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Welcome to episode 16 of Blue Square SEO & Digital Marketing Podcasts. In this episode I talk about review and reputation management tips and when you should remove negative reviews.
There are plenty of good reasons why your business should be listed on review sites. Most importantly, it is the customer reviews on these review sites that makes them so important. However, review sites can hurt your business as well as make it thrive.
Positive reviews can do wonders for your business, as review websites are considered more credible than any form of advertising. But negative reviews can have a disastrous consequence to your bottom line. The complaint can be serious enough to significantly derail your business.
In this podcast you will learn whether or not you should remove negative reviews.
Here are some statistics from 2020 by BrightLocal about reviews.
31% of consumers say they read more reviews in 2020 because of Covid-19, while 34% read fewer
The industries in which consumers are most likely to have read reviews: 1) Restaurants, 2) Hotels, 3) Medical, 4) Automotive, 5) Clothing stores
The most important review factors: 1) Star rating, 2) Legitimacy, 3) Recency, 4) Sentiment, 5) Quantity
Only 48% of consumers would consider using a business with fewer than 4 stars
73% of consumers only pay attention to reviews written in the last month
When writing a review, 20% of consumers expect to receive a response within one day
Consumers are most likely to look at Google My Business for local business reviews, but trust the Better Business Bureau the most
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Blue Square SEO and Digital Marketing Podcast. I’m your host, Paul Birkett, from Blue Square Management, and in today’s podcast I’m going to be talking about when you should remove online reviews.
INTRO
Not too long ago, business reviews were written by subject-matter experts and printed in well-known publications. In today’s online world, that is simply no longer the case. Nowadays your customers, clients or patients can easily voice their opinion and experience they had with your business online for the world to see.
But that’s actually a good thing. There are plenty of good reasons why your business should be listed on review sites. The first is that you get to add a link to your website which will boost traffic to your business site. Secondly, people can also get basic information about your business, such as your opening hours, where you are located, your phone number and so on.
But most importantly, it is the customer reviews on these review sites (they call them review sites for a reason!), that makes them so important. However, review sites are also a double-edged sword.
Positive reviews can do wonders for your business, as review websites are considered more credible than any form of advertising. But negative reviews can have a disastrous consequence to your bottom line. The complaint can be serious enough to significantly derail your business. Like a report about seeing bed bugs in a hotel room or a cockroach at a restaurant. What is really frustrating is when the review is false and not true.
But the question is, when should you remove reviews? Reviews that make your business look bad.
The Advantages of Removing Negative Reviews
Purging negative reviews can be a good thing. Firstly, it limits the number of people who’ll ever read them. Keeping the damage to a minimum. After all, it’s not unusual for a potential customer to reconsider their choice after reading just one negative review over a dozen positive ones.
Another benefit to removing negative reviews means that your average rating will go up. Studies show that a high customer rating means a potential increase of 55% in sales. According to Yelp, a restaurant with a 4-star rating is 63% more likely to be full at any given time than a restaurant with just a 3-star average rating. And a one-star increase in the average rating can bump up your revenue by 5 to 9 percent.
So, it is blatantly obvious why anyone who runs a business would want to remove negative reviews.
The Disadvantages of Removing Negative Reviews
But these reasons alone for removing negative reviews does not mean you should necessarily do so. In fact, websites like Yelp, Facebook, and Google do not make it easy for you to remove negative reviews for one very simple reason— it damages the credibility of the site and the business
Removing reviews is to remove trust. People trust review websites because they believe that by and large, the reviews are honest and unbiased. To most people it’s an obvious red flag if they only find positive reviews. There has to be some contrast. You can’t please everyone, and consumers know that. They will become suspicious if all you have is raving reviews about your business.
In this way, negative reviews are helpful because almost 7 out of 10 consumers are more likely to trust the reviews when they see that there is both positive and negative reviews in the mix. In fact, it has been found that shoppers who read negative reviews are actually 67% more likely to convert than the average consumer.
What to Do When You are Slapped With Negative Reviews?
First of all, you need to understand that unless the review is inaccurate, a fake review, or violates the policy of the review website in question, you don’t stand a very good chance of actually getting the review removed.
To start with, you need to keep an eye out for reviews. Whether they are positive or negative. But if you can’t spend the whole day manually monitoring these review website, it’s a good idea to consider using an online tool like reviewpush.com to help you monitor the sites automatically.
If you want a free alternative, setting up a Google Alert will pretty much do the same thing.
Once you have been alerted to a new review, it’s best if you can respond to it right away, good or bad. When you respond to positive reviews, it shows that you’re a gracious business owner who acknowledges the importance of your customers.
But when you are responding to negative reviews or complaints, you have several options. For example, if a customer felt your business fell short in some way then you should apologize and promise to do better.
But you can turn a negative into a positive by taking responsibility and emphasizing how you are going to resolve the issue and do better next time.
Or you can even engage with the customer and ask for ideas from them. Apologize for any inconvenience caused and then ask if they have suggestions on how you can do things better.
Whatever you do, just be polite. The good thing about responding to negative reviews is that 33% of the reviews are amended and become a positive review when they get a response from business owners. So, it’s a win-win solution.
Negative reviews with inaccuracies or negative comments about your business that are just lies posted maliciously, often by your competitors, or disgruntled ex-employees, are the reviews that you’ll have the best chances of getting removed. However, there must be a legitimate reason.
How to Remove Reviews
Each review site has its own policy and guidelines. For the most reputable sites you cannot just remove a review simply because it says negative things about your business. You can, however, check out the guidelines governing such reviews, and then flag a negative review if you think it has violated their guidelines.
- For Google maps reviews (or Google My Business), check out the Google local review content policies and see if the review violates any of their guidelines. If it does, you can flag the review and bring it to Google’s attention. Examples include offensive content, advertising for your competitors, or conflict of interest such as a review which was written by a competitor.
- The Facebook Community Standards are similar to Google’s. You can just follow the Facebook instructions to report a review and request for its removal.
- For Yelp, check out their guidelines and if you see a violation you can follow the instructions on reporting an inappropriate
For other review sites, contact the website’s webmaster, requesting them to remove the content, or at least indicate to Google that it shouldn’t crawl or index the page. They will probably require a compelling reason to remove reviews, so back up your request with as much proof as possible.
Whether you plan to keep or dispute a negative review, your main priority should be to boost the trust of your customers. Remember, positive reviews can make them trust you, but the presence of negative reviews doesn’t always mean that they will trust you less.
It may be better to simply respond to negative reviews in a proactive way rather than trying to remove them. When you show to your customers that you value them by making every effort to give them a positive experience, then even bad reviews can be used to your advantage.
I hope you found this episode helpful and see you in the next Blue Square SEO and Digital Marketing podcast.
To be kept up to date with our latest podcasts, you can follow us on Anchor.fm, Spotify and Apple Podcast.
If you need help getting your customers, clients, or patients to give your business online reviews, we have an online review and reputation tool that can help. If you would like to learn more, please contact Blue Square Management by visiting our website www.bluesquaremanagement.com or calling us on +44(0)1689 602 248.
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