“No one answered the phone. Sure, it was after business hours, but that’s still no excuse! One star!”
Ever received a review like this on your Google Business Profile – a review so unreasonable that all you can do is hang your head and wonder what’s wrong with certain people?
Don’t worry.
Every business owner has received a negative Google review at some point or another – many of which are spam, fake, or completely unreasonable.
As any business owner knows, Google reviews are vital to a business’s success.
Positive reviews lead to more customers and a foundation of trust, whereas negative reviews communicate one thing to potential new customers: Stay away.
For this reason, it’s crucial to monitor your Google Business Profile and learn how to respond to – or remove – negative reviews.
That’s the exact purpose of this guide.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to navigate the process of:
Deleting negative reviews on Google.
Responding to the authors of these reviews.
Recovering from the aftermath of the entire ordeal.
I call these fundamental steps the Three Rs:
Remove.
Respond.
Recover.
The impact of negative Google reviews
Before we discuss the three Rs in detail, it’s crucial to know why and how negative Google reviews harm your business.
Erodes customer trust
For starters, these reviews can alter the perception of potential new customers.
Consider a scenario in which a business owner opens a restaurant. During the restaurant’s first week, a member of the waiting staff delivers the wrong dish to a customer. Instead of the lobster, the customer gets the shrimp fettuccine.
The waiter quickly realizes their mistake and brings out the proper dish. All is well.
Not to the customer. After devouring their dish and licking the plate clean, they furiously drive home and leave a one-star review.
One star? Even though you ate every bite?
In this example, the customer has left an unreasonable Google review that does not accurately portray the restaurant or their experience.
They don’t mention the fantastic food, the fact that it’s the business’s first week open or the fact that the server quickly corrected their mistake.
They only mention the mistake. Unfair, right?
Completely. In this case, it’s only the third review of this business’s Google Business Profile.
Now, other potential customers will see the review and notice its impact on the overall restaurant’s Google rating. Instead of going to that restaurant, they’ll go somewhere else.
Affects search engine visibility
Negative Google reviews can also impact your business’s visibility on Google’s search engine.
Building on the last point, these reviews erode customer trust, which means lower click-through rates from customers. Because search engines’ algorithms factor in user engagement metrics, decreased trust can correlate to decreased search engine visibility.
Long-term consequences
With trust levels dwindling and SEO metrics taking a hit, your business will suffer long-term – especially if the negative reviews pile up.
Your business’s Google rating will take a substantial hit, word of mouth will spread, and customers will stop flowing in. Before you know it, your restaurant faces closure after less than a year open. All because one poor review started a snowball effect.
That’s why dealing with these reviews is of paramount importance. Let’s discuss how to remove negative Google reviews – the first of the three Rs.
How to remove negative Google reviews
You can remove negative Google reviews in certain instances.
The first is when a review is fake, spam, or misleading. In these cases, you are dealing with fraudulent content that in no way reflects your business. Perhaps you’re even the target of review bombing from a competitor.
The second instance occurs when a review clearly violates the Google review guidelines. For example, Google monitors the following:
Spam and fake content.
Misleading information.
Off-topic content.
Restricted content.
Illegal content.
If a review has overstepped any of these boundaries, you are well within your right to have it removed. Here’s how to go about that process: