Mordy Oberstein tweeted to me this morning about his observation that Mt Everest has been plagued with dozends of fake reviews. I think Google has a fake review problem when it comes to Earth’s most famous landmarks. Here’s one for Mt. Everest & despite some of these being hilarious, they are of course fake. Same..

As of April 12, 2018 Google has updated the review guidelines to clarify that review-gating is not allowed.  They added the following to their guidelines: “Don’t discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.” What is review-gating? Review-gating is the process of filtering candidates before asking them to leave you a..

Jan 8, 2018 Update: Google now clarifies that all reviews from competitors & employees are against guidelines. Before, it stated that posting negative content about a current/former employment experience wasn’t allowed and on January 5 they removed the word “negative”. Before, it stated that posting negative content about a competitor to manipulate their rankings wasn’t allowed..

Creating fake reviews might seem like a great way to boost your business’s local profile, but the consequences far outweigh the benefits. After all, you’re not just violating Google’s guidelines – you’re breaking the law.

If you’re a small business owner who actively gets reviews, it’s likely that you’ve ran into a case where some of your reviews on your Google My Business listing randomly vanished. Google has an active algorithmic filter in place to remove reviews that violate their policies. Before you get all excited thinking this filter is..

One of the most common questions I run into at the Google & Your Business Forum (Google Places Forum) is people wanting to know why their reviews got filtered. The first step to figuring that out is to track down the reviews and looking for patterns to see why it might have been filtered. But..