Hello everyone,

My mother leases a Commerical stripmall downtown to run her business from. She has a few other business that rent the offices next door to her office in the strip center. One of her tenants couldn’t afford rent or any of her bills. After about 6 months of no rent, my mom had to evict the tenant.

My mom started a new business in September, 2023 out of her main office in the strip center.

The tenant retaliated by posting on social media, damaging the building, stealing items like Sonos speakers from my mom’s office, and leaving non related reviews on Yelp and Google.

My mom felt really bad about the evicted the tenants situation and gave her all the chances in the world to pay her bills. She filed in small claims court for the damages on the building. Yelp deleted the review. However she now has 8 one star Google reviews that are attacking my mother’s character and have nothing to do with the business.

We have reported the reviews several times now, but can’t get Google to remove them. The evicted tenant used her family’s Google accounts to leave the reviews. Which is quite obvious because they all have the same last name, the reviews are nearly identical, and not related to the business.

What is the best way to get these reviews deleted?

Thanks

  • BusinessBrokerRyan@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Fellow business owner here.

    I have been slammed by disgruntled clients / competitors a couple times through nasty reviews, the exec summary is there is no credible way to have scam google reviews removed. That said, all consumers these days are used to seeing these type of vindictive / unreasonable reviews. Best thing to do:

    1. respond to every negative review and call out that the reviewer was not a customer. Be polite but firm.

    2. respond to all positive reviews too

    3. encourage past customers to leave reviews, make this a standard practice and consider encouraging people to leave reviews by offering small discounts or giveaways

    4. create an online profile for your business on as many profiles as you can think of - it helps give your business credibility online and the backlinks are important for search ranking in your geo. This includes yelp, fb, the local chamber of commerce, bing, industry associations

    5. make it a habit to review your online platforms monthly and post something to keep these fresh - some platforms will consider your business inactive if you do not do this, therefore penalizing your discoverability in search

    Hope this helps. I work with a lot of different business owners as a Business Broker, believe that too many owners think they need to spend $$ to make their business better. Here is a post on some no cost things every owner can do:

    https://wabusinessbrokers.com/2022/10/13/no-cost-actions-to-increase-the-value-of-your-business-in-this-economy/

    Notice #1 is actively maintaining and enhancing your online presence :)

  • rymndtng@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Gather family, friends and get them to all downvote and to report all the fake reviews.

    Reports do get looked at and actioned on.

    Focus on gathering positive reviews from customers moving forward, as sometimes reporting doesn’t always result in removals.

  • ProfessionalMother51@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This is devastating when it happens to your business. I think it’s actually quite common to see someone try to slander a business with a series of 1 stars in a row. Best thing to do is use it as an opportunity to respond to them and without identifying them or their interaction, stand up for yourself with the facts about how you run a ethical business. Then get a series of people to leave good reviews that mention the 1 stars are being invalid and reasons why

  • cynthiachan333@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Google won’t take down the reviews. I had a competitor get people to write fake reviews and have reported them many times. You can just respond back. It sucks