Amazon product reviews… the lifeline that boosts sales into success celebrations or kicks listings all the way back into the bane of page 20. When sellers launch a product, reviews shorten the lag time between unknown and popular. Product reviews influence conversion rates so strongly that they are a sellers’ powerful tool of transformation from zero to quit-my-day-job income.
There are basic pro-active steps sellers take to make sustainable success possible:
A high-quality product that earns rave product reviews;
An outstanding product detail page that leaves no buyer doubts; and,
Customer service fit for royalty.
Knowing these elements are in your hands makes you an empowered seller. On the premise that you have mastered the above three, let’s move forward.
The Achilles heel of every seller is negative reviews and in a previous article about how to deal with them, I focussed on how to learn, grow and benefit from all types of reviews, even the negative ones. Amazon will not remove negative product reviews just because it makes you unhappy. But what if you have some negative product reviews that don’t seem like fair play? It’s time to investigate if a bad product review is TOS compliant and actually warrants their presence.
Knowing The Difference Makes A Difference
It may seem like a tedious task, however, you could discover an Amazon-approved reason for requesting product review removal in these two areas: Customer Feedback ratings (aka Seller Feedback) versus Product Reviews.
Some buyers write Customer Feedback content as a bad Product Review and visa versa. That is actually grounds for removal submission in both cases.
Acceptable Customer Feedback
Customer Feedback covers the issues of delivery, packaging, the condition of the product or container (opened, leaked, cracked, broken, etc.) and customer service (rating their experience with the merchant). These ratings directly impact your overall account health.
FBA sellers can get negative customer feedback comments about low ratings for delayed, damaged goods or return issues removed since Amazon handles all of this on your behalf.
Whether you are an FBA or FBM Seller, if a low customer feedback rating is only about the product; you have an absolutely valid reason to request removal since that content doesn’t belong there.
Check out this real-time example:
product review
I contacted Seller Central Support to notify them of the above issue on behalf of a fellow seller.
seller support
Because these were product reviews written as Customer Feedback, that was an Amazon acceptable reason to request removal. Amazon responded at 7:55 a.m. (yes, that’s 3 minutes later):
07:55 AM
Greetings from Amazon Seller Support,
Thank you for contacting us. I am happy to help you with the issue related to removal of the feedback.
I have checked all the details and found that the feedback is related to a product review that was provided by the buyer and it had nothing to do with your performance or your services. As per your request,I have removed the buyer’s feedback.
And voilà! By the way, this seller had a “Fair” Account Health rating. After two low ratings were removed; it returned to a 5-star “Good” status once again.
Moving On To Product Reviews
As a general rule of thumb, Amazon doesn’t make a habit of removing product reviews. However, reviews containing Customer Feedback details and nothing about the product itself are possible removal candidates. Amazon lists these criteria as well:
Inappropriate Content
Hate Speech & Offensive Content
One-word-reviews
Promotion of Illegal Conduct
Promotional Reviews
Amazon would also consider removing at least one review when “a buyer, unhappy with their purchase, posts multiple negative reviews for the same product.” Some people do this through multiple accounts. Why they would go out of their way to post more than once, is beyond me.
Grounds for Product Review Removal
Here is an example of a product review worthy of removal consideration… notice how this person just wanted to rant. If anything, this falls into the Customer Feedback ratings, and as you can see, the review has nothing to do with the product itself.
Remove product review
Take a look at this one. In this case, no one can tell if the reviewer even took the product out of the box it came in.
1 star review
Customer Opinions
Product reviews are opinions. And Amazon likes every customer to have one. To be clear, just because a review is negative but it’s about the customer’s experience with the product – Amazon won’t even consider removing it. That type of review is legit.
Assuming you have an Amazon approved reason, no one knows if Amazon will actually accept it nor how long it could take for them to respond. I understand that Seller Central transfers such cases: “The team that owns this feature is outside of Seller Support and does not use the case system. So your case will appear closed in Seller Central… results of investigations are not shared.”
Remember, the only guaranteed outcome is that nothing will happen if you don’t try.
The How-Tos
There are two ways to go about submitting non-compliant negative product review removal requests: Report abuse and/or contact Seller Support. I will include both ways. I don’t believe this is an either/or option, so I recommend using both.
Report Abuse
Next to the “Was this review helpful to you? Yes – No, click on “Report abuse”.
report abuse
This window will show up:
Inappropiate product review
Write clear, authorized reason(s) why the content is inappropriate (just stick to Amazon’s guidelines). Then submit by clicking on the orange Report as inappropriate button.
Contact Seller Support
This option allows for much more information to build your removal case.
Before you go wild reporting every 1-star review, remember that Amazon may, or may not delete the ones with real content violations so don’t waste everyone’s time trying to get legitimate negative ones removed.
Amazon
Can Negative Product Reviews Be Changed?
For some sellers, 3-stars or less is a source of frustration. Others recognize that multiple 2 or 3-star valid testimonials are perceived as more authentic feedback. Consumers find a mixture helpful. That’s why they read both.
Consider that having a few negative reviews isn’t going to be your demise. Let’s say that you have compliant negative product reviews that Amazon would easily refuse to remove; you could try reaching out to the customer. Just do so wisely. At no point can you ever state or imply that if a customer improves their product review, you will give them a gift, discount on their next order, refund or anything other than a genuine “Thank you.”
Sometimes a reviewer simply doesn’t understand how to properly use a product (even with included carefully crafted instructions). Generally, prospective buyers discern that it’s a limitation of the reviewer versus the product itself. As the seller, taking time to respond in a professional, friendly (non-defensive) way on the detail page for everyone to see, counterbalances those negative reviews and builds confidence in your name/brand. In many cases, answering questions leads to a customer changing their review of their own inspired volition.
While it may be tempting to take your customer interaction offline: Don’t. It works in your favour to keep Amazon in the proverbial loop. When Amazon sees that a seller is responding to product issues, they smile upon it. Prevent getting busted for misunderstood resolutions attempted off of Amazon’s platform. Even the best intentions may come back with haunting repercussions if a buyer ends up writing about how you contacted them by phone or directly via a personal email, then offered x, y, z to get their negative feedback removed. If reading that makes your palms sweat because the thought had crossed your mind; take it as a think twice sign.
Instead, take confident steps via Amazon and remember to leave a trail so that they know your efforts are genuine.
Reducing Recovery Time
One way to make up for drops in conversion rates resulting from multiple compliant negative reviews is to actually acquire more reviews. This is easily accomplished by running promotions or sponsored product ads or review campaigns.
Proactively Prevent Negative Reviews on Amazon
Want to increase your Amazon seller feedback score? For a limited period, register your interest in FeedbackExpress below to receive a 30-day free trial which includes 10,000 free messages! What have you got to lose?!
Google reviews can make or break your business. Sadly, there are people who do leave negative or even downright mean Google reviews. But what, if anything, can you do about it?
Here we walk you through how to delete a Google review—or at least how to try. Google reviews are the internet’s “word-of-mouth,” influencing potential customers before they even visit your website or walk in your store.
Ultimately, having both good and bad reviews on Google isn’t the end of the world. In fact, having a couple negative reviews mixed in with mostly positive reviews is a good thing—it shows that you are a real business and that you didn’t just beg your friends to say nice things about you.
However, in the case of a truly nasty or possibly fake review, it’s worth it to do what you can to delete the Google review.
How to Delete a Google Review of Your Business that is Bad
Unfortunately, there isn’t a button that reads “delete Google review.” However, if you are the owner of the business that has received a bad review, there are different ways you can go about getting the review removed.
Respond to the Review
One of the first steps the business owner should take for how to delete a Google review is to respond to the reviewer who left the review. Say the right thing, and the customer might choose to remove the Google review on their own. At the very least, you can mitigate the damage as other potential customers will get to see your side of the story and learn a bit about your customer relations skills.
Here are 3 vital tips to keep in mind when responding to a negative review:
Respond kindly and be nice
Do not get defensive, and don’t make it personal
Keep the response brief and to the point
These three tips could be the key and make the difference between the reviewer retracting the bad review or letting it stand. Ask the person to contact your company so that you can investigate the issue that caused them to leave a bad review in the first place. If they do follow up, do everything you can to help them have a positive experience.
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How to Respond to a Google Review
Not sure how to log in so you to respond to the review? Google makes it pretty simple. Follow these steps:
First, make sure you’ve claimed your business listing—that is, registered yourself on Google as the owner. This will give you access to the listing on Google’s search results so you can edit information such as the website or hours—and respond to reviews. Claim your business by visiting Google.com/business and entering details about your business.
Sign into Google My Business (you’ll set this account up in step 1 if you haven’t already) and select the location (if you have multiples) with the review you’d like to respond to.
In the menu, select “Reviews.” Then click “Respond” next to the review you would like to address.
Type your response and click “Submit.”
Flag the Review
If you believe you have received a review that is fake, inappropriate, or promotes a competitor you can flag it to be reviewed by Google for removal. Only reviews that violate Google policy will be removed.
Follow these steps to flag a review:
Log into Google My Business.
Select the location (if you have multiple)
In the menu, select “Reviews”
Find the review in question. Click the three-dot menu , then select “Flag as inappropriate.”
It can take several days for someone at Google to review your request and determine whether they will delete your Google review. If possible, ask other people to flag the review also, as this might draw more attention to an offensive review and encourage Google to remove the Google review.
Report to Google Small Business Support
Flagging the review and/or responding to the unfair comments sometimes gets the review removed. But if those strategies fail, the next step is to report the review to Google Small Business Support.
To contact Google’s support for businesses, follow these steps:
Go to support.google.com/business
On the top right of your browser, select “contact us”
Select “customer reviews and photos,” and then “manage customer reviews”
Choose to receive help via phone, web chat, or email
Using any of these methods, you can expect help within 24 hours. If you choose to contact Google via email or chat, it is helpful to have a screenshot of the review in question ready to go.
You can also send a tweet to the Google My Business team (@GoogleMyBiz) from your company Twitter account. Someone may reply to you and you can take things from there. You could also search for and seek advice about the removal of reviews in the Google community support forum.
The Next Step
When someone from the support team gets in contact with you, it is up to you to explain why the review should be removed. Be ready to tell them why you think the review is false or in violation of policy and to defend your request to get it removed.
In some cases, the member of the support team may tell you that they will escalate the review to a specialist, who will make a decision about the outcome. You will again have to wait for an email confirmation or phone call from the member of the support team who helped you. Hopefully, they will be contacting you with good news.
How to Remove a Review You Left on Google
Have you ever left a bad review for a business and then had second thoughts? If you realize your review might have been unfair, you might be asking yourself if you can delete a Google review you wrote. So how do you go about it?
You probably left the review using Google Maps. If so head back to Maps then follow the steps below:
In the left-hand corner and you will see the icon for the menu, with three lines. Click this.
Head to “Your Contributions” and then pick “Reviews.”
Find the review that you want to delete in the list under Reviews.
Click on the “More” icon (the three dots, one above the other).
You can then choose to either edit the review that you left or delete the review.
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Is It Possible To Remove a Google Review?
In short, yes. There are steps you can take if you feel that your company has been wronged with a review or a review has been faked. Google reviews and complaints can be the death of any business but are more detrimental to small or new businesses. The good news is that you can dispute a Google review. However, it is not an easy process and it can be frustrating.
Unfortunately, it is not as simple as going to your own account on Google and removing the review yourself. You can contact Google with the hope that they will remove the review, but there is no guarantee that Google will listen to what you have to say and remove the review for you. However, it’s probably still worth a try.
Hopefully, by now you will have a solid understanding of how to delete a Google review by following the steps outlined above. Remove a Google review that is bad and get your business back on track.
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Why do I need to worry about negative reviews?
Bad reviews directly affect your business’ bottom line by driving away customers. According to a ReviewTrackers survey, 94 percent of consumers report that an online review persuaded them to avoid a particular business. This number is worrisome because a company’s online profile is now one of the main ways that people learn about it. In 2017, 93 percent of consumers checked online reviews when deciding whether or not to do business with a local firm.
Online reviews also carry a lot of weight with consumers. Research from BrightLocal reveals that 85 percent of people value reviewers’ opinions as much as they would a friend or family member’s personal recommendation. Moreover, 40 percent of individuals would avoid a business because of a negative review.
Besides turning away potential customers, bad online reviews can hurt your company’s SEO. In a recent survey conducted by Moz, online reviews accounted for up to up 10 percent of local search engine ranking decisions. Thus, having a number of poor reviews can cause your company’s website to appear farther down the page in a Google search.
What are my options for dealing with bad reviews?
Before you can begin to address your negative reviews, you’ll need to identify which ones are the most problematic. To accomplish this, you can do a number of Google searches for your company name and see what negative content comes up. When deciding which reviews to tackle first, you’ll want to take into account how high they rank in your search results. The higher on the page they appear, the more likely it is that a potential customer will read them. You should also look up your company on the most popular online business review sites, such as Angie’s List, Insider Pages, and Google My Business.
Are online reviews hurting your business? We can help.
SCHEDULE A FREE CONSULTATION
Read all of your reviews carefully, searching for common complaints that you need to address or issues that you’ve already fixed. Is a single unhappy customer responsible for posting most of the negative comments? Are any of the reviews obviously fake?
Once you’ve identified which negative reviews to target, you can decide how you want to manage them. You have several options: You can fix your business to solve the problem and avoid getting any more bad reviews, you can try to get the site to delete them, you can respond to them in hopes of resolving the reviewer’s complaint and getting them to revise their review, or you can publish so many positive reviews that you essentially drown out the negative voices. The best results, though, usually come from combining all four strategies.
how to handle negative reviews
1. Repair your business
The first step is to see what you can do to address those common complaints. While you should only give so much weight to rude and abusive reviews, if the same problem keeps coming up, it’s likely affecting far more customers than just those willing to complain on the Internet. Find and address those problems before you do anything else; listening to your critics and acting accordingly is your most effective tool for preventing bad reviews on the Internet.
2. Erase negative reviews
It seems like such a simple solution: Just ask the website to delete the review! Sadly, eliminating bad reviews is never this easy. The problem is that, according to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, websites aren’t liable for what their users post.
Whatever you do, don’t hire anybody who promises to remove content from review sites for you. Companies that promise to do this are most likely trying to scam you. Most people find that after they pay for bad reviews to disappear, the content keeps coming back, which means they end up having to repeatedly pay to keep it at bay.
Take control of your business’s online reputation.
TALK TO AN EXPERT
Review sites generally have a set of very strict guidelines (usually listed in their Terms of Service) for removing content. Often, the review has to be personally threatening or profane for a site to agree to remove it. Likewise, if you can demonstrate that the individual who wrote the content is actually a business competitor, someone you are battling in a lawsuit, or a fake reviewer, then the site will probably delete the content.
Remember, though, that the process for deciding to remove negative reviews is entirely subjective, and the final decision rests with the website. Therefore, there is no guarantee that the website in question will agree with you about the inappropriateness of the content. Reviews that sound calm and reasonable are extremely difficult to remove, regardless of how wildly inaccurate they may be.
You will have to adjust your tactics, as well as your expectations, for each site you are trying to remove content from. The following are some strategies for a handful of specific popular review sites:
Angie’s List
Angie’s List won’t remove any review unless it meets the following three conditions:
The member who posted it asks to have it removed.
The issue the review describes is resolved as part of a Complaint Resolution.
Angie’s List verifies that the review was fraudulently posted.
Thus, your best bet is to contact the unhappy reviewer and work with him or her to resolve the issue.
A surprising number of Angie’s List users will voluntarily remove their negative reviews if a business owner goes out of his or her way to correct the problem that led to the bad review. In fact, this is the number-one way to remove bad online reviews from Angie’s List. Additionally, making the reviewer happy might win you back a customer who otherwise would have been lost for good.
Insider Pages
To remove a bad review on your company’s Insider Pages site, you’ll need to make sure that you’ve claimed the listing. If you haven’t yet created an account, you’ll need to do that first and then search the site for your company name. When you arrive at your company’s page, just click the “Claim Business” link.
Take control of your business’s online reputation.
TALK TO AN EXPERT
Once you’ve verified your account information, you can report a bad review as “abuse.” Simply go to the review in question and click the “Report Abuse” button. Insider Pages employees will then look at the content to see if it violates the company’s Terms of Service. If it does, then Insider Pages will delete the review. If not, then the review will remain. There is little you can do to dispute the site’s decision. This is why it’s vital that you look into other ways to address the negative review.
Insider Pages offers business owners a way to respond to reviews, and doing so is a great way to not only resolve the disgruntled customer’s issue, but also show potential customers that you are a professional who cares about your customers’ satisfaction. To post a response, just click “View/Update Business Profile” and then click “Respond to Reviews” at the bottom of the page. When you are done with your response, click “Update Response.” Bear in mind though that the site doesn’t let you respond to reviews from Citysearch users.
Google My Business
Google My Business reviews are notoriously difficult to remove. However, the site does offer a way to flag reviews to bring them to the attention of Google employees. If the review violates the site’s policies regarding Prohibited and Restricted Content, then Google will delete it. Simply select “Reviews” from the My Google Business menu, find the review you want to flag, and click the three vertical dots menu. Finally, click “Flag as inappropriate.” This last item will be “Flag review” if you are using the mobile app.
Are online reviews hurting your business? We can help.
SCHEDULE A FREE CONSULTATION
Regardless of whether you end up flagging a bad review, the best approach for dealing with negative Google My Business reviews is to quickly and calmly respond to them. To do so, you must first verify that the business is yours.
3. Respond to negative reviews
Your next tool is to simply respond to reviews. Especially for sites that refuse to delete bad online reviews, replying to a review can be a powerful tool because it turns a one-sided view of your business into one where a potential customer can see both sides of the problem.
When it comes to replying, there’s a set of rules you need to stick to for the best effect:
Use common courtesy. Being polite forces the critic to also be polite; especially if there’s a rude review, it will force a contrast between the raging critic and the polite business owner.
If you are at fault, apologize and see what you can do to resolve the situation. Often, demonstrating that you’ve heard their complaints and that you care can do a lot to excise a bad review.
If there’s another side to the story, lay it out clearly and concisely without blaming the critic. Making the critic aware of information he or she may not know (or pointing out information they’ve purposely left out) helps mitigate a bad review.
Never make legal threats or “out” the critic under their real name; doing so can get your response removed, and legal threats are empty anyway.
Take control of your business’s online reputation.
TALK TO AN EXPERT
4. Bury negative reviews
Another highly effective tactic for dealing with negative reviews is to simply force a contrast between a handful of bad reviews and a flood of good ones. Encourage your customers to review you on websites by including links on your website, in your social media presence, and in your email signatures. Post signs asking those with a positive experience to review you online and those with a bad one to come see you personally to talk about it. The flood of positive reviews will often be a powerful counter to even the most vitriolic critic.
In addition to generating positive reviews, it’s a good idea to create other content that will rank higher than your negative reviews in a Google search results page. This content can include social media posts, articles, or listings on business websites.
How do I keep negative reviews from affecting my business again?
Don’t assume that you can ignore your company’s online reputation after you have successfully addressed your bad reviews. You will need to continually monitor your search results to stay on top of any negative content.
If you need help dealing with negative reviews, contact ReputationDefender for a free consultation. We’ll help you build up a positive presence online to counteract even the worst review. In the end, you should be the one in charge of defining your company’s reputation, not strangers on the Internet.
Do you want to remove news articles that say negative things about you?
Local news, national news, International newspapers… They rank very high in Google, and they will stay there at the top and destroy your personal image and credibility.
Google displays these kinds of websites because they have authority, lots of traffic, they are shared on social media, and as a result of all of this they are tough to hide from.
We can remove negative search results for your name or business. If you have negative search results that you would like to remove from Google search results, call us now on 0800 088 5506 or visit our webite
We have specialists that can remove negative images from image search and Google too. This is one of the most powerful tools to have when repairing your reputation. The ability to hide or remove an image of you that is displaying for your name. These images rank at the top of Google and have a very negative impact on your ability to progress in life and in business.
If your company has bad reviews, it might be worthwhile speaking to professionals. Reputation Management companies have strategies to remove negative reviews from all kinds areas of the Internet.
Google Business Listings, Glass Door, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook, YouTube, … Anywhere.
Call us for a chat on 0800 088 5506 and we can help you with all kinds of negative search results in Google.
We can help you by deleting negative content, removing images, news articles, social media comments, bad reviews, negative feedback…
Visit our website for a free quote on getting help!
Reputation Ace is Reputation Management company that helps businesses, brands, and individuals repair their online reputation and control their online image. In this day and age your image and reputation is everything. If you don’t have a positive image online who is doing business with you? Get help now!
How to remove bad reviews from Google local
Do you want to know how to delete google reviews posted by others?
It can be extremely difficult as you know! Google will not just remove a review because you don’t like it. And some of these reviews will be from other websites that are being displayed on page 1.
We know how to remove bad reviews from google maps. Google Business listings, TripAdvisor, Yelp etc… We have extensive knowledge of removing bad reviews, and negative search results of all types.
Is it illegal to delete bad reviews?
No it is not. In fact some bad reviews might be some
How to remove negative reviews from Google search results
There are 3 ways to get rid of negative content from Google search results
1 – Remove the content at the source
2 – De-index the content so that the search engine does not display the content
3 – Suppress, bury and replace the content with new content that dominates the search term.
We work from every angle to repair the online reputation of businesses globally.
If you need to hide or bury bad google reviews, don’t worry… We can help. We know how to hide google reviews and repair your online reputation.
