Imagine that you are a business owner, and you receive an email alert advising you that you have received a new review. You click on the email only to discover that the reviewer is not only one of your customers but that the review is fake. While you flag review and wait for Google to remove it, another similar review comes in. After it is all set and done, you have gotten a dozen fake 1-star reviews, and Google refuses to remove them. While you are dealing with the fake reviews, your Google My Business (GMB) listing gets suspended. This is what happened to the Law Offices of Jimmie Kang.
It appears that a local competitor purchased a series of fake negative reviews to diminish the overall rating of his local competitors’ GMB listings. It happened to 3 different law firms back in September. The first law firm that got attacked was able to get all of the negative reviews removed. The second law firm has not gotten negative reviews removed, but that a story for another time. If you know I Accident Lawyer, you would know why nobody is willing to help them.
The negative reviews all fit the same patterns of abuse. The profile names are all fake, and they used stock images. The profiles also posted reviews on random area businesses. These reviews also fit the same pattern of the 4-star review attacks. Google removed most of the other reviews for the profiles left for the other business listings. Google won’t remove any of the negative reviews left for the Jimmie Kang listing. Google deleted the reviews for the unnamed law firm and several of the random business reviews the fake profiles posted.
Review policies, what review policies?
These reviews also match a series of fake positive reviews of another local lawyer. This lawyer had just gotten accepting into the LSA program. The lawyer with fake reviews also has several fake listings with keyword stuffing. Yelp posted consumer alerts on all of this lawyer’s Yelp listings for a suspicious review activity. We all know that Google is wildly inconsistent when they enforce the review guidelines. The Law Office of Jimmie Kang needs to choose to keep the fake reviews or spend money trying to find the source behind the fake reviews while the spammy lawyer gets rewarded with rankings and LSA placement for his fraudulent listings. I have proof that this lawyer’s listings are not adhering to the guidelines. They had better hope I don’t feel incline to name and shame them, which is my next step. For now, I’d instead wave my finger at Google and its inability to enforce the policies or protect businesses and consumers.
Comments
I do not have a google business account but I would like to remove fraudulent reviews from Yelp and Zillow. Some unknown party made up some fraudulent information and posted this on both Zillow and Yelp. Who can I speak with or respond to in order to verify the reviews are fraudulent and remove this information.