It seems like there’s an overwhelming amount of fake reviews out there these days being cluttered among real reviews. It’s true that reviews are an important piece of the Local SEO puzzle, but they aren’t anywhere near a silver bullet.
How come there are so many companies cheating when it comes to reviews? If they had an issue with bad reviews that they were trying to bury, that’s one thing, but it doesn’t make any sense when its a company that is getting great reviews anyway.
The worst part of it, most of the fake reviews that are out there are happening on Google. With last fall’s Possum update, there is more importance to spread your reviews around to third-part sites.
Greg Gifford did a mini-audit for a potential client last month, and when he got to the review section, he found some troubling results. It was obvious that he was faking reviews. But when it was brought up on the call, the owner didn’t have any idea that his team was faking reviews for the site.
For Greg Gifford’s post, he thought it would be smart to share six important tips to help everybody make their reviews more honest in 2017. They’ll be better for potential customers, and they’ll avoid potential problems from filters or penalties.