Google's New Review Policy - Still Flawed

Oof! Google's new review policy - still flawed. Google once was an excellent place for reviews that you could trust. Now, like many other platforms, the reviews are mostly one extreme or the other and are filled with fake reviews both good and bad. We covered this in our UGC post for fake 5 star reviews, but there's also an influx of 1 star reviews from keyboard warriors that have also never visited the business.

Google is not taking any steps to protect small businesses, or the consumer. The new rules only hurt small businesses trying to grow online. Instead of focusing on scammers, review bombing, and fraud, Google is going making it harder for real customers to contribute.

Some changes Google is making are...

• Businesses can't ask customers to leave reviews while they're on site, because this is "pressuring" the customer. By using location data, Google will know if your customers are on site when they're writing the review.

• Reviews that seem incentivized, even for real customers that received something like loyalty points for their review, may be removed. This one could have a workaround, but Google has not released their criteria for this policy.

• Reviews that mention employees could be filtered out or removed. This is devastating for the service and beauty industry, and we're curious how Google will stand by this one.

Google says these rules will help small businesses, but will they? This change doesn't stop the abuse of the system, it prevents small businesses from fighting back.

Small brick and mortar businesses do everything they can to capture good reviews, from asking for a review right then and there on site, to giving a customer a discount or loyalty points, to giving employees a small perk for each review they're mentioned in. Of course, small businesses are not asking customers who've had a bad experience to leave a review. Google claims that by doing this the business is rigging the system. This is where Google gets it wrong.

A customer who has a bad experience is much more likely to go to Google and leave a bad review. Businesses have to push customers to take the time to leave a good one.

Time and time again we find that bad reviews of small businesses come from people who choose not to seek a resolution on site. They feel good by leaving a bad review online, they feel good to "hurt" the business. There's no agreeing to disagree, it's "my way or the highway" with these customers. When potential customers see these reviews, they don't understand the full picture. That's why small businesses are forced to push for as many good reviews as possible.

We see this with our own clients. These are all real statements from 1 star reviews.

• A restaurant got a 1 star review saying Seafood Fra Diavolo "was spicy", even though the menu says the dish is spicy.

• A retail store got a 1 star review because there was "no parking out front", even though the store is in a very busy tourist area.

• A boat tour got a 1 star reviews because the customer "got splashed by the ocean", when the website says repeatedly the passengers will get wet (and you're literally on a boat?).

Are some bad reviews genuinely accurate? Absolutely.

We're not saying bad reviews shouldn't exist. Some reviewers did try to work with the business for a resolution, and then ultimately left a bad review. Some experiences are just too serious not to inform others. It's the reviews like the ones above that hurt a businesses initial image to a potential customer.

Overall, we don't push reviews anymore on Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, or other platforms. Not for our clients, not for us. It is way too easy for someone to write a bad review to hurt a competitor or a small business, and way too difficult to fight the false information. We're just not into that.