Kurt London of London Harker Injury Law posted on LinkedIn that his firm lost a third of its Google reviews. The firm has four locations across Utah. According to Kurt’s post, he has a connection inside Google whom he reached out to. The person learned that a competitor had flagged every review the firm had. We are talking about around 400 reviews that had to be flagged individually. That is some serious dedication. London Harker Injury Law got their reviews reinstated, but I have some concerns.
For starters, how did a Google employee find out that a competitor flagged the reviews, and why did they tell Kurt? This is a privacy violation and unethical. Google needs to identify this employee and address the situation. Also, if this employee helped Kurt get the reviews reinstated, that needs to be investigated too. This practice is not allowed. I have heard that Google had a similar issue in the past and ended it.
Some of the reviews I am looking at violate Google’s TOS and should never have been reinstated. London Harker Injury Law has clients reviewing more than one of their locations. Clients may only review the office where they interacted. Clients leaving reviews for multiple locations violates the TOS and is considered review manipulation.
Google takes Fake & Misleading Content seriously. Contributions to Google Maps should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business, and a review or rating should reflect an actual experience with a business, and be genuine and unbiased. Identifying and removing Fake or Biased Content and instances of Rating Manipulation are part of how we keep maps trustworthy, reliable, and useful.
Contributions to Google Maps should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business. Fake engagement is not allowed and will be removed.
This includes:
- Content that is not based on a real experience or does not accurately represent the location or product in question.
- Reviews or ratings that have been paid for, directly or in kind.
- Content that has been posted from multiple accounts by or at the request of one person.
- Content that has been posted using an emulator or other device tampering service, modified operating system, or other method to mimic genuine engagement, manipulate sensor data or results, or otherwise thwart or confuse normal operations.
We do not allow merchants or users to:
- Solicit or encourage the posting of content that does not represent a genuine experience.
- Offer incentives – such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services – in exchange for posting any review or revision or removal of a negative review.
- Post content on a competitor’s place or business to undermine that business’ or product’s reputation.
Rating Manipulation
Contributions to Google Maps should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business. Rating Manipulation includes Incentivized or Biased Reviews, which are not allowed and will be removed from Maps.
This includes:
- Content that has been posted due to an incentive offered by a business – such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services.
- This includes content posted following requests for revision or removal of a review or rating in exchange for an incentive.
- Content exhibiting unusual volumes or patterns of review contributions that are indicative of efforts to manipulate a place’s rating
- Content that is based on a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest may include current or former employment, a contractual or consultory relationship, or other professional or personal affiliations that demonstrate a conflict of interest (such as industry competitors, familial relationships, etc.).
Three TOS violations relate to clients posting reviews across multiple locations. It never ceases to amaze me that when I see these patterns of abuse, it’s for personal injury lawyers. I have previously identified Brandon J. Broderick and Morgan and Morgan doing the same.
If London Harker Injury Law wants to keep their reviews, they need to make sure their clients are not reviewing more than one location.