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.
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...
Further reading:
There have been two seismic shifts in the world of reviews this year...
and...Regulation
We asked Google's AI a simple question: 'Is there anything suspicious about [XYZ]'s reviews?' This is what it returned:
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...
*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;
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
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...
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.
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.
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...
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.
So: speak to us - or contact us at info@helphound.com - and we will answer all your questions.
Further reading
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...
2. The likes of this website fulfilling the need...
Most B2B businesses will tell you - publicly or privately - that many (most?) of their best customers come thanks to referrals from their business contacts*. So if you run a business, current client of HelpHound or not - please read on.
*business contacts: we don't expect referrals from direct competitors, obviously, but most of our successful referrals come from either businesses in the same line of work but in a different geographical area or the referring business's professional advisors, including marketing, advertising and PR agencies.
Going from Zero to Hero as these two businesses have done (the one on the left had two reviews on joining HelpHound, the one on the right none at all, showing great faith!) is not the only reason a business joins HelpHound. Others include compliance - it comes as a surprise to some that it is illegal to hand-pick customers to invite to write reviews in the UK - and SEO (a good flow of reviews through your own site boosts that considerably), to star ratings in local search (very highly valued by most of our clients)
Criteria for partnership
The key to recommending a business is that there should be no, or at the very least minimal**, downside for the referring or the referred business.
**While HelpHound provides the best review management available globally (that we are aware of), we cannot, and should not, make promises regarding the elimination of negative reviews. UK law currently - and rightly - prohibits such activity anyway, and there will always be the tiny minority of consumers who are determined to wilfully misunderstand what a business has done for them. We have operated in this 'real world' for well over a decade now, and our own statistics show that over 97 per cent of erroneous reviews are addressed before they ever reach the public web.
Let us put this in the context of HelpHound, first for the referred business...
***very occasionally, we need to advise a business to modify its CRM before embarking on review management. Our moderation is designed to eliminate, as far as the regulations allow, factually inaccurate, potentially misleading and sometimes just plain unfair reviews. It is not, and never should be, seen as a mechanism for a business whose CRM is deficient to deflect fairly held negative opinions.
So: your valuable business contacts will be safe in our hands. No comebacks and definitely no backlash. Our aim is for them to all feel eternally grateful that you introduced us, day in day out, year in year out, from day one.
We are completely open in terms of remuneration: our referring businesses receive...
An example of a single-location business: fees paid to the referring business:Total fees paid to referrer in year 1 = £ 1,171In subsequent years = £ 735
Referring one business a month - fees at the end year 1 = £14,052
"If you are going to ask us to invite all of our customers to write a review, then the answer has to be a definite 'No'. It would be far too high-risk a strategy for a business like ours."
And they would be quite right. Businesses such as those providing professional services such as financial, healthcare, legal and the like, can be extremely complex, and as a result aspects can be easily misconstrued. This can lead to misunderstandings that are bound to be perpetuated in reviews. And such reviews can seriously harm a business. The following is just one example (albeit with an extreme outcome)...
If you have any doubts about this, please read the full story of the firm of solicitors that were being so seriously (and quantifiably) damaged by this single ill-founded negative review that they took the reviewer to court (and won damages - 'won', when you read the full sorry tale, is not really the right word for what happened subsequently).
Fears, well-founded as they are, quite understandably lead businesses in the sensitive and complex sectors mentioned above to either...
Despite what their marketing may say - the review sites now play second fiddle to Google, big time. Google dominates...
For readers who have a 'perfect business'We hear you. And we know businesses just like yours. You have highly effective management, wonderful staff and checks and balances in place to ensure your clients/patients/investors are always completely happy with whatever service you provide for them.But every time we meet such a business we ask one simple question: 'Are all your customers perfect?' And that question always - invariably - elicits the answer 'Most. But - turning to a colleague - what about Mrs X and Mr Y, and a few others. I wouldn't want any of them writing a review of our service.'That's where HelpHound comes in. By law, in the UK, you cannot allow all your customers except the 'Mrs X and Mr Ys' to write a review. You must - again we stress: by law - allow all of your customers to write a review.By now you will be seeing where we are headed - after all we have nearly 15 years doing nothing but this - the key word here is 'allow'. Look at this screenshot of a client's mobile website...
It contains all you need to collect reviews safely (for the business and the consumer - very few people really want an inaccurate or misleading review published for all to see) and in compliance with UK law:
