How to Overcome Negative Online Reviews?

12 years ago

I'd have to actually see the site and business' listing that you're talking about to fully understand what you're working with and talking about, but I'd say, although it may be considered sort of a black hat method, paying for good reviews on Fiverr or something similar.

Surely if you built up more reviews it would show more and possibly outweigh the bad review. Nonetheless; one bad review can drive someone to go to a competitor rather than your business. I've seen it happen and sometimes a single bad review can even deter me.

Anyways, my advice would be to buy good reviews. It may be your only option and definitely worth a try.

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ryanmckinney

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Larches

I'd have to actually see the site and business' listing that you're talking about to fully understand what you're working with and talking about, but I'd say, although it may be considered sort of a black hat method, paying for good reviews on Fiverr or something similar.

Surely if you built up more reviews it would show more and possibly outweigh the bad review. Nonetheless; one bad review can drive someone to go to a competitor rather than your business. I've seen it happen and sometimes a single bad review can even deter me.

Anyways, my advice would be to buy good reviews. It may be your only option and definitely worth a try.

Do not buy good reviews. Do not buy any reviews.

Reviews should be real reviews from real customers.

You are describing "reputation management" - which is a very lucrative niche.

The basis of reputation management is teaching companies how to get real reviews (maybe by giving an incentive) posted, then how to SEO those reviews to essentially "push" off the bad. I am not an expert in reputation management, but anyone who is can correct me if I am wrong, but this is the basics of it.

From what I understand there is a lot of money to be made in reputation management, and it is one of my goals to learn more of this year.

Ryan

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Michael Bucker 12 years ago

Dont think to much about it and move on. If you have a service or product worth its weight in gold other reviews will come to your recuse. If you spend to much time on one review and worrying about it how much are you getting done. Your work will always prove you above false reproach.
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HypeText

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Ta1212

For one site in particular, I have found that gaining just ONE negative review has been a tough thing to overcome. For an offline business, these online reviews are now more important than ever.

So, for a company that now has like 5 online reviews, only ONE of these reviews is being shown, and it's actually the ONLY 1-star review on the site.

All of the other 4 and 5 star reviews are being hidden (or filtered), and not even counted towards the overall rating for the business.

How have YOU overcome negative online reviews for your offline business or client?

We have worked with a number of businesses that have experienced this.

It doesnt take much more than a offer to make it right by the business in question.

Customers are pretty easily pacified by stepping customer Service up a notch.

9 times out of 10 a simple apology for their bad experience and an offer to make it right is sufficient to get the Reviewer to update their rating to a positive one.

Merchants need to understand that customer service doesnt end with the sale.

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topgold

12 years ago

This reminds of a quote that someone said to me:

"A happy customer will tell three people,
but
an UN-happy customer will tell 300 people!"

Humans. Go figure!

I know of two ways to "overcome" a negative review.

1. Compensate your unsatisfied customer. Giving a $10 coupon or so might be a good idea. Just don't go overboard; some people will keep asking for MORE and MORE and MORE!
2. "Bump down" your unsatisfied customer's negative review with positive reviews. Like the others said, you probably need to hand out incentives to get some positive reviews. You can do this with SEO if you are concerned about it appearing in the search engines, too.

All in all though, one negative review really doesn't hurt you that much. You're doing something right if you get zero reviews (which means your customers are satisfied). It's only when you're doing something "wrong" that you will get the reviews... and trust me, you WILL hear from your unsatisfied customers!

Best of luck!

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Ta1212 12 years ago

All very wise advice. Thank you!
- Thanks
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DriveTheGoods

12 years ago

While it is not good to pay for or write your own review, I think it is good to respond to negative reviews. Post a review and respond to the reviewer. Tell them how you will fix the problem or request a another chance to make them happy. Then make them happy!

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Its Trish 12 years ago

Hi @Ta1212,

Was the negative review on Yelp?
If so, post back here and I'll suggest some ways to deal with it.
- Thanks
- 3 replies
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- DRO 12 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Its Trish
  
  Hi @Ta1212,
  
  Was the negative review on Yelp?
  If so, post back here and I'll suggest some ways to deal with it.
  
  I'd be interested in some ways to deal with it as well.
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  uppway 12 years ago
  
  Will appreciate any help dealing with this issue, have similar problem.
  
  Thanks
  
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- Ta1212 12 years ago
  
  Yes, the negative review was in Yelp. So far, I've gathered that I need to gain some high-authority, aged account reviews from established and reliable Yelp users..
  
  Thanks
  
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- RoseMarie528 11 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Its Trish
  
  Hi @Ta1212,
  
  Was the negative review on Yelp?
  If so, post back here and I'll suggest some ways to deal with it.
  
  ------------------
  I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR ADVICE FOR HANDLING YELP FILTER ALGORITHMS. WE HAVE 13 POSITIVE REVIEWS THAT DO NOT SHOW AND ONE 1 NEGATIVE SHOWS. WE'VE MADE GOOD WITH THE CUSTOMER, SENT A GIFT, MADE A PHONE CALL AND THE CUSTOMER IS NOT ABLE TO CHANGE HER POST.
  
  Thanks
  
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mench114

12 years ago

Try to add a complaint area on your website to help give customers guidance on how to get in touch with your company and keep them on the site.

Thanks

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Darion

12 years ago

Don't buy positive reviews to compensate this problem. Negative feedback can be overlooked, but an uncredible reputation is almost impossible to overcome.

Have you tried encouraging more of your other customers to leave reviews? Sometimes, a simple reminder can do wonders. If you have 4 out of 5 positive reviews (hidden or not), chances are that your product/service is well received, but just needs more feedback to provide an accurate evaluation.

Thanks
1 reply

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StrategicCheetah 12 years ago

Customers are generally lazy and the ones who have had a good service are unlikely to go to the hassle of signing up to various accounts and leaving a review unless its "their thing".

The people who have a grievance to air have much more motivation for leaving a review which means that for certain businesses, there will always be a need to think outside the box.

Luckily, there is a service called Local Business Listing Robot which saves the day.

Get your client to take testimonials and customer reviews via email or over the phone and pass these along to you. Then post them through LBLR.

Job done.
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- 1 reply
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- Richard Tunnah 12 years ago
  
  There are really only a couple of ways to help negative feedback out.
  
  Firstly try contacting the poster of negative feedback and see if the situation can be resolved and once it's resolved the poster will remove the negative feedback. However this isn't always easy with aliases often used and sites unable or unwilling to reveal the contact details of any poster.
  
  Secondly is to bury the negative feedback as far back in the search results as possible (bottom of page 2 or better page 3/4). The only way to do this is to basically start a seo campaign that will include buying the domain names of the company (.com,.net and .info plus any local variant) and putting info about the company on each one. Write articles and submit them to directories. Do a press release. Set-up some blogs under the company name and write some useful info relating to the company on them. Grab all major social media outlets in company name (facebook, twitter and linkedin). Make sure the company is using them. Make sure googles places is set-up. Lastly consider a youtibe company channel.
  If you do all the above for 3-12 months you'll push these to the front pages of google and force the negative feedback down.
  
  Rich
  
  Thanks
  
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Robert Kim

12 years ago

Its not good to hire persons or make fake account to promote or appreciate your service or brand. This is like you cheating yourself. Listen to your customer and try to satisfy him/her with your best services. That client definitely post good comment about your service or brand.

Thanks

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DeltaForce

12 years ago

If the negative reviews are genuine, you have to address the issues to be successful in long run, you can always buy reviews from sites like fiverr etc...

but they will be short term gains, true success lie in addressing your issues

Thanks

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MaxReferrals

12 years ago

Address the operational and customer service issues that almost always cause the negative review.

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uppway

12 years ago

We sent clients to yelp to post real review in the last 3 months...yelp filtered 41 out of 45 reviews. they all was 100% real clients. The issue is that yelp filter is removing all the none yelper reviews so unless you have a client that is already yelper then this probably would work.

If anyone here can help with more reviews on yelp ( Los Angeles area) please let me know!!

Thanks

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Calvin Cole

12 years ago

The most effective way to overcome negative online reviews is to counter it with positive reviews, positive feedbacks and positive customer testimonials from your past clients. Post them to your website in written form or in video form so that when people visit your site they will know the truth. In this way, you can build and establish favorable brand image to your website and offline business.

Thanks

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RoseMarie528

11 years ago

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR ADVICE FOR HANDLING YELP FILTER ALGORITHMS. WE HAVE 13 POSITIVE REVIEWS THAT DO NOT SHOW AND ONE 1 NEGATIVE SHOWS. WE'VE MADE GOOD WITH THE CUSTOMER, SENT A GIFT, MADE A PHONE CALL AND THE CUSTOMER IS NOT ABLE TO CHANGE HER POST.

Thanks
1 reply

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Rus Sells

11 years ago

Ask her to leave a review "update" on the profile.

Originally Posted by RoseMarie528

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR ADVICE FOR HANDLING YELP FILTER ALGORITHMS. WE HAVE 13 POSITIVE REVIEWS THAT DO NOT SHOW AND ONE 1 NEGATIVE SHOWS. WE'VE MADE GOOD WITH THE CUSTOMER, SENT A GIFT, MADE A PHONE CALL AND THE CUSTOMER IS NOT ABLE TO CHANGE HER POST.

Thanks

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Lokahi

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Ta1212

For one site in particular, I have found that gaining just ONE negative review has been a tough thing to overcome. For an offline business, these online reviews are now more important than ever.

So, for a company that now has like 5 online reviews, only ONE of these reviews is being shown, and it's actually the ONLY 1-star review on the site.

All of the other 4 and 5 star reviews are being hidden (or filtered), and not even counted towards the overall rating for the business.

How have YOU overcome negative online reviews for your offline business or client?

Is this review site very important to target? Or, are there other review sites you could better spend your time and energy on? If you really want this review site to show your best reviews, you may need to contact them and make that request.

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Rus Sells

11 years ago

Firstly, don't ever ever buy reviews, or create proxy accounts to post customer reviews on behalf of customers, and don't try and manipulate Google's search results by trying to push down the result with the negative review to lower search result pages.

Buying reviews - Illegal
Posting reviews on behalf of cutomers - Illegal if not disclosed and is against all major directory sites TOS.
Content spam to manipulate search results - This is referred to as ORM SPAM and just like the back linking blog networks and content spam networks will eventually no longer work so it's a waste of time, effort, and money.

Additionally, if the review is on a major review site like Yelp that is actually where the absolute BEST traffic is going to be so I suggest responding to the review in an appropriate manner. Don't pick a fight, don't make accusations, offer solutions, be empathetic, and show genuine concern.

Work with client to develop a reputation culture mindset within the company that creates a great customer "experience" and "then" encourage customers to leave reviews.

Thanks
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Rus Sells

11 years ago

I'm quoting myself here because I'm disappointed that there are no thanks for replies to this response.

Is it that this advice isn't popular because while it is the truth it is contrary to "some" of the advice being taught in other sections of this forum?

Originally Posted by Rus Sells

Firstly, don't ever ever buy reviews, or create proxy accounts to post customer reviews on behalf of customers, and don't try and manipulate Google's search results by trying to push down the result with the negative review to lower search result pages.

Buying reviews - Illegal
Posting reviews on behalf of cutomers - Illegal if not disclosed and is against all major directory sites TOS.
Content spam to manipulate search results - This is referred to as ORM SPAM and just like the back linking blog networks and content spam networks will eventually no longer work so it's a waste of time, effort, and money.

Additionally, if the review is on a major review site like Yelp that is actually where the absolute BEST traffic is going to be so I suggest responding to the review in an appropriate manner. Don't pick a fight, don't make accusations, offer solutions, be empathetic, and show genuine concern.

Work with client to develop a reputation culture mindset within the company that creates a great customer "experience" and "then" encourage customers to leave reviews.

Thanks

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Review Sentry

Dotcomcodex

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How to Overcome Negative Online Reviews?

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