do when the Google review is inappropriate? It doesn’t necessarily have to be a negative one but one that shouldn’t appear in the company’s official profile. In such a case, you can report the review and count on Google’s customer service team to delete it.

Reporting inappropriate reviews in Google My Business

Recently, Google rolled out a new system for reporting reviews. It’s another change in Google My Business in some time (apparently, someone in the Silicon Valley really got down to GMB, as some time ago they introduced changes in reporting). Expanding the options to report reviews is to speed up the verification of submissions.

When can you report the review in Google My Business?

• The review is off the topic, does not apply to your company.
• The review is spam, created by a robot or fake account.
• The review was submitted by a person connected to the company or the competitor (I assume that employees might want to share their working experience at the company and that should be ok).
• The review contains inappropriate language.
• The review is a source of bullying or harassment.
• The review contains discriminative or hate content.
• The review contains personal data.

According to the reporting review confirmation, Google will process it within 3 days, which is quite a short time 🙂

It’s worth remembering that Google can also delete reviews that weren’t reported due to detecting inappropriate opinions. The reason can be too frequent (compared to the average frequency of submitting reviews on a profile) review submission that can suggest a robot’s work or when the review is submitted from the IP address already assigned to the company.