Report Reviews

Reads: Negative Search Engine Optimisation - Report Reviews. Description: A large yellow triangular warning sign, with a big black exclamation mark in the middle. It's surrounded by 6 review cards, 3 with green outlines - indicating they are good/legitimate, and 3 with red - signalling they are bad. It's sat in front of a digital backdrop of two horizontal plains of characters and random bits of data, converging in the far distance, top to middle, bottom to middle.

Details

Vector type:
Review System Attack
Risk level:
Low
Impact level:
Low to Moderate

This approach works in tandem with “Good Fake Reviews,” which entails building large numbers of obviously exaggerated fake reviews for your target. Once you’ve done that, you mass-report your victim for manipulative practices, in an effort to have their business listing penalized or excluded outright from the consumer review system. Again, this is harder to achieve in the Google My Business ecosystem than with third-party review sites, because of Google’s approach to mass-flagging/reporting.

Defense

As with all Review System Attacks, there is no actual defense against this tactic, since you’re solely reliant on Google My Business and the other review site operators to detect and eliminate malicious reviews and behavior.


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