How to Remove a Spam Google Review

Do you have spam reviews on your Google My Business listing? If so, then Google has a new way for you to remove these. This is a new feature that they have recently released that lets you report a spam review and then check the status of the reviews you’ve escalated.

We have had functional medicine practitioners that have had spam reviews left on their GMB page. Up to now, getting them removed hasn’t been easy. With this latest feature, escalating the request is much easier.

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What is Considered a Spam Review?

It’s important to know what Google considers to be a spam review. This is not a bad review that was left by a patient. Rather, a spam review is when a competitor pays other people to post on your listing. Or, maybe they have left the bad review themselves.

As a practitioner, you can likely spot whether or not someone has been in your office. But, if you aren’t sure whether or not a review is fake, there are a few indicators that are often used by the fake reviewer that can help you pick up on this:

Reviews with several !!!
More likely to use words that ask you to “bring back, “offer more” or “please” go back to what was previously offered.

If you have people who are leaving reviews on your GMB listing that aren’t your patients, then this calls for you to report it as spam. You can use Google’s new tool to report the review for removal.

Should You Respond to a Fake Review?

Even if you suspect that a review is fake, you should take the time to respond to it. There are several reasons that responding is important:

Engagement with your listing – every time you update your listing, respond to reviews, or publish new posts, you’re showing Google that you’re active on your listing. Especially, post-COVID, signaling to your Google that your business is still active.
Show patients you take feedback seriously – when there are negative reviews on your listing, people want to know how you will handle it. It’s important to show them that you are kind and caring when it comes to patient care.

Since you can’t guarantee if Google will take the review down or how long it will take to resolve the issue, go ahead and respond to it anyways. Then, no matter how long it takes for it to be removed, people that come to the page while it is live will see your response.

What to Do After You Receive a Negative Review

When you have a negative review on your listing, the first thing you need to do is respond to it. You can make your response something generic, such as, “Contact our office so we can help you resolve this issue.”.

After you leave the review, send out your review link to current patients and work on getting more reviews to push the negative review down. Having a bad review won’t necessarily mean you lose out on patients, but having one at the very top of your listing can be a big deterrent.

Contact Us Today For GMB SEO

Here at Functional Medicine SEO, we work on your GMB listing every month to make sure that it stays up to date. We see this listing as your second website, so we do things each month that will help it rank for the keywords that are best suited to your practice.

Get in touch with us today if you’d like more information about our SEO services. Fill out our free strategy session form here and we’ll get back to you right away.