If you have a Google Business Profile you have had the message. Fifty five star reviews, drip fed, looks natural, money back guarantee.
It is tempting when you are sitting on six reviews and your competitor has ninety. It is also the fastest way to lose the listing entirely.
How they get caught
Google is not reading the reviews to judge whether they sound genuine. It is looking at patterns, and the patterns are hard to fake at any price.
- Reviewer history. Accounts that review businesses in six cities in a week are obvious.
- Timing. A profile averaging one review a month that suddenly takes twelve.
- Device and network signals. Multiple reviews from the same device or IP range.
- Language patterns. Reviews written by the same person or the same generator read alike.
- No corresponding activity. Real customers searched for you, got directions, looked at your photos. Bought reviewers did none of that.
What it costs when it goes wrong
- The reviews get deleted. Expected, and the least of it.
- Real reviews get caught in the sweep. Genuine ones from around the same period often go too.
- The profile gets flagged or suspended. Now you have no listing at all.
- A consumer alert on your listing. Google has placed public warnings on profiles caught buying reviews. It is visible to everyone.
- ACCC exposure. Fake reviews are misleading conduct under Australian Consumer Law, and the ACCC has pursued businesses over them.
The near misses that are also against the rules
Plenty of businesses that would never buy reviews breach the policy anyway:
- Offering a discount, a voucher or a prize draw entry for a review. Incentivising is prohibited.
- Review gating, where you ask how the experience was and only show the link to the happy ones.
- Reviewing your own business from another account.
- Staff reviewing the business.
- Swapping reviews with another business.
What to do instead
The honest route gets you to fifty reviews in a few months, not a weekend, and nobody can take them off you.
- Ask every customer within a day of finishing.
- Send a direct review link, not an instruction to search for you.
- Follow up twice if they do not respond. This roughly doubles the return.
- Work backwards through your old customers, ten or twenty a week.
- Reply to every one that lands.
Slower, and it is the only version that is still there in two years.
Don't want to chase reviews yourself? Our review management asks every customer at the right moment, with your direct link, and replies to what comes in.