In this week’s Local Search Tuesdays, I tackle bad reviews and how to deal with them. No one’s perfect, and bad reviews happen—it’s all about how you respond. I’ll share why a few negative reviews can actually help your business, tips for handling reviews that violate Google’s policies, and the best ways to craft thoughtful, authentic responses. Tune in to learn how to turn criticism into a chance to build trust with future customers!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays. This week, we’re talking about bad reviews and how to deal with them, so stay tuned!
Customer reviews are incredibly important – they’re a powerful ranking signal for Google’s local algorithm, and they’re vital for attracting new customers.
No one is perfect, so it’s inevitable that you’ll get a few bad reviews here and there. The most important thing to do is not to freak out. Multiple studies over the years have shown that a few bad reviews make you look more trustworthy. In fact, according to the studies, the ideal score range is anywhere between 4.4 and 4.7. Anything lower or higher will reduce the number of conversions from your Google Business Profile.
Everyone always asks about removing bad reviews. In most cases, Google won’t remove bad reviews. Unless the review is a clear violation of Google’s review policies, the review won’t be removed.
Many business owners claim that a bad review came from someone who wasn’t a customer. Sorry to tell you, Google doesn’t care. You don’t have to buy from a business to be allowed to leave a review, so Google won’t remove the review.
If you do think the review violates policy, the first thing to do is to flag the review. Click the report review link to the right of the review, and then select the reason you’re reporting the review. You’ll need to wait 3 days before doing anything else.
You can check the status of your reported review in Google’s review tool – you can go to bit.ly/google-review-tool to check it out. If your request is denied, you will have the option to appeal the decision. Include as much detail as possible about the review and your reason for reporting it when you submit the appeal.
If your request is denied again, your last option is to head to the GBP community forum and post there. Include your support case ID number if you have one, and explain in detail why the review should be removed. If the review violates policy, one of the Product Experts should be able to get your forum post escalated to the review team and get you help.
In most cases, you’re not going to get the review removed, so the next best option is to leave the right kind of response. Remember, your response isn’t for the person who left the review – it’s for every potential customer in the future who reads your reviews.
Never cut and paste the same response to every bad review. If your response to every bad review just says “hey, we strive for great customer service, I’m sorry we missed it this time. I’m Greg, call me at 214-867-5309 so we can hear more about this situation” – then you look lazy and uninterested.
It’s even worse if you obviously have customers’ contact information in your database. You should be reaching out to the bad reviewer offline to attempt to turn the situation around, and people know you could just pick up the phone and call.
It’s important to be honest. If you screwed up, own up to it. Customers and future customers will appreciate the honesty. People rarely leave a review to try to hurt a business, they typically just want the business to know that their experience didn’t match their expectations.
Make sure you get a response posted quickly. If it’s going to take some time to dig in and find out all the details of the situation, it’s ok to post a preliminary response to let people know you saw the review and you’re tyring to find details about what happened on your end. Once you’ve gathered the details, you can edit your response.
Stay professional and don’t attack the reviewer. Remember, they’re simply trying to let you know that their experience didn’t match their expectations. In most cases, you likely already spoke to the reviewer offline, so your response should let the public know the details of the situation and how you either made things right with the customer, or at least attempted to.
And now you know how to deal with bad reviews! That’s all the time we have left for this week’s video, 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.
