HelpHound - no punches pulled.

Here we describe - briefly - the key aspects of HelpHound for your business. Rarely will any of these not apply; you may have a perfect business, but everyone has imperfect clients/patients/customers. For each point, we will link to a full explanation.

Point 1 - HelpHound will make money for your business 

 We will measurably increase both clicks and conversions for your business

HelpHound will make your business money. Guaranteed. Or your money back. To see how, read this case history, and this - our guarantee. Revenue, net of our fees, will rise.

 

Point 2 - Now, more than ever before, your review management needs to comply with the law

Selecting which customers to invite to write a review, without allowing all of your customers to do so - see Point 3 - has been illegal for years. The difference today is that the CMA has introduced AI detection, now making it far more likely that any business doing so will be sanctioned

 

HelpHound will ensure your business makes the most of reviews: Google's, your own or those on a third-party site (or all three), whilst remaining in full compliance with the law. Last month the regulators - the CMA - announced a major ramping up of their efforts to track down and discipline businesses that cherry-pick or gate. Businesses that currently don't have a compliant system in place need to adopt one, urgently.

 

Point 3 - Compliance means enabling, not actively inviting, every customer to write a review

 From this button all the benefits of professional review management flow. Click on image to enlarge.

HelpHound allows all of your stakeholders to write a review, via our moderators, through and to your website, and then on to Google. There are two vital keys here: the first is the word 'allows'. You don't have to actively invite every single stakeholder to write a review, to your website or to Google. Who you invite is entirely up to you. You are fully compliant by dint of having the invitation to write a review permanenently displayed on your website. Our moderators read every review written through that mechanism and refer back to the reviewer, and to you if necessary, if the review contains any errors of fact or wording likely to be misconstrued by anyone relying on it - your future customers - before it is published. Read more about moderation here and here.

  

Point 4 - Rank right at the top in search

This is the kind of search result we aim to help our clients achieve. Click on image to enlarge.

 

The introduction of Gemini - Google's own AI search tool (on 25 July this year), has meant that a consistent flow of reviews through your own website is now an even more key element of appearing in relevant searches. Out with the old SEO in with the new.

Point 5 - support - humans not bots

 

HelpHound will support you every step of the way, from initial implementation and training tailored specifically for your own business to day-to-day human support. No bots here! You have received an unfair review? Ask us for advice. Mobilising reviews for marketing and PR? We have dozens of successful examples (see a client on Instagram above). Not sure how to respond to a review? We'll draft one for you. Not enough invitations converting into reviews? We'll have the answer. Not appearing high up in crucial local searches? We'll provide advice.

 

 And finally...

Besides our guarantee, we have no contract period for clients (see our fee scale here). so the risk for your business is next to non-existent. It is tempting to say - se we will say it! - the only risk a business runs is not experiencing the uplift HelpHound membership will bring.

That's it - in a nutshell. The next step? Speak to one of us here at HelpHound. 

HelpHound for the medical profession - Google AI

We asked Google AI 'How does HelpHound help doctors with online reviews?' A simple enough question. Here is Gemini's answer (the full page first - you can replicate this search for yourself)...

Click on image to enlarge

And the text element only (for ease of reading)...

We rest our case.

A seismic shift in the reviews landscape - CMA to use AI to examine online reviews

This post is directed at those businesses that have so far escaped sanction by the Competition and Markets Authority (the government body responsible for enforcing the law regarding online reviews in the UK). If you are a HelpHound client, you do not need to read any further, but you may like to do so to reassure yourself that your business is in full compliance with current legislation.

First, we repeat the rationale behind compliance with the CMA's regulations...

We understand why businesses cherry-pick (not so much those that 'gate*'); it's exactly why we introduced moderation: to give businesses the confidence to allow** all their customers to write a review. 

Of course, the business above could simply replace the invitation to write a review to its own website with one to write a review directly to Google, but that would mean bypassing moderation and increasing the risk of inaccurate and potentially misleading reviews finding their way to Google.

The CMA is on the case of businesses that cherry-pick happy customers to write reviews (that was confirmed to us in no uncertain terms in a conversation with a senior CMA staffer). Until now, that meant a pretty exhaustive and in-depth investigation, and businesses, particularly SMEs, quite understandably reckoned that their chances of appearing in the CMA's crosshairs were remote.

Not any more. As of this month, the CMA will be employing its own bespoke AI to track down offending businesses. 

Now, we don't know exactly how the CMA's AI will work, but if we put ourselves in the CMA enforcement team's position for a minute, we know exactly what we would be programming its AI to look for...

• Few reviews relative to the number of customers the business has, or onboards over a given timescale 
• An erratic pattern of reviews; many one month and then few - or none - the next
• Sudden spikes in positive reviews - especially following a negative review
• Use of more than one review platform. Not always an indicator, but any sign that the business is inviting reviews to one platform (Trustpilot, say) and then only inviting those that post a 5* review there to copy it to another, more visible, site (Google is the obvious choice). Called 'gating*' by the regulators and Google
• Businesses that show only 5* reviews on their own websites
• Businesses that show unattributed reviews on their websites
• Businesses that are proactive in inviting customers to post reviews, but cannot prove that all their customers have had the opportunity to post a review**
• Businesses that use mechanisms that control the timing of the review (commonly immediately post-purchase)
• Businesses that reward customers for 5* reviews

None of the above, taken individually, are concrete proof of any contravention of the CMA rules. But they will be enough for the regulators to move on to the next step: formal investigation. This may/will involve the sequestration of computer hardware and email records. And we seriously doubt any business wants to experience that at first hand.

And the list doesn't end there. The great thing about AI is that, once programmed, it will find just about every business that fits the regulators' target criteria. All the CMA will need to do is issue sanction notices to those businesses. Exactly as HMRC did on 10 July this year, for businesses not in compliance with the Anti-Money-Laundering legislation. The onus will always be on the business to prove its innocence. And ignorance of the CMA regulations will be no defence.

And finally...

The most obvious question from businesses that have cherry-picked historically is, 'If we become compliant today, will the CMA sanction us?' We cannot give you a definitive answer to that question, although any sensible person would imagine that the CMA's priorities would lie in the direction of currently non-compliant businesses. What we can say for sure is that being able to say 'We ensured we became 100% compliant as soon as we were made aware of the relevant CMA regulations' is a far better response than 'We are currently ensuring that all our review management will be in compliance with the CMA regulations in future'.

Further reading:

• AI and reviews - an important update

HelpHound - AI and reviews - an important update

There have been two seismic shifts in the world of reviews this year...

• Google's Introduction of AI search (Gemini) 

and...

• The CMA's warning that it is introducing AI to establish which businesses are contravening its core regulations relating to reviews (see below)

Regulation 

We asked Google's AI a simple question: 'Is there anything suspicious about [XYZ]'s reviews?' This is what it returned:

This was the very first business we asked Google's Gemini AI to interrogate - it was the first law firm 'near me' in search, so no cherry-picking for our example. You can be sure that if we can do this using proprietary AI, then the CMA's bespoke system will work even more effectively - and in numbers; this, again from a Google AI search...

What does the CMA mean by 'suspicious activity'? It is simple, really: any activity that tilts the review gathering and posting process in favour of the business (and, therefore, by definition, against the interests of the consumer). At the risk of repeating ourselves, here are the most obvious examples...

1. Cherry-picking. Every business that invites reviews is either tempted down this road or actively does it. Why is it illegal? Because the CMA has said so! Seriously though. Take a minute to think about it; hand-picking 'happy' customers to invite to write a review must work in the business's favour.
2. Gating. The act of pre-qualifying the above-mentioned customers. There are many mechanisms - the obvious one being an e-questionnaire. Not only against UK and EU law but expressly against Google's terms of service (risking deletion of the entirety of a business's Google reviews and red-flagging).

This issue with both of the above, post-AI, is that the regulators have gone, overnight, from relying on whistleblowers and exhaustive, time-consuming and expensive follow-up investigations to a click of a mouse and bingo! - a comprehensive list of those flouting the law, along with comprehensive proof*.

We frequently hear businesses dismiss regulation (and at least half the businesses we meet for the first time are in breach of one or more of the CMA's core regulations). It will either be a case of 'Why would they - in this case, the CMA - bother?' or 'If they bothered, what is the likelihood of [our business] being sanctioned?'*

But now the CMA are introducing sophisticated AI, it is time to stop 'parking on the double yellow lines.' It's not as if parking legally, in the context of reviews, is going to cost businesses either - professional review management has proved itself to be a profit centre time and again (in fact, so comprehensively that we now guarantee results or your money back).

*Again, there are those who doubt us. The key here is that a) a sanction by the CMA will not be viewed as a victimless crime by consumers, the press and social media - you can probably write the headines yourself - and b) every business in breach will have a positive treasure trove of evidence for the CMA's AI to pick up - from the reviews themselves (and the posting pattern), to the emails/texts inviting them (or not inviting them, as the case may be).

4.9 is the new 4.5

We all remember the days, not long past, when we would use a business provided it scored over 4.0. No longer. To feature in a competitive search, and to attract custom wherever it may appear in search, a business now needs three things more than ever before...

• Great SEO

• A Google score of 4.8 or better

• A feed of its reviews on its own website - that, in turn, feeds through to Google searches

In the case of the latter, the feed can be of Google reviews or its own reviews. The advantages of the latter being...

• that the individual reviews themselves can be moderated, with factually inaccurate or potentially misleading (and damaging) reviews being resolved pre-publication anywhere (on the business's own website and/or on Google). We estimate, based on over a decade's experience and the statistics behind it, that our moderation adds between 0.2 and 0.5 to a business's overall Google score. Of course, it is not only the score that is important;  almost, sometimes more than the score, is the elimination or correction of a potentially* damaging review at the top of the business's Google feed (now almost certainly referenced by any AI search as well).

• that the business owns its own reviews, rather than donating the data they contain exclusively to Google

*We struck out 'potentially' as all negative reviews are damaging. The business may know that the reviewer is being unreasonable or even factually inaccurate, but the reader does not, and almost everyone searching for a high-value business will take the trouble to read any 1* reviews a business may have. Moderation is a vital safety net for any service or professional business.

SEO

You will have spotted the HelpHound client. But do you know where that '4.9 from 129 reviews' and its accompanying 5 gold stars come from? Most consumers will bet their last penny that they are from Google, but they are not. They are taken directly from the client's own reviews, moderated by HelpHound, and hosted on their website for all to see...

Why host your own reviews on your own website? There are many reasons, not least of which is the marketing boost they provide. Ammunition for advertising and PR, your website, your social media and print materials. But it's not entirely accidental that HelpHound clients tend to a) score higher - by definition, a moderated system must outscore the equivalent unmoderated system, even if it only enables the business to avoid having a single inaccurrate or misleading review a year (we have clients who recieve one a month - and they are invariably resolved before publication), and b) feature more prominently in all the vital searches - local/map etc.

Artificial Intelligence

Our article from the day of Google's launch of Gemini AI for search

Two here: first, the boon that AI provides for the basic day-to-day management of reviews, helping draft responses is a major one for our clients. Second: the warning from the CMA that it is going to be using sophisticated AI to identify businesses that flout its core regulations (see above). 

Getting great reviews

Convincing? You bet. We have purposely chosen a client in one of the most sensitive areas to show that a) people using extremely 'private' services will write reviews. If patients of a women's health clinic will write a review, albeit in less volume, so will clients of a lawyer or a financial adviser. 

More and more evidence points to three factors that override all others;

1. Warn the individual - face to face if at all possible - that it is now standard practice for your business to invite all its customers to write a review, and stress how helpful that is a) to other people in their position and b) for you personally
2. Invite the review by email, not SMS. This has been shown to produce better quality reviews, consistently. Fewer 'They were great' and more of the kind you see above.
3. Follow up with a one-minute phone call. Businesses that do so - and we have plenty of evidence of this - often convert over fifty per cent of the invitations they send out.

Results

These bear repetition, in the context of our fees and all of the above. Detailed numbers lifted from an industry forum (in this case estate agency) and collated by someone totally unconnected with HelpHound. Again, we repeat: these are guaranteed, and have been for over 18 months now. 

To summarise

• Don't wait any longer to become compliant with the CMA regulations; the CMA will not warn anyone before they act. The benefits of compliance (see 'Results' above) so far outweigh the cost, from the point of view of both time and £. And sanction by the CMA will hurt - both the fine and the attendant publicity

• Get a compliant reviews feed embedded into your website

• Aim to achieve a score of 4.9 for your business as soon as possible

• Get the SEO kicker of reviews working for your business, again, as soon as possible

Google's Gemini AI goes live

Remember the date. 31 July 2025. The day the world of search took a giant leap. 'A giant leap where?', you may well ask. The honest answer, in spite of all the noise, is 'Only time will tell'. And the main thing only time will tell is just how many web searches, and of what kind, will be conducted using AI going forwards (at this point we should apologise to the tech-sophisticated minority - we're going to focus on Google here, since it is currently 93 percent of the UK search market and that dominance currently shows no sign of waning).

What has changed?

Have you seen this yet?

Or this?

We know you are keen to see what happens next, so let's look at the search above in 'conventional' Google search...

...and now using 'AI mode'...

What you - and therefore your potential customers - will note, pretty well straight away, is that the second - the AI search - contains far more qualitative information: Winkworth heads the first search by dint of excellent web design and SEO, plus the schema pulling through its own reviews. For the AI search, Google Gemini has scraped information from over 80 different sites (if you conduct a similar search, you will see the ticker counting as it searches) and is providing the searcher with far more information and a proper response to the 'best' query. 

What should concern any business that hasn't got its review management house in order is that the AI search doesn't stop there...

...making the 'best' look even better.

Here's a specific search for a medical practitioner...

And here's another search, which anyone considering such treatment might be expected to make...

This is the result of over 120 separate searches by Google Gemini - almost certainly including the clinic's Google reviews and the reviews hosted on its own website and on HelpHound servers.

No need to highlight any of this as it is all relevant!

Conclusion

All the while Google allows people to opt in/out of Gemini, there will be some that stay with conventional 'ten blue link' search (although that is also headed by AI results), but then we remember people saying that Ask Jeeves was here to stay. There is no doubt that 'long string searches' for high-value services will gravitate towards AI; the only question is 'How long will it take?'

Last of all - but very important

Regular readers will know we never relent when it comes to compliance with the CMA regulations. But we also know that many reading this article will be content to continue to flout those regulations (which have the force of law), the key rules being those prohibiting cherry-picking (businesses must allow all of their customers, clients or patients to write a review if they invite any to do so) and gating (pre-qualifying customer opinions before inviting selected customers to write a review. 

Until now, we would probably have agreed that the risk of sanction was pretty low - even despite this conversation with the CMA - but no longer. The CMA is introducing AI, with special reference to online reviews...

...AI will identify, in seconds, businesses that flout the CMA regulations by looking for patterns of review writing and the content of the reviews themselves. To take one obvious example: a business looks great on a review site but far less good on Google. Another: the ratio of reviews to customers - the business conducts dozens of transactions but gets few reviews. 

The key is to look at the opportunity cost of compliance: a compliant business - and all HelpHound client businesses are compliant by definition of having the 'Write a review' button on their websites - can relax in the knowledge that their reviews are bullet-proof: from criticism by competitors ('they only have great reviews because they cherry-pick') and the CMA. Our clients don't pay for our review management because they have cash to spare, they do so because they know that our professional review management feeds straight through to the bottom line - guaranteed.

HelpHound - it's not 'either/or'

When a business first encounters HelpHound - through our website or this blog, or as a result of a recommendation from another of our clients, there can be an understandable preconception: that it is 'HelpHound's way or the highway'. Nothing could be further from the truth, and in this article we will set out the options for your business as well as dispelling any notion that HelpHound is a one-size-fits-all solution.

Your objectives are our objectives

What does your business aim to achieve with reviews, besides the universal objective of 'more enquiries/more conversions'? There is a very good reason that HelpHound does not offer an online signup: we need to know precisely what kind of review management will benefit your business best...

• Google reviews
• Moderated Google reviews 
• Reviews on an external website - Trustpilot, Feefo etc.
• A combination of two or more of the above
• Reviews showing on your website
• Reviews feeding through to your socials
• Reviews supporting PR, advertising and other marketing
• Ownership of your own reviews

We will also ensure, whatever solutions we recommend, that your business is in compliance with the law (enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK) and Google's own Terms of Service (applicable worldwide), the core rules of which are...

• no cherry-picking (if a business invites any reviews, it must allow all of its customers to write one)

• no gating (gating includes such tactics as sending out a questionnaire and then only asking those who respond positively to write a review)

An online reputation built on either of these is built on sand; and, furthermore, unnecessary. With moderation - reviews being checked for factual accuracy pre-publication - businesses can build rock-solid online reputations without flouting the law (our clients also tell us that it helps them sleep at night!).

Our No. 1 objective on behalf of all our clients is to ensure that the review management strategy we recommend is fully compliant with both UK law and Google's Terms of Service.

In the case of products, a review site's star rating can be a helpful marketing tool, but we might argue that 5 glowing gold stars from Google is an even more powerful - and credible - way to drive customers through your door

Next: where are your potential customers looking? If the answer is 'billboards' or 'on the London Underground', then a reviews site may be the right avenue (or at least part of the solution); if the answer is 'through a web search [of any kind]', then the answer will almost certainly be Google.

You can spot the HelpHound client easily, not just because they head up local search (having your own reviews provides a great SEO kicker) but because we ensure their own reviews are pulled through by Google - see the red arrow (no, they're the business's own reviews, not, as many are convinced, Google reviews or Google stars; just look at them on the business's website). Many clients say those stars pay for their HelpHound membership on their own!

Professional services need to look increasingly as near-perfect on Google as they can. Five years ago, scoring 4.5 out of 5 meant leading either their category and/or local search; today, that score needs to be at least 4.8 or 4.9, and maintained at that level. The only way of being sure of achieving that is...

• to be really good at what you do
• to have great CRM
• to employ a moderated review management system

The last of these - a moderated review management system - will help enormously where the first two are concerned: it will provide an ongoing stream of feedback to the business so improvements can be made and those, in turn, will result in improvements to customer relationship management.

Every client that has posted a review on the business's website is automatically asked to copy it to Google. Out of the 743 posted here over 500 have done so

So: speak to us - or contact us at info@helphound.com - and we will answer all your questions. 

Further reading

• Moderation - the key to successful review management

• Compliance - to be credible, reviews must be acquired in compliance with the law and Google's Terms of Service

• Google reviews - eliminating the risk

• Results - the clincher

• Our fees

Nature - and the public's thirst for reviews - abhors a vacuum

Who benefits? Parents? Pupils? The school? Read on. The answer may surprise you.

Earlier this year, for reasons a tad unclear - we cannot believe that one plea from a schoolteacher in the Northwest of England and some of their colleagues moved Google all on its own - Google removed the ability for users to write reviews of schools.

The initial reaction from schools and the educational press was positive; after all, who likes to read the kind of reviews schools were receiving as a result of their failure to engage with Google reviews? 'Nonsense written by silly year 9s' was the general consensus.

We were surprised that we were just about the only voice in the wilderness shouting 'But Google reviews, properly mobilised and managed, are one of the most powerful tools there is when it comes to  communicating a school's strengths.'  Here's the piece we wrote then.

We also warned that schools would live to regret the passing of Google reviews. 

So - now, less than six months later - what do we see? Two distinct things...

1.  Schools being forced to resort to paid-for Google Ads if they wish to feature consistently in Google local searches...

We know! 'Sponsored' is a strange word to use for 'We are charging this school £X per click to appear at the top of this search,' but that is exactly what this is.

2.  The likes of this website fulfilling the need...

The quality of the reviews - if the score is anything to go by - has not improved!

To reiterate our position: Google should allow reviews of schools. If not schools, why doctors or lawyers? Where do you draw the line? Schools have a responsibility to all their stakeholders, especially future parents and pupils, to proactively engage with those stakeholders to ensure their school or college is accurately reflected in those reviews. That way everyone benefits: parents don't have to pay to 'unlock' reviews and schools don't have to pay to rank in Google searches. Everyone benefits, with the possible exception of Google and websites such as the one above, but we're not here to shed a tear on Google's behalf!

Please feel free to comment - below - on this incredibly important subject.