Normally, in the world of SEO, when we think or talk about reviews, we are interested in positive reviews that help improve a small business owner’s website ranking on the search engines. At Outrank.com, we educate clients on the impact positive reviews can make not only for SEO purposes but also when a potential customer has found you on the internet and starts to weigh their options. Reputation matters. Providing incentives for your customers to positively review your business is mostly frowned upon but you can politely ask satisfied customers to review your business and rate their experience.

What do you think looks more impressive – a company with happy customers who took the time to provide valuable feedback or a company that has no reviews from customers? Even if you are a successful business owner with happy customers, appearances speak volumes in marketing and advertising. Consumers assume that businesses with (positive) reviews are more legitimate than those without. Consumers look to one another for honest opinions which is why reviews are so important: user-generated content is influential. Consumers trust one another. Casual conversations happening on social sites like Yelp, Google Places, Facebook and Twitter are why businesses have found a way to join in to engage and reward fans and customers.

Blumenthals brought up an important issue in a post about ratings and reviews. He called to attention a case where a moving company posted fake reviews about their competitors. Clearly, this brings up another, darker side of reviews. There is always the chance that a customer at some point in your career might post a less than desireable review of your product or service. If and when that time comes and the customer has a legitimate point, you can certainly use it as a learning opportunity, do what you can do remedy the situation and respond publicly to send a positive message and reveal what you did to make things right. Simply put, sometimes there are just miscommunications. Sometimes, there’s just no pleasing certain people. And, in Blumenthals’ example, there are unethical strategies other businesses will use as poor guerilla marketing tactics.

What you can do to combat this type of behavior is limited. You can flag and report the review and wait for Google or (wherever the review lives) to respond. You can try to locate the source but good luck with that. Blumenthals suggests some possible solutions that Google could employ to quickly respond to small business owners suffering from false reviews. Check out the post here.