The problem here is “people” – and unfortunately – we can’t get rid of all of them (I’ve been asking for years :D).

The other problem is – the Internet/Web is still a wild, untamed and ungoverned land in many respects.
Suggestions for it to be policed are refuted (understandable to a degree).

Google state that they are not wanting to police their indexes either.
They then incorporate factors for ranking (Places, Products, Web etc.) that are blatantly going to be abused, and have nothing in place ready to handle it.

Through in that some of the sites G may reference are immature sites that permit Anonymous complaints/ratings/reviews … and you are basically begging for trouble.

Verified posters.
Substantiated complaints.

It’s not that hard, not really.

Of course – you then get the other end of the issue … such sites cost a lot more to function, and you get companies partnering with Google and you have to pay for services to benefit.
The upside is that you are less likely to get drive-by’s and scum, the downside is the “great equalizer” for the little businesses ends up out of reach … again.

Google should be examining it’s reference resources,
and ensuring that it doesn’t pay too much attention to likely junk sources.
It should also Not be making a public noise about questionable reviews/ratings – Only those that are verified to some degree.
(Of course – this will lead to “hire-able reviewers” in the same vein as paid posts for blogs … but it’s better than what we currently have).

Mike: Thanks for the update. Looks like you might have provoked what we call a “quick google hand “job” to fix the problem that was suddenly getting publicity. There have been a lot of those over time.

I’ve run some minor tests in various ways on Google Reviews. I suspect there are some “minor” filters in place via algo. OTOH, it appears that most of these filters can be easily overcome by dedicated spammers. Then it becomes a game between the professional spammers and the google engineers.

Its interesting that you noted that this type of spam is widespread on other sites with lesser visibility than google.

I suspect the professional spammers test this stuff out at various places over time then address google once they have their MO down.

Maybe the various sites that carry reviews should meet to review best practices to establish an industry response. Possibly if the spammers get snagged by one industry site early on, the other sites that carry reviews can be alerted at an early stage.

I blogged about a different moving company yesterday and most of his reviews were cleaned up too. So it appears Google read both of our stories and cleaned up those 2 at least. Or maybe did a big sweep. THANK YOU GOOGLE!

Back in June blogged about yet another mover with this same problem and outed some NEG FAKE REVIEW SPAMMERS. Looks like 2 spammers were shut down and 2 still have their reviews. So I think G must be working on it. I’ll out them here again for good measure.

Darling Dovert This one is unique in that instead of the typical short reviews these are HUGE. However all cut and pasted exact dupes. (We KNOW the algo can pick up dupe content). PLUS all the reviews are for NY movers but the reviews say got a quote for moving from Atlanta to New Mexico. So bit of a red flag there too.

Sam

Just checked this moving company’s Place page and much of the spam is cleaned up: Delta Van Lines Inc

However they still have some. See owner reply to fake reviews.

“It has been brought to our attention that an individual or a company posted the same negative review to over 400 Moving Companies Nationwide. This is a repeat situation posting the exact same derogatory information in Google Reviews; we recently resolved the past situation with Google Legal Department and other authorities.”

In my June 16th post and I offered some suggestions for Google re the fake review spam problem. I’ll repost select snippets here since I know Google reads Mike’s blog.

——————————————————————-
Certain types of negative review spam (actually I want to call it FRAUD) could be easily nipped in the bud by Google’s algo. It frustrates me to no end that businesses have to deal with issues like this.

In this case it appears to me that a company has paid Mechanical Turks or other cheap labor to post HUNDREDS of fake negative reviews for NUMEROUS moving companies all over the US. I think if this company is caught they should be sued. This is criminal!

The majority of this type of blatant review spam is EASY to catch and eliminate with a Google algo and I think Google should be held accountable for doing something about this!

There should be stops set up so people can’t post over XX numbers of reviews in one day. YES Google, I know you are trying hard to build up reviews for competitive reasons, but SMB’s livlihoods are at stake here! Plus seriously, a REAL consumer seldom takes time to write legit reviews and does not have time to sit down and do 10 in a row much less 60 in a row unless they have an agenda!

There should be stops set up so people can’t post multiple reviews at the same time for businesses in cities other than where the reviewer lives. Yes someone could be traveling and review restaurants around the country. But they would not legitimately have reviews for plumbers or movers all over the country – ESPECIALLY numerous posts in close succession.

There should be stops so people can’t just cut and paste the same reviews over and over.

If I posted 20 reviews for 20 electricians today who were all in different states, they would obviously be fake. Whether positive or negative reviews, they should be flagged as trying to game the system.

Maybe a slight exception for restaurants, hotels and entertainment. I can see once in a blue moon a consumer deciding to sit down in one night and write reviews for all the restaurants during their trip across the country last week. But I doubt that happens that often. Real people typically post reviews right after they use the service or eat the food and it’s fresh on their minds. AND they usually use services in their local area. They don’t live in LA and use a plumber in NY.

Other suggestions in my blog comments from my readers:

“Google should tell the user right on the review page, that their IP is being traced and that it is against the law to leave fraudulent reviews. Maybe that would deter them.” Linda says: that seems like it would be EASY to implement.

“I’d say something good would be a “freeze time” after each review of say 1 hour in which a user couldn’t post another one. Actually I think even 10 minutes could do it.”

“What a crock. If a website can get “red flagged” for a manual review by a search algo, then something can be done about clearly fake places reviews. Google really should do something before the gov’t really starts to make regulating online activities a priority.”

I realize the algo would not catch ALL review spam, however the suggestions above would catch the majority of these blatant spam cases. PLUS we only made a few suggestions and don’t specialize in reviews. The review spam team at Google could put their heads together, knowing what they know about these fraudsters – and figure out many other safeguards.

However I fear that somehow Google looks at # of reviews as reward points they need to stack up against Yelp and the rest of their competition. “My review bank is bigger than yours!”

But to tell the truth I don’t think the safeguards above would cut back on many legitimate reviews. The fake reviews should not be allowed and are hurting small businesses!

Linda

@Chris

I think if Google wants to really be a force in Local they have no choice. I think that they recognize this.

They are gradually doing so…. since last year they have speeded up responses to report a problem on Maps (manual oversight), they attempted to buy Groupon (lots of manual oversight), they added Boost Reps (OMG real people), they added support for ALL adwords and Boost clients and these folks actually can help with Places pages, they have added community managers in a number of cities, they are putting sales staff on the street in most major cities….

To succeed at local they need to be perceived as providing good service. That can’t be just good service in adwords and not Places… If they want to be perceived as having good service they absolutely MUST have a human response until such time as their algos minimize the need.

Reviews are an area of particular friction with SMBs. Google would be well served to implement a process that is part algo but defers to humans when necessary…

Regardless they could even change their algorythmic priorities… for example a Places owner could report a review as bogus, instead of having that input sent into a black hole, Google could hide the review until either algo review and/or human review resolved the issue. They could implement processes that don’t punish every business and my belief is that they will need to do both.

Good for Google.

Thinking over Linda’s suggestions and the situation, it seems to me that a flag could be triggered if the same industry keyword (electrician, for example) appeared in a reviewer profile on more than, say, 5 reviews within, perhaps, a 7 day period. Something like this might work. Though it could get sticky in something like the restaurant industry where I suppose someone might eat at a ‘Chinese Restaurant’ more than 5 times a week (oh, the cholesterol!). But, I bet Google could definitely put something like this in action. Wonder if they are working on something like this.