As the kids today say, “Sounds sus.” Now, Google is dealing with consumer reviews that may be a little suspicious. Google has updated its policy regarding these reviews and is taking measures to help curb them. Greg takes you through everything you need to know about the latest Google update, which is all about making the customer aware of questionable reviews.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays. This week, I’m sharing a quick update from Google about customer reviews.

A few weeks ago, Barry Schwartz wrote a post over on Search Engine Roundtable that kinda flew in under the radar – but it’s a pretty big update with some huge implications.

I don’t know why this didn’t make bigger waves, so I wanted to point it out in this week’s episode.

Google quietly released a new help doc that explains the new “consumer alerts” that will be displayed on Google Business Profiles for businesses with questionable reviews. According to the help doc, Google says
“When we detect suspicious review activity on a business or a business violates our policies we may impose restrictions on its Business Profile and you may encounter the following”

Three possible outcomes are then listed.
If a business has had suspicious reviews removed, a banner will be displayed on the GBP.
Review posting restrictions might be imposed, blocking any new reviews for a period of time.
Reviews may be hidden for a period of time, so no review score or review count is displayed on the GBP.

Yelp has been displaying consumer alerts for shady reviews for years now, so this isn’t too much of a surprise. Google has been aggressively going after fake reviews recently, and this makes cheating even more dangerous.

That’s all the time we have left for this week’s episode, so you know what that means.
Put your hand on the screen right here:
We totally just high-fived ‘cause you learned something awesome.
Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next week for another episode of Local Search Tuesdays