I found a local business clearly using Review manipulations that looks like real to get higher review scores.
Some of their recent 5-star reviews are all posted by accounts that has 10~20 historical reviews, looks legitimate, right? but no…
If you click in the accounts that gives 5-star review recently, you find that ALL of their 10~20 review history are given in the SAME DAY, or even in the SAME HOUR.
AND at the very last of their review records, they give a 5-Star review to the TARGET BUSINESS with long written sentences and a lot of compliments (the most detailed one in all their review records!).
I know that you can report these reviews one by one, or report these reviews’ profile,
but, is there anything else i can do? will Google Moderator provide any help in such case?
To be honest I don’t understand the text that you’ve shared above. I don’t understand the language. Wkwkk… So I cannot give you my personal suggestion.
I believe this is a kind of conflict of interest violation. And I’ve reported a lot of that reviews with that reporting reason. Tens, maybe a hundred. And it works, eventually. Our report matters.
I’ve read what Conflict of Interest is in the link I’ve provided in the comment up there before you shared the same link. Both in English and Indonesian.
Thanks for the Feedback @iorikun301 , and sorry for missing your important post. A masterpiece, in fact, very useful.
In my own opinion, @songshan99 , conflict of interest should be addressed only to review where the writer have some personal relationship with the business (Normally a family business, or a place where you worked, or a competitor).
Writing a review to alterate the ranking of a business is a complicate thing to manage, I agree with @iorikun301 article.
A business can “buy” positive reviews, like in your case, and this is a double violation. The business must be penalized by GMB, and the Local Guides must be penalized too. Unfortunately it is difficult to demonstrate, if there is not a clear evidence of the business to invite offer something in exchange of a positive review. On the Local Guide side, we can only report each individual profile (if we see a behavior in the profile) or each review. As I said, in my opinion “conflict of interest” is not the best option, but I understand that this is a matter of opinion, and “influencing the rating” can be an indirect case of “conflict of interest”.
I personally think that this type of manipulation cannot be automatically found by Google algorithms and needs human intervention. Otherwise how could it be that this local business I found has 80% of 5-star reviews that seems suspicious??
I agree with your suggestion that google should provide a “text box” to let us explain the reason of reporting and give some tips for further manual inspection.
I agree with what songshan99 has said and I am finding a lot of reviews like that. I am in the same situation, wanting those fake reviews to disappear but they do not disappear. I have reported profiles and reviews that clearly have indications that they are not real. And even so, they are not eliminated. I can send an example in photos if you want more information.
