Can I buy Google reviews?

3 Reasons You Should Never Buy Google Reviews

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3 Reasons You Should Never Buy Google Reviews

3 Reasons why you should never buy Google reviews

1. Fake reviews lack authenticity

Fake reviews are usually very easy to spot. Bought and paid for reviews are usually immediately suspicious by the type of language they use. Those disreputable companies selling reviews online will often work from a template, allowing them to copy and paste thousands of reviews in a day in an effort to maximise their own profits.

These templates will often be stuffed with keywords or slots to add the companys name multiple times in an effort to improve the ranking making your fake reviews quite obvious. Theyll read in a very insincere way, often talking very generically about the product, giving no real reason as to why theyve chosen to award the business five stars. Its a bad idea to be impatient with new reviews for your business profile and introduce fraudulent reviews as they give no value to your business page.

Clicking through to their reviewer profile can also help shine a light on how inauthentic they are, theyll likely have hundreds of reviews against their name, many often posted on the same day as many customers buy reviews from them. Or conversely, that profile may just have a single Google review on it as the user will make a fresh account for each one.

Or if you buy google reviews by offering incentives to customers, e.g. money off a product in exchange for the review, theres a chance the customer mentions this in the review itself, making your company look very insincere. Even if they genuinely loved the product, no one will believe them if they see an incentive was offered. Negative reviews will do you less harm when it comes to new customers than buying reviews. Getting someone to write positive reviews is quite common but your potential customers can detect fake reviews which can lead to a negative reputation with all your customers.

Consequences

• Normal customers can identify fake reviews a mile away and it will immediately feel like a breach of trust. If you have dozens of obviously fake reviews, customers wont have any faith in both you or your product and move on. This means that youll actually be losing more customers thanks to your Google listing.
• It has the opposite effect of social proof, instead of encouraging more people to use your services you end up driving more people away. Things are even worse if you are a local business that people can actually ask neighbors about their customer satisfaction and call you out on your business profile.

2. Youll never learn your strengths and weaknesses

Paying for reviews is like living with your head in the sand, a refusal to acknowledge weaknesses or play to your strengths. In fact, businesses needmorehonest feedback not less as this is the only way they can implement genuine improvements. Buying google reviews or asking people to write fake reviews on other review sites doesnt help with that.

Consequences

The reviews become meaningless. You never improve your product or services which hurts you more in the long run, youre essentially wasting money on fake paid reviews.

You may never resolve issues or pain points. Even though you earn Google reviews you are drowning them out with dozens or hundreds of paid-for positive reviews youll remain ignorant of the areas you need to fix. Legitimate customers and negative reviews can help you out more than a sea of incentivized review postings on Google business or other review platforms.

3. Its a legal minefield and also against Googles policies

Paying outright for reviews can come very close to being illegal in a lot of countries. In both the UK and the USA, misrepresenting your business, or claiming its something that it isnt, is illegal and paid for reviews skirt dangerously close to the edge of this definition.

Both theCompetitions & Markets Authorityin the UK and theFederal Trade Commisionin the USA have taken action in the past on those companies farming out fake reviews online.

In addition, paying for reviews is in violation of Googles own policies. They state that while its OK to solicit (authentic) reviews from customers, its a definite violation of the terms of service to start paying for reviews.

This also applies the other way too, for example if you decide to badmouth your competition and pay to have them bombarded with one star reviews to make yourself look good. Therell be consequences if youre caught.

Consequences

• You could face civil fines from the federal trade commission (or its equivalent in your country), and even face criminal proceedings for buying reviews or making incentivized review requests.
• Google can choose to remove reviews if they find them to be fake or paid for. Google doesnt take kindly to those who violate its policies and you can definitely expect your rankings to suffer if they find out youre being dishonest.

So how do you get more Google reviews naturally?

So, we now understand that getting genuine and authentic feedback is the route you should be taking with Google reviews, and weve gone into moredetail heretelling you why and how this works, but it can sometimes be very difficult to get customers to actually leave a review.

Your customers have a lot of other things vying for their attention during the day and they might not be motivated to leave a review. This is why buying Google reviews to boost online reputation is so popular but even you write reviews yourself more reviews dont always translate into future customers. You need good reviews and you need real reviews, especially if you are aiming to come up in local search results as a part of your digital marketing campaign.

Below weve outlined some tips to help you boost those numbers and get feedback immediately.

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1. Just ask them to leave a review

Thats right. It really is this simple. Businesses that ask their customers to leave a review tend to have more feedback than their competitors and generally have higher ratings. You of course have to ask in the right way, get the timing right and not be pushy though.

• If your interaction with a customer is face to face Ask them directly after their purchase if theyd be happy to leave a review when they get home. Offer them a flyer or business card with instructions on how to do it.
• If the purchase was online Follow up afterwards by email. Depending on the type of product you may want to wait a couple of weeks to give them time to use and experience the product.

Its OK to follow up with a second or potentially third message requesting the review too, but any more than this and youll probably come off as pushy. Always remember to be very polite and respectful in your correspondence and to personalize it to that customer too and youll get more reviews.

Try searching through your social media mentions to see if anyone has been talking about you too. If any happy customer has been singing your praises recently it might be worth reaching out to them via a direct message and asking if theyd be happy to share their experience on Google.

2. Make it simple for the customer to complete

Thankfully, Google has helped to make the review process very simple to follow by letting you generate your own URL that links directly to your review page. FollowGoogles instructions hereand simply add the link to any emails or texts you send out and onto any printed materials where youre asking for reviews.

Try adding the review link in your email signature on your normal day to day correspondence too. You never know who might respond to a quick call to action at the end of an email.

3. Let customers leave reviews via your website

Staying with the theme of making things easy, add a link to Google reviews on your homepage. This way any visitors should be able to see a clear box theyll be able to click through to leave a review. This is less direct than asking customers individually, but can really help up your reviews if you get a lot of traffic via your website. Every legit Google review counts and even a negative reviewer can help you cause if handled properly.

4. Respond to your reviews

When your business has popped up in a Google search we already know youll rank higher if youve responded to the reviews and have shown to Google you engage with your customer base. However, it can also encourage others to leave reviews too.

When customers see youre regularly corresponding and talking to other customers, theyll be more likely to leave a review themselves. People like to feel listened to and reviewers expect a response to feedback these days (both positive and negative) so get engaging with your customers to boost those online reviews.

Remember, never underestimate the power of good quality, authentic reviews and you can check out thesestatistics hereif you dont believe us! And most importantly of all, never, ever, pay for your positive reviews, itll end up costing you far more in the long run. You can deal with negative reviews but fake reviews are a blatant stain on your track record.