Can Fake Reviews Harm Your Local SEO? Here's What You Need to Know

Key Takeaways

• Fake reviews are highly connected to SEO as they impact local rankings and retailer trust.

• Finding and reporting fake reviews early can mitigate long-term SEO issues.

• Use proven tools and be proactive in a clean-up of your review profile to protect your brand.

Have you come across any business whose reviews seem too unrealistic to be true? While positive feedback is so important, such fake praise reviews actually drive customers away instead of influencing them.

Fake reviews and SEO rarely stand a chance together, and mere suspicion of fake reviews can downgrade your online reputation. The second Google suspects manipulation, you're looking at ranking penalties.  

Therefore, it is important to understand the harm fake reviews can cause to your Local SEO, along with the ways to detect and remove them. 

What Counts As A Fake Review? 

A fake review is typically a review that does not truly reflect the real experience of the customer. It can be a false praise review that you thought could highlight your profile. 

It can also be a swamp of bad reviews that any of your jealous competitors may cast on you unethically. Whatever it is, Google notices the common trends in such fake reviews, and the impact will not be good on your SEO and trust signals.   

The Impact of Fake Reviews on Local SEO 

Google uses reviews as a trust signal to assess your credibility. This is why fake reviews and SEO manipulation can hurt your local search visibility and traffic. So, check out the harms that fake reviews can cause to your business profile.

• Watching Trust Signals Disappear

Google's smart and ever-developing algorithm can tell when unnatural activity occurs in your review listings. Faking reviews with too much positivity destroys trust signals, which then likely damages SEO rank and consumer perception of your business.

• Ranking Penalties

You may also have to suffer from ranking penalties for using fake or incentivized reviews. Penalties cause businesses to rank lower in their local pack, have less visibility, and may take months to recover from this blow.

• Distrust of Customers

Consumers can detect dishonesty, so when they recognize fake reviews, they will disengage. If you lose customers' trust because of review spam, it will cause damage to your reputation, conversion rates, repeat business, and brand loyalty in the long term.

• Engagement Metrics On The Decline

Fake reviews should bring clicks, but users bounce quickly once they ascertain the dishonesty. Thus, bounce rates increase and time on site decreases. This negatively affects your SEO since Google considers engagement rates when determining local rankings.

• Reporting from Competitors or Users

Anyone can report fake reviews, and if Google confirms the report, it will remove the review or issue some kind of penalty. Competitors often monitor each other's listings; therefore, businesses need to cautiously put only the most authentic and valuable reviews.  

Fake reviews promise unrealistic customer expectations and inflate businesses' reputations that they cannot uphold. This is why you need to continuously grow organic reviews.

How to Detect and Remove Fake Reviews? 

Fake reviews can silently destroy your reputation. However, detecting and attacking review spam earlier can be the difference between running a reputable business and being the target of the spam. Here is how you can save your business.

• Look At Repetitive Wording Or Patterns

Many fake reviews contain some copy-and-paste phrases, some similar compliments, or strange language use. Watch out for multiple reviews that sound the same and or have no context on their experience at all. You can then report them based on this evidence.

• Study The Reviewer's Profile

Check if a profile is reviewing products in unrelated cities or unrelated industries, as this is usually a sign of review spam. Also, look for new accounts and reviewers that don't have any source of information and note them down.

• Reporting Inappropriate Reviews on Google

Click on the three dots icon beside the review and select "Report Review". Google will determine if the reviewer is violating their review policy. Reporting such unethical reviews will help you win Google's trust signals for being a responsible business.  

• Respond Professionally In The Public

If you believe you are getting fake feedback, calmly respond to it and collect additional evidence to support your case. This is important, as Google will review your responses during its manual checks and note your intent and honesty.

Conclusion 

With constant improvements in Google's algorithm changes, fake reviews and SEO will no longer go hand in hand. You will have to be vigilant about detecting and removing them, whereas opting for only custom, skillful, and real customer reviews, even if you buy them.

Therefore, let go of the easy ways of improving review numbers with fake or bot reviews. Rather, trust BuyReviewz and gather authentic, location-specific detailed reviews from genuine users.