CMA to investigate Amazon and Google over fake reviews

Here is the full text of the CMA's announcement

Background

The CMA has repeatedly stated its determination to address the manipulation of online reviews, ever since its first open letter on the subject back in 2016. 

They are, as is usual for government agencies, acting both top-down and bottom-up. This action is part of their top-down activity (bottom-up action currently primarily consists of reacting to whistleblowers implicating individual firms in breach of CMA regulations relating to cherry-picking and gating reviews).

Reasoning

We see more and more references such as this "online reviews were excellent" in the review content; just more confirmation of the value attributed by consumers of all kinds of goods and services.

The CMA's reason for taking action is straightforward: fake or otherwise unreliable reviews cause direct harm to the consumer, by misleading them into buying one product in preference to another, possibly of better quality or more suitable, or using one service over another less apparently well-regarded thanks to fake or manipulated reviews. 

Manipulation of reviews by businesses, whether by posting fake reviews, only inviting 'happy' customers to write reviews or by using other mechanisms - gating, for instance - to positively impact their review scores and/or to ensure an unrepresentative number of positive reviews are written is equally misleading.

Reality

Fraud - and therefore, by definition: breach of the CMA regulations - is widespread. Harm, in the context of product reviews, almost certainly impacts SMEs with limited marketing resources more than the consumer. The consumer may end up with a substandard product but the worst outcome will probably be 'throw it away and start again', highly irritating but survivable. 

But in the case of high-value services, the opposite is true: a patient that is misled by manipulated reviews into using a substandard medical professional or an investor misled into using a subpar investment adviser can be caused immense harm, physical, mental and financial, sometimes - often? - all three.

Reviews are trusted, currently

This is the crux of the matter facing the entire web, not simply Amazon and Google, and regulators worldwide: how much longer can the status quo persist without consumers being worn down by businesses abusing reviews, not to mention honest businesses being done down by their less-than-scrupulous competitors?

Take these two business's ratings and number of reviews on Google (let's call them A and B for the sake of anonymity):

A

B

Difficult to choose between them, right? On the face of it - absolutely, after all, what is 0.1 between friends?

But let's delve a little deeper; business A has this on their website:

It refers to the reviews the business hosts on its own site and includes a vital indication that the business is complying with the law, by inviting any customer and any visitor to their website to 'Write a review' whenever they feel like doing so.

Underneath the reviews is this link:

It leads directly to a full explanation of the review management system the business is using, which includes this important paragraph:

Business B?

It is difficult for consumers to accurately and definitely establish that any given business is contravening the regulations regarding reviews. But here are some pointers:

• Does the business have anything on their own website that indicates that all of their customers may post a review at any time?
• Are there any patterns in the business's reviews that give cause for concern? These may include...
• no reviews for a period of months and then several in a short space of time; not necessarily non-compliant (if the business can prove they invited all their customers to post a review) but sometimes indicative of cherry-picking
• patterns in the wording of reviews (the reviews consistently name-check members of staff, for instance)
• locations of other reviews for the same reviewer indicate that it may be unlikely the individual reviewer has visited a certain geographic location (you may remember the case of the restaurant in Virginia that received hundreds of reviews from reviewers who had never used any other business in that state after they had denied entry to a prominent member of the Trump administration)
• Does the business have significant numbers of reviews on a platform other than Google? This can be an indication of gating (the business invites everyone to write a review on the secondary platform - so compliant so far - and then goes on to invite only those who posted a 5* review there to post to Google)
• Does the business make use of feedback mechanisms or customer surveys? Again, not conclusive evidence of gating, but a common enough way of establishing which customers are likely to post a positive review if subsequently asked

For the regulators

This is a very different story: the CMA has legal powers of investigation and confiscation and has used them in the recent past. Businesses that cherry-pick and gate leave a highly visible record of such behaviour on their computer hard drives that remains there for years to come. 

So: just because the CMA is not currently paying visits does not mean that businesses flouting their rules will not face action. We have consistently advised businesses that compliance is a priority and that the publicity flowing from a fine for non-compliance is simply not worth the risk. Especially given that they are able to take the route Business A has taken.

And finally...

Speak to us. Become compliant. Look great in search. Watch the calls and clicks mount up. Sleep at night.

Further reading

• The CMA regulations and how they impact your business
• Gating - defined and explained

Reviews - you are all breaking the law!

Got your attention*? Good. For years now we have been tactfully explaining the law as it currently stands - in the UK and the EU - to businesses, but still we see the epidemic grow. So please excuse us if this article is a little blunt.

*If you're already a HelpHound client you can relax, you aren't breaking the law. This article is for those yet to join.

This business's Google score and the reviews underlying it look impressive; until you realise that they have been acquired illegally.

First: the law

In simple terms, you (businesses) are not allowed to...

1. select customers to invite to post a review - anywhere, to Google, to your own website, to Trustpilot, or anywhere else
2. control the timing of when your customer is invited to write a review
3. delete or otherwise filter out reviews you 'don't like'
4. incentivise customers to write [positive] reviews

Let's see what most businesses are doing currently...

1.  They are hand-picking customers to invite to write reviews

...which is against the law

2.  They are controlling the timing - by only inviting/allowing reviews when they think the customer is most likely to rate them 5* (it is fine to email a customer to invite them to write a review, just not using a system that prevents them writing a review at another time of their own choosing)

...which is against the law

3.  They are filtering out unhappy customers by 'gating': using a feedback mechanism to pre-qualify customers and then only inviting those that have previously indicated their satisfaction with the business to write a review

...which is against the law

4.  Offering cash, discounts, rewards or vouchers for positive reviews.

...which is against the law and Google's terms of service

Now, what do we hear when we speak to some of the businesses engaged in these illegal - yes, illegal - practices?

• 'Everyone else does it'

No! 'Every other business' is not dishonest. But some business people appear to see this form of cheating - sorry law-breaking - as a badge of honour. It is somehow seen as 'macho' to break the law. 

The CMA have announced a crack-down and the press are hot on the trail of businesses that manipulate reviews

• 'We would be swamped with bad reviews if we allowed anyone to write one'

This bears thorough examination. Would the bad reviews come because you are running a substandard business? Or because you don't trust your customers to write reviews that accurately reflect their experience of your business? 

If the former, then - respectfully - you need to address the issues within your business before you engage further with reviews. If the latter - a more reasonable objection - you need a moderated review management system, of which more later

• 'One 'unfair' review could do untold damage to our business'

And so it could, but law-breaking is not the answer; stories like this one make businesses extremely wary of opening themselves up to reviews without some form of illegal filtering. 

Again the answer is moderation; independent moderation allows you to invite all your customers to write a review whilst minimising the chances of inaccurate or potentially misleading comments appearing in print

• We won't get caught

That's as maybe - although the CMA has reviews and their abuse right in its sights, and it has teeth (remember the estate agents fined £600,000 for price-fixing? that was the CMA). 

What is certain is that your competitors will notice, and they won't be backwards in letting your potential customers know the you are decieveing them. And who wants to entrust their life savings/home sale/health/legal affairs to a business that breaks the law to look good?

• 'It's expensive to comply'

This is referring to the reaction to the idea of adopting a professional review management strategy. The short answer? You don't have an option. The long one: professional review management, which incorporates moderation to minimise the likelihood of inaccurate or misleading reviews ever seeing the light of day, invariably earns a business money. 

How so? Because hosting independently verified reviews on a business's website is proven to drive clicks and calls and therefore new business (there are many more benefits - see 'Our pitch to you' below)

How about these stars? They light a business up in local search - and drive calls and clicks. And no wonder: every survey ever conducted has proven that a great rating and a significant amount of reviews does just that. Put it this way: if we were to tell the business above that they were going to lose those stars and that score - and revert to looking like their four other competitors in this search - and lose0 this on their own website, what do you think their reaction would be?

We rest our case.

Further reading...

• The Competition and Markets Authority rules - the law - explained in detail
• Moderation - and how it protects business and consumer alike
• Estate agents and banks manipulating reviews - the Times' commentary
• Our pitch to you

Reviews - a guide for consumers

Some businesspeople reading this may wonder what an article directed at their customers is doing here. The answer is pretty straightforward: to understand how review management works in any depth it is vitally important to understand how consumers view and interact with reviews. It is also sometimes useful to have a ready response to the question 'Why should I do as you ask [and post a review to your website/Google]?'. 

To begin with, let us take a brief look at the evolution of online reviews. In the days before the web consumers had three main resources when it came to identifying the right service or product for their needs:

• prior experience of the business or product in question
• word of mouth: friends, neighbours, or colleagues who had previous experience of the business or product in question
• 'professional' reviews published in the media

And one smaller one:

• the 'Which?' organisation - with, currently, half-a-million subscribers

This all changed with the advent of what generally became known as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 was the nickname given to the interactive web, led by forums and evolving into social media - where the web moved from enabling businesses to simply offer their wares and services to consumers interacting with those businesses through their websites and other sites independent of the businesses.

Early examples

One obvious example, known to us all, is TripAdvisor. Founded as an online travel agency pure-and-simple, TripAdvisor stumbled upon the power of reviews almost by accident: here's TripAdvisor's founder, Steve Kaufer, in a BBC interview back in 2014...

"We started as a site where we were focused more on those official words from guidebooks or newspapers or magazines. We also had a button in the very beginning that said, 'Visitors add your own review', and boy, did that just take off."

Even more review-focussed from day one was Angie's List. Founded pre-web as a simple list of local building contractors, its evolution into a sort of Which? for US consumers - with about the same market penetration - has been driven by reviews attached to each listing.

Then came the first of the all-encompassing - in theory at least - sites: Yelp! Yelp aimed to be a one-stop site for consumers requiring peer reviews of businesses. 

All three had their drawbacks:

• TripAdvisor was, by its very nature, restricted to hospitality businesses and to this very day is dogged by accusations that it is far too easily gamed by interested parties: the businesses bigging up their own listings and their competitors doing their very best to knock them down.

• Angie's List began as a subscription-only service - like Which? - at a time when one of the key buzzwords on the web was 'make content free'. As a result it tends to gain subscribers when they are in 'spending mode', specifically around home moves, and lose them when that need declines.

• Yelp! has never managed to square its business model with its conflicting stakeholders' (and shareholders') needs. It sells uplifted listings and CPI advertising which is distinctly unpopular with major brands and some of its core target audience - SMEs and their customers. The SMEs resent paying to appear in search and consumers resent what they see as paid-for shills heading their results.

Product reviews

While all this US activity had centred mainly around service businesses, from hotels to pizza parlours, in 2007 a Danish entrepreneur noticed a gap in the market: product reviews. Along came...

• Trustpilot: predicated on the idea that consumers are far more likely to buy a product, whether that be a shirt or a washing machine, that is highly-rated by their peers. A free alternative to Which? if you will (but hosting consumer, rather than expert, opinions).

So what now?

You can see there is now - at least there was back in 2015 - a website catering for every consumer need for reviews. And that, in itself, was, besides being a solution, a part of the emerging problem: consumers - and businesses - were beginning to be confused by the variety of review solutions out there. Which to use when? Look at travel and hospitality alone:

• Tripadvisor
• Trivago
• Booking.com
• Expedia
• Hotels.com
• Orbitz
• Travelocity
• Kayak
• Hotels combined

Just examining the pros and cons of one of these would take up a whole article - and often has (see 'Further reading' below)!

But then, thankfully for all concerned, along came a business with the reach and the resources to cover virtually the whole spectrum, and for free. And the name of that 'Johnnie come lately'? Google.

Google enters the reviews sphere

Google, as is its habit, tiptoed into the world of reviews, first via the now-defunct Google Places and then Google Maps. When they were confident they had their offering right they brought it right forward into the prominent place in all Google searches it maintains to this day.

What did Google get so right?

1.  By its very nature: coverage. There isn't a business in the free world that isn't listed on Google. Google hosts reviews of all businesses. Near you. Or anywhere on earth.

2.  Visibility: Google is the gatekeeper. Everyone has to go through Google, so everyone sees Google reviews. Back in 2017 Rightmove conducted a survey on behalf of estate agents and asked respondents about reviews, here is the result...

'Where reviews were read, most (42%) were on Google, followed by agents’ own website (36%), Trustpilot (11%), allAgents (6%) and Feefo (2%).' 

..and we're betting the Google figure would be far higher if they conducted the same survey again today.  

3.  Credibility: one of the main stumbling blocks of other reviews sites is the ability - for businesses and consumers alike - to be confident that their reviews are being written by genuine customers of the business concerned. Google has a huge advantage here, and one it is yet to make real capital of, it knows where the reviewer has been, what they have searched for and, almost always, who they work for, as well as a plethora of other information. 

 

Google reviews, for that reason alone, invariably win for credibility. They can be trusted - and they are. That doesn't mean that there are not some very 'wrong' Google reviews out there (see 'Moderation' under 'Further reading' at the bottom of this article), but it does mean that Google knows who wrote them.

 4.  Product reviews? Google have those covered too: for free (sorry, Trustpilot)

Now some 'tricks of the trade'

With reviews now being so critical for businesses (the Harvard Business Review has conducted extensive research directly correlating business flows with review scores), you will not be surprised to hear that some businesses will go to extreme lengths to ensure they look good. Here we will outline some of the most common wheezes - when we say 'wheezes' we are being polite, what we actually mean is 'deception' and 'illegality' - and show you how to spot them.

• Cherry-picking: the business only asks customers who it knows will rate them five stars to post reviews. It is illegal but very common. How to spot? The only sure-fire way is to either become a customer and see if you get asked to post a review or ask someone else who has used the business if they were asked. Ex-employees often give the game away and the CMA, in the UK, have the power to sequester emails to see if all customers have been invited. Just ask to write a review; if the business says anything along the lines of 'You have to wait until...' or 'You cannot unless...' alarm bells should ring.

Another cherry-picking giveaway is the pattern of the business's reviews. Does it reflect the volume you would expect? Or is it 'lumpy' - many reviews one month and none the next.

• Gating: a sophisticated version of cherry-picking, against the law in the UK and Google's own terms of service. It involves inviting customers, sometimes every customer, to either write a review to a little-known site or complete a 'customer survey'. The business then only invites those who have indicated complete satisfaction to go on to write a Google review. If Google sees it happening they will delete all of the business in question's reviews, unilaterally, without giving the business recourse to appeal - despite this we see it happening often. How to tell? A major disparity in the business's score on the reviews site of their choice and Google (review site low, Google high) and significantly higher volume of reviews to the reviews site than to Google.

• Controlling the timing: where the business sends out the invitation to write the review at the most favourable time for getting a positive response, commonly done by online retailers within a week of purchase; that action is not, of itself, illegal unless the customer is then unable to return to write a further review at a later date (or modify their original review, which is the case with Google). One high-profile UK review site operates in this way. With Google the reviewer can edit their review at any time and as often as they like. How to spot? Simply ask the business where you can write a review - now. If the answer is 'I'm afraid you will have to wait until we invite you' head for the hills.

So: our advice to consumers

Maybe worth spending a few minutes reading the actual reviews of the businesses - estate agent (£2,780), conveyancing solicitor (£1,046), removals firm (£1,181), mortgage broker (£450) - you're considering using?

Use Google. When you are considering using any business whatsoever, but especially high-value service businesses where a wrong choice could cost you thousands - financial and legal services, medical and health services, estate agency and the like. 

Read the actual reviews themselves. So many consumers see a headline score - after all 4 out of 5 is OK, isn't it? NO! 4 out of 5 means that twenty percent of that business's customers rate the business 1 out of 5, and, given that you cannot rate a business less than one..!

Question the business about its negative reviews. Read its responses to those reviews.

If the business has few - or even no - Google reviews, ask them why.

Be especially sceptical of any business that uses any other review mechanism. Ask them why they use [Trustpilot/Yelp/Feefo...]. And ask them why they do not use Google - it's free, after all, and they will be paying the others.

Isn't this all a bit long-winded?

Yes - if you're buying a pizza. But not if you're choosing an oncologist or an estate agent. where the former may be a case of life and death and where you will be paying tens of thousands in fees to the latter.

Where does HelpHound fit into this scheme of things?

A typical HelpHound client's homepage: the 'Write a review' button at top right enables anyone - anyone at all - to write a review whenever they choose to do so, the button to its left enables anyone wishing to read all of the business's reviews to do so, instantly. This gives the business's reviews credibility which, when combined with the ensuing automatic invitation to copy the review to Google, is as absolute as can possibly be. We can confidently - and proudly - say there is no superior solution to reviews in the third decade of the 21st century than this.

HelpHound began life as a review site, but we soon realised that we could add far more value, for both businesses and consumers, if we became an intermediary; providing advice and moderation to businesses and the ensuing really high-quality reviews for consumers.

This meant that we were ideally placed when Google entered the marketplace: we could recommend Google reviews wholeheartedly to our business customers while they learned very quickly to value our service as moderators. All our business clients' invite the reviews you see displayed on their website using our software - and this enables our moderators to check every review for factual inaccuracies and potentially misleading comments pre-publication. 

This service is vital if reviews are to add value for both business and consumer. And we are happy to say it has proved itself and continues to prove itself day-by-day. As a consumer, you can be sure that a HelpHound's client's reviews - whether on their own website or on Google - are a true reflection of the business you are considering.

Further reading...

1. Moderation - the vital ingredient in professional review management
2. Trustpilot - taking the 'trust' out of reviews? and criticism from the Times analysed
3. Independent review sites - the unintended consequences for a business's Google rating
4. Compliance: the CMA regulations and the law
5. Yelp! - the largest review site on the planet departs the UK and the EU
6. Gating - the Google ban and the consequences of flouting it
7. Cherry-picking - some examples and more advice

HelpHound for your business - why now?

Anyone who reads this blog - even occasionally - will be aware of all the benefits of HelpHound: more clicks, more calls, looking great in local search, stars in search (not always, but Google-willing). 

But there's one major benefit that some have been missing - until now.

Compliance

In every meeting with a client since the weekend before last, when the Times criticised Purple Bricks, Foxtons and Trustpilot - if you haven't seen it, it's here - we have invariably been thanked. 

Why 'thanked'? We asked the same question, and the answer we have been receiving has been pretty universally similar, and in every case it went something like this...

"We appointed HelpHound for its positive benefits - the potential it had to drive more traffic through our website and Google, for the SEO kicker and for the stars and scores in competitive search, we viewed 'compliance' as a useful addition rather than a core benefit. Not any more; thank goodness, for all the right reasons, we are with HelpHound."

So - to answer the question posed in the title of this article: why now? Because, if your business is inviting reviews to anywhere, but mostly of course to Google, it is almost certainly in breach of the CMA regulations.

We are going to keep this article short, much shorter than most. We will, as we often do, add links to other relevant articles. But if you have even the slightest doubt as to which side of the law your business currently stands on in relation to reviews, we urge you to contact us - now! Our compliance audit will cost you nothing.


Further reading

• the Purple Bricks/ Foxtons/Trustpilot article
• the CMA's regulations - and a paragraph by paragraph explanation of them
• an article from 2017 warning of the unintended consequences of adopting a reviews site
• Three reasons to join (including - surprise! - compliance)
• Proof - a sample case history

Back to basics - is your Google score hurting your business?

The reason for this article is that there is an 'urban myth' doing the rounds of some businesses that runs something like this...

'A score of 4 out of 5 on Google is OK'

...and another that goes...

'Having no Google reviews is OK'

...not to mention the one that says...

'Looking awful on Google is OK'

...and they are all damaging businesses.


How - and, just as importantly - why?

The 'how' is simple. Let's use some examples:

If looking really, really good on Google, like this...

...and this...

...is a 'good' thing (and we meet few marketeers these days that don't agree that it is), then all logic tells us that looking like this (we have used real-life US examples to protect innocent UK businesses)...

...and this...

...must be a 'bad' thing (or at least 'not such a good thing').

And like this?

...or even this?

...and this...

Must transmit the wrong message entirely.


Let's look at those last two in more detail...

No reviews

Having no Google reviews has the potential to harm your business in any - or all - of the following ways...

• it looks insignificant
• it looks as if you are behind the times
• it looks poor by comparison with competitors
• it fails the Google Filter (as does any business that scores less than 4.5)

Scoring between 4.0 and 4.5

If it were an A level everyone would be happy, but this is the harsh world of business. A business with just thirty Google reviews that scores 4.0 will have up to seven one and two star reviews. And these will be read by potential customers.

Bear in mind that all one and two star reviews say the same thing, no matter how they are worded, and that is: 'Don't use this business'. 

And they are read and they are believed and they are trusted. So they will deflect business.

And the business will be failing the Google reviews filter.

Scoring less than 4.0

We will be blunt here: no-one who sees that a business is scoring under 4.0 - be that 3.9 or 1.6 - is going to contact that business (if you doubt this, ask yourself a simple question: "I need a plumber, would I call one where over twenty per cent of their customers said "Don't use them"'? If you have any lingering doubts replace 'plumber' with 'heart surgeon' in that question). 

If you have sufficient business coming in through avenues other than the web, OK. Otherwise serious remedial action is needed.

Important note: if your business is scoring 4.5 or better but is achieving that by selectively inviting customers to write a review (or denying customers the opportunity to write a review unless expressly invited) you are currently in breach of one or more of the CMA's core regulations. Speak to someone here at HelpHound and we will advise you on your business's options.

Are all businesses that score below 4.0 rubbish at their jobs?

No, they are not. How do we know? Because we work for lots of businesses that scored well below 4.0 when they first joined HelpHound. What they did all have in common is that they had let the very small minority of their dissatisfied customers control the image they were presenting in search.

How will we know that scoring 4.5 and over will result in more business?

There's only one way - achieve a good - great - score and then see the results for yourselves...

• your click-throughs will increase
• your inbound enquiries will increase
• your customer facing staff will tell you
• Google will tell you - like this...

This is a HelpHound client's Google My Business report. Your business gets one every month, just wait until your Google score gets north of 4.5 - as it has in this case (see Google's 'congrats' above the stars) - and then look at the numbers in green.

And finally - why use HelpHound?

Three main reasons...

1.  We will take the fear out of inviting reviews. Most businesses initially shy away from inviting reviews because they are, quite sensibly, concerned that some of their customers will write inaccurate or misleading reviews. HelpHound's moderation process reduces the chances of that happening buy well over ninety per cent.

2.  We will enable you to display independently verified reviews on your own website. Not only will these increase inbounds through your site, they will be picked up by Google to show in all searches and in 'Reviews from the web' in the Google knowledge panel. Here is how the client at the top of this article looks...

...in search, in local search...

...and in the knowledge panel...

3.  You will be compliant with the law. The legal authority in the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority, forbids any practice that puts consumers at a disadvantage. The core of its regulations say that any business inviting reviews must enable their customer to write a review at any time of their choosing and that all their customers must be given the opportunity to write a review. This rules out practices such as selecting customers to write reviews (known as 'cherry-picking', probably the most common contravention of the CMA regulations - for more see here).

So: if you have persevered and read this far, you only have one more step to take, call us and we will conduct a thorough review of your business's current exposure to reviews and then make recommendations to bring your business as close to the holy grail of 5.0 as you deserve.*

*please note: there are no 'smoke and mirrors' involved - no 'filtering' of negative reviews. If your business has existing CRM issues these will need to be addressed before you adopt a review management strategy. HelpHound cannot 'make' a business with inadequate customer care practices look good. What we can do is make a business that truly cares look great.

Reviews - two out of three UK businesses are breaking the law

This article is important - every business should familiarise itself with all of its contents. You may well find - and you will be in the company of many others - that your current reviews policy is in breach of the CMA regulations in some way (there is a link to our analysis of these at the bottom of this page). If in any doubt whatsoever, contact us.

First - an Italian goes to jail...

This is Ebay UK. Advertisements such as this appear all the time. Why? The last line of this advertiser's 'puff' says it all...

Last week the director of a business selling fake reviews was jailed for nine months by an Italian court. But the important thing for businesses to realise is that this behaviour (we wonder what the Italian authorities will be doing about the customers who bought the fake reviews) was just the tip of a very large iceberg. 


Your business may well be breaking the law

We estimate that more than two thirds of businesses that we meet or see are breaking the law as it relates to reviews in the UK - mostly unwittingly.

The point is that, as any businessperson knows, ignorance of the law - unwitting breaches of the CMA regulations in this context - is no defence.

So let us look at the two distinct types of breach - first the intentional...

• writing your own reviews. You might - or might not - be surprised at just how many businesses do this. It commonly occurs when a business that has had no reviews receives a negative review. There is a panic - sometimes because the phone has stopped ringing - and someone says 'quick, get on Google and write a five star review'. We have a file full of such behaviour. How do we know? Because people don't think - they use an account that is easily linked back to them and then matched to a Facebook, Google Plus or Linkedin account. 

• connected person reviews. Remember the wording on the back of the Cornflakes packet (in relation to competitions)? Goes something like 'no connected person, employee of the company or employees of its suppliers and agents may enter'. We know of at least one business where all the branch managers agreed to get their staff to post a review of the next-door branch. We have seen multiple instances where a quick look at a reviewer's Linkedin account will reveal their connection to the business under review.

• cherry-picking. We sometimes come across people who genuinely - still in 2018 - do not understand that any behaviour that leads to any bias in the impression created by reviews and a business's reviews strategy is illegal. Hand-picking customers - those who the business knows are more than likely to write a 5 star review - whilst quietly ignoring those that are known by the business to be not quite so happy is just such a breach. How many times do we see a business with twenty or thirty positive reviews on Google - often considerably more - all gained by this kind of non-compliant selection? The answer? - multiple times a day.

• review farming. This is a refinement of cherry-picking - and illegal. It involves inviting customers to write a review to one location - it might be the business's own website or a reviews site, sometimes it involves using the business's internal feedback mechanism - and then inviting only those that write a complimentary review there to copy it to Google. It leaves a paper trail a mile long for the CMA to follow.

• the 'app trap'. Seen most commonly with apps (apparently apps live or die by their rating): the consumer is asked to rate the app/product/service and then - here's the 'clever' part - if they rate it five stars the 'review' is published, anything less and the 'reviewer' is diverted to a customer service questionnaire to establish why they didn't rate the business fave stars - and no review ever appears.

• incentivising. We have seen both cash and Amazon vouchers offered to customers, sometimes for 'a review' and sometimes for 'a 5 star review'. Both are against Google and most reviews sites' terms and conditions. The latter is a breach of the CMA regulations.

...and now the unintentional...

• using a reviews solution that breaks the law (1). Businesses might reasonably expect that most of the reviews solutions that are being actively marketed in the UK today are legal and above board. Take 'closed' reviews sites - those that allow the business to choose who is invited to write a review, but where a customer cannot write a review direct to the site. Sounds reasonable at first glance, doesn't it? But it's non-compliant with the core CMA regulations - that state that if a business invites any of its customers to write a review it must allow all of them to do so. We meet businesses using such solutions that think they are compliant because they do invite all their customers to write a review. The problem is that they don't see hat they are in contravention of the second fundamental CMA regulation that states that the consumer must be able to write their review at a time of their own choosing - and it's not enough to say that they can hunt out the email from months ago to do so.

• using a reviews solution that breaks the law (2). There are reviews sites that incorporate mechanisms that place the onus on the reviewer to prove that they have a) used the business in question and that b) their review is true. Surprising as it may at first seem, these also contravene the CMA regulations - not because the CMA wants to see reviews published by people who have not used the product or service under review, but because they realise that such mechanisms have the potential to be manipulated by businesses to deflect or delay uncomplimentary reviews.

• Reacting to negative reviews (or 'blitzing'). Commonly done by businesses that have had little or no prior engagement with reviews. The business in question gets one or more negative reviews and its reaction - quite understandably - is to do 'whatever it takes' to 'rectify the situation'. This will often involve a mixture of 'intentional' breaches - often justified by saying 'it was so unfair, the impression the negative review(s) created, we just had to do something, and quickly'. The business in question is invariably shocked when told that this behaviour is illegal.

Strategies - in addition to those above - that some businesses think are compliant include...

• including an invitation to post a review in their email signature block
• combining a review invitation with their CRM software to 'ensure all customers are invited to write a review'
• mentioning/showing reviews from a reviews site on their websites, but with no live feed
• showing selected reviews - from Google or a reviews site - on their websites

Advice

HelpHound will provide you with half-an-hour's advice free of charge (you can visit us or we will speak to you - phone or Skype). During that half hour we will look at your current review management policy and comment on...

• its effectiveness - in driving business and/or enquiries
• its compliance with the CMA regulations
• potential improvements

...after which you can decide whether you would like to understand more about what HelpHound does for its clients. 

Further reading...

• a full analysis of the CMA regulations

Failing the Google reviews filter? This is NOT the solution!

We noticed this tweet today (and, if we can spot it you can be doubly sure Google and the business's competitors can spot it too)...

Now, we have a certain amount of sympathy for businesses that find that a tiny minority of their customers are impacting their Google (and Facebook and Yelp) images. At least the businesses in question have passed first base: they have accepted that it is essential to look as good as they possibly can on Google. But there are four big reasons that businesses should not knee-jerk into taking this kind of action...

1. It is non-compliant with the CMA regulations - you will, in the UK at least, be breaking the law.
2. It hands your competitors a really big stick to beat you with: 'I wouldn't trust [Dossett Dental]'s reviews, they are paid for'.
3. It's against most sites' own T&Cs - and the last thing any business wants is to fall foul of any of these social media giants.
4. It doesn't work - let's see what's happened to Dosset Dental's Google reviews since this promotion...

...Wow! Two whole Google reviews (and none on Facebook or Yelp) - at the risk of 1-3 above. It's simply not worth it. 

What should businesses in this position do?

First - take a deep breath, then do what you would do in any similar situation - take professional advice. And what should that professional advice be? Here goes...

1. Adopt a long-term review management strategy (how may businesses do we see every day that have tried multiple reviews sites - sometimes more than one a year - over the recent past?). Buy a solution, after serious consideration of the options available - don't be sold one.
2. Ensure that strategy is 100% compliant with the CMA regulations
3. Stick to that strategy until your reviews accurately reflect your business

Essential reading...

• Why independent review sites can no longer compete with Google reviews
• The CMA rules - and how to ensure your reviews solution is compliant
• The sort of results you should expect when you adopt professional review management
• A detailed description of the Google Filter and its impact on businesses scoring less than 4.5