The Truth About How Buying Google Reviews Can Hurt Your Business: Here’s an Organic Work-Around
Buying Google reviews has become a common practice for businesses and advertisers to gather business reviews. Unfortunately, when you buy Google reviews, this can hurt your online business.
Google reviews are important for your to Google searches ranking, which in turn helps you attract more customers. However, when you buy Google reviews, this could hurt your online reputation. One major drawback is that Google search engines regularly monitor sites that buy Google reviews and can detect fake reviews.
In extreme cases, the search engine removes a Google business profile or page if they constantly buy Google reviews with fake positive reviews and almost zero negative reviews. When you buy Google reviews regularly, with almost perfect positive feedback, Google business can distinguish genuine positive reviews from fake ones and suspend, delete, or penalize the latter.
The Federal Trade Commission is also very strict about when they find a business purchase reviews with the intent of misleading buyers. The answer to “why are Google reviews important?” is that they can affect a buyer’s decision.
These include buying Google Maps reviews, Google My Business page reviews, reviews on any review site or review platform, Google Play reviews, five-star reviews, or reviews on any other review sites. If your business seldom receives legitimate reviews, there are ways that your business listings can encourage high-quality Google reviews on your page or other review sites.
Generally, consumers trust online reviews, which is why they are important for your Google My Business page, Google Play Store, and other review platforms.
Before buying Google reviews, read our guide below about the dangers that fake Google business reviews can have on your business. While you might see an increase in positive Google reviews, this could damage your online reputation.
Risk of Buying Google Reviews
You are subjecting your Google business page and brand identity to grave risk when you buy Google reviews. The internet has revolutionized how businesses can interact with customers to earn Google reviews and positive feedback, and on the other side, shady business practices have also emerged.
However, with the rise of online review platforms, it becomes problematic when many companies buy fake reviews to mislead customers and exaggerate their online reputation. Here are ten disadvantages of buying Google reviews:
1. Legality Issues
Purchasing reviews is not only unethical, but it can also be illegal. Companies can find themselves facing hefty fines if caught buying online reviews in an attempt to mislead customers with fake positive Google reviews.
These include Google Maps, Google My Business, and other websites where customers can post, view, or interact with reviews. The Federal Trade Commission is also very strict about businesses misleading customers to purchase products or services. The punishment depends on the severity of the crime.
2. Negative Reputation
Suppose customers find out that a company has been buying reviews or using an automated review bot to manage reviews artificially. In that case, they could look at your business as a spammy online store, ultimately damaging your online reputation. Having sensible negative reviews or genuine positive Google reviews shows you are a legitimate business profile.
Getting genuine bad reviews should be taken as constructive criticism. There are Google review services that will help you encourage healthy reviews instead of buying fake ones. Depending on how you handle the situation, even bad post reviews can be turned into good ones.
3. Lack of Credibility
Fake online reviews damage user trust when a business is caught using fake positive Google reviews. More experienced customers can easily spot when you buy Google reviews because they look spammy or fake.
Bad reviews are often better than an obviously fake Google review. The more reviews you get, the more you can wash out a negative review with five-star reviews.
4. Poor Quality Content
Paid online reviews often lack the depth and reliability of naturally generated feedback. Basically, they don’t look authentic. When you buy positive Google reviews, expect generic, poor-quality, inexperienced business reviews.
When your business page is flooded with poor positive review posts, this can negatively affect your business and even local SEO. Your Google My Business page or Google maps listing can suffer from quality when you buy Google reviews cheap from shady vendors.
5. Risk of Detection
Google has powerful algorithms which can detect fraudulent Google reviews and penalize companies for doing so. Your business listing is at risk when you buy fake Google business reviews.
Can Google detect fake reviews? Yes. Although sometimes they do not take action immediately and allow you to gain genuine positive Google business reviews and change your tactics. Your Google My Business local search results could suffer if you are spotted constantly using fake reviews.
6. Time and Money Wasted
Companies spend considerable resources paying for reviews and time managing them. A business page can spend more time buying more Google reviews and managing them instead of spending time incentivizing more positive Google reviews genuinely.
Companies offering reviews written by professional review writers are often expensive, depending on how many reviews you want to buy. While your site might have good reviews, or there may be a review link or two leading to your products, if Google spots these generic reviews and penalizes you, you would have wasted your time and effort for nothing.
7. Neglect of Real Customers
Companies that purchase Google reviews may be less likely to listen to criticisms and feedback from real customers. When bulk reviews are fake, it’s hard for the business to make better decisions due to the lack of actual reviews.
When you focus too much on getting your Google reviews ready by buying them, you tend to increase the number of genuine negative Google reviews you receive. This is because your buyers won’t get what the reviews with a direct link say about your product or service.
8. Reduces Reviews from Organic Sources
Companies that buy reviews may reduce the quality and quantity of reviews from organic sources, thus leading to further erosion of trust and credibility. You may stop receiving genuine free reviews when you focus too much on fake reviews.
Local search engines are built to spot when a review is not natural. They can penalize your search engine optimization ranking, especially if they find that this builds up the majority of your reviews.
9. Bias in Results
Paid reviews may lead to an inaccurate representation of quality and customer service. Biased results can do more damage than good since, aside from customers becoming unhappy, they could even spread their negative reviews or comments elsewhere where you have little to no control over them.
10. Poor Customer Experience
Customers do not like to purchase services or products from companies that buy reviews; this can lead to an overall decrease in customer confidence and a negative customer experience. Customer experience is hampered by a huge gap between what reviews promise them and what buyers get.
How Customers can Spot Fake Google Reviews
Fake reviews are becoming increasingly problematic. Many companies will hire people to write positive reviews for their products and services, making it difficult for customers to distinguish between factual and fraudulent reviews. To help customers identify fake Google reviews, here are five things to look out for.
1. Timing
One of the easiest ways to spot fake reviews is to look at the timing. If a company just launched a product and there are already dozens or even hundreds of reviews, the reviews are likely fake. Companies usually need time to build up a base of reviews; if the reviews are coming too quickly or in large numbers, they could be bought.
2. Language
Fake reviews tend to contain excessive praise or too many compliments. They also tend to be overly positive and vague, lacking in detail when describing the product or service. Basically, these reviews look like the generic “Best product ever” type of reviews that nobody really pays attention to.
3. Unverified Purchases
If a review cannot be verified with a purchase, it is a good sign that something’s off. You can require customers to verify their purchases to leave reviews. If there are too many unverified reviews, the reviews are likely fake.
4. Multiple Accounts
If a customer is leaving multiple reviews from different accounts, likely, the reviews are not genuine. Google and other platforms are wise to this review manipulation and can easily pick up on this pattern.
5. Inconsistencies
Fake reviews tend to have inconsistencies with their location and language. If different reviews are coming from different parts of the world and the language used is not congruent, then it is likely that the reviews have been manufactured.
Buying Google Reviews vs. Organic Reviews
Organic reviews come from customers who have purchased a product or service and leave feedback about their experience. They are an important part of any business as they provide valuable insight into how customers feel about the company and can help them improve their services.
On the other hand, buying Google reviews is a relatively new practice where businesses pay for positive reviews from people who have not actually used the product or service. These reviews are often used to manipulate search engine rankings since reviews are one of the factors Google considers when ranking websites.
While buying reviews can help businesses get more exposure, it is not very ethical. It can even lead to penalties from Google, such as lower rankings or removal from the search engine.
Overall, organic reviews are much more reliable than buying Google reviews. Additionally, businesses that use organic reviews have better long-term success, as their reviews are more likely to be seen as reliable by potential customers. Buying reviews is a short-term fix that can have long-term consequences, as it can lead to penalties from Google.
Attracting Organic Reviews
Organic reviews are essential for the success of any business. Online reviews help build customer trust and can significantly impact your bottom line. However, attracting organic reviews can be difficult. Here are some tactics to help you get more organic reviews:
Create Incentives
Consider offering a small discount or reward to encourage customers to leave a review. This can be based on the number of reviews they leave or the type of review they leave. For instance, if you offer a discount for leaving more than five positive reviews, customers may be more likely to leave them.
Be Proactive
Reach out to customers through email or social media and ask them to leave you a review. Make sure your message is personalized, as generic messaging may hurt your brand.
Make the Review Process Easier
If you have an online store or website, embed a link for customers to leave a review in their checkout confirmation or account creation emails. Additionally, provide customers with the addresses or links to your review sites so they can easily leave a review once they’ve completed the purchase.
Respond to Reviews
It’s important to show customers that their feedback matters to you. Thank customers for leaving positive reviews and addressing any criticism they have professionally. This reinforces to customers that you value their opinions and care about their feedback.
Why Organic Reviews are Important
Organic reviews are an important part of any business’s success since they allow potential customers to get a better feel for the quality of the products and services offered and the business’s reputation.
In this day and age, reviews can make or break a business, so it is important to ensure that your business is getting the most out of organic reviews. Organic reviews can help increase your business’s trust, credibility, and visibility.
Organic reviews offer valuable insight for potential customers. They give customers a feel for the quality of the product, customer service, and overall experience with the business. Reviews can also validate the business from real people who have had a genuine experience with the product or service.
Organic reviews can also help improve search engine rankings. Search engines consider the number and quality of reviews when ranking a business. The more organic reviews you have, the more likely you are to appear higher up in search results, which will increase the visibility of your business.
Furthermore, organic reviews are a great way to keep track of customer feedback. Reviews can help your business identify areas they may need to improve. Reviews can be used to monitor customer satisfaction and identify trends in customer buying habits.
Contact ReputationSciences Today
Online reviews play an integral part in your business’ growth. Suppose you’re entertaining the idea of buying reviews. In that case, we suggest consulting the review management experts at ReputationSciences to discuss a better strategy to improve your online reputation, whether your site is bombarded by negative reviews or doesn’t have reviews at all. From managing reviews to comprehensive review removal services, our team is ready to help you get the most from your online review profiles.
You might want to start looking for an experienced partner to do the job. Contact us or dial (844) 458-6735 to learn more about how to encourage positive reviews and what to do with negative reviews.
