HelpHound - the COMPREHENSIVE solution to reviews for ALL businesses

Regular readers will have seen all the Google AI scrapes posted here in recent months. One theme has been consistent: the comparison of HelpHound with Trustpilot. Here's a typical example...

Not 100% accurate - our reviews are incorporated into your Google listing, not under (or not at all):

Our client leading local search (in a very crowded marketplace) with their stars and rating highlighted (arrow); see Trustpilot anywhere? Quite.  And we should be quite clear: we moderate every single review, but we will only intervene if a review contains factual inaccuracies or has the potential to mislead a future reader, we do not - and cannot, by UK law - intervene simply because the reviewer is 'unhappy'.

And so far, so good. We are delighted to be singled out as the best review management option for high-value professional businesses, because that's exactly what we developed HelpHound to be (not, as some other solutions - no names - as a way of confecting a score of 4.5 to be used in marketing).

But here's the thing: a business doesn't have to choose between HelpHound and the review sites, be that Trustpilot or one of the myriad out there - Feefo, reviews.io, Yelp, Tripadvisor, or one of the industry-specific sites (Trusted Trader and so on) - if we (and our client) decide that they need a profile on one of those sites, then we will manage that as well. 

We have a high-profile client that looked great on Google and on its own site, but noticed that Trustpilot was attracting reviews from those that had - often unfounded or the result of misunderstanding - negative opinions. This was driving the business's score down to a point where competitors were able to weaponise it against the business in question. Unfairly. Funnily enough, the business also had an inbound sales call from Trustpilot offering 'help' too.

What did we do, together?

First, we pointed out the following:

1. The business's Trustscore (Trustpilot's name for the rating) could be improved without having to pay Trustpilot
2. That the business owned their own reviews, and could do whatever they liked with them, and that included asking their customers to copy them across to Trustpilot
3. That their Google score was of paramount importance, notwithstanding Trustpilot's pitch as to visibility in search. Google's own reviews always take pole position in search and Google is the search engine of choice for well over 90 per cent of the UK population, and it commands 98 per cent of UK mobile search

Second, we implemented - jointly - the following strategy:

• We first set up a test: we asked a percentage of customers who had written a review to the business's own site to copy it to Trustpilot
• We measured response, and then we calculated the number of positive reviews that would be needed to restore the business's Trustscore to good health
• We switched the repost request away from Google to Trustpilot for a percentage of customers for a period of weeks

Result?

The business's score on Trustpilot restored to well above 4 ('Great' in Trustpilot terminology). All for no extra cost. Diary note to repeat the procedure at intervals in the future.

So, our objective on behalf of all our clients:

First...

...to enable them to safely - and compliantly - invite reviews to display on their own website and use in their own marketing

Second...

...to get as many of those reviews as possible across to Google, to ensure a really impressive presence in competitive searches there

Third, and it is a distant third if we are honest...

...to look good on the review sites that matter to our client without incurring any extra costs

One more important consideration

Both Google and HelpHound are designed to host reviews and score a business per location. If a business has multiple locations, it is essential that the consumer can discover how the customers of that specific location feel about the service they were provided, and the service they can expect. Trustpilot charges significant fees for multiple listings, which is why it is so rare to see individual branch/office/outlet scores hosted there.

Conclusion

So, we repeat the title of this article: HelpHound works for all kinds of businesses, and it works more effectively and more comprehensively than any other review solution. Think of us as a review broker, in the sense that wherever your business needs reviews, now and in the future (remember Qype or Ciao, anyone?), we will enable you to get them there. If that means to Trustpilot, fine; if that means on Yelp!, so be it. But, just for the foreseeable future, at least, we will almost certainly continue to focus on enabling our clients to positively glow on Google, and in the relevant Google searches.

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.