What to do when you get a lot of fake reviews at once

Open your Business Profile and read every new low review once, without replying. You want to know three things before you act: roughly how many arrived, over what span of time, and whether anyone has contacted you about them. A wave that came with a message asking for money is handled differently from a wave that came out of nowhere.

Write down the time you noticed the first review, and your rating and review count at that moment. If you keep bookings or a call log, note anything unusual today, such as calls that hung up or bookings nobody turned up for. This is the starting line for everything you report later, and it is easy to lose once the day gets busy.

Tell your staff what is happening and ask them not to reply to reviews or post about it on social media today. One heated reply from a manager is screenshotted and shared faster than any of the fake reviews.

Customers will ask about the reviews at the counter and on the phone. Give your staff two sentences so nobody improvises: We have seen a run of reviews from people who have not visited us, and we have reported them to Google. Thank you for asking, and for coming in. Ask them to pass on any message, call or email about the reviews to you, unanswered, with the time it came in. A demand for money that reaches a junior employee is still evidence, and it is easy to lose if someone deletes it to protect you.

• One person reads and logs the reviews.
• One person handles calls and messages about them.
• Only the person you choose replies on Google.
• Nobody posts about the attack on social media until the reports are in.

Reviews can be edited or disappear while you work, so capture them now. Take screenshots that show the reviewer name, the star rating, the text and the date, and save the link to each reviewer's profile. Also save one screenshot of your overall rating and review count so you can show the before and after.

The full method, with the columns to keep in a simple log, is in the guide on documenting a review attack. Do that step properly once and every report after it gets easier.

A wave is rarely one kind of review. Sort each one into a group, because each group goes to Google under a different policy.

• Copied or repeated text, the same line on several reviews: Spam.
• About the news, a post online or the street, with no visit described: Off topic.
• A phone number, link or offer for another business: Advertising.
• Written by a competitor or a former employee, in their own words: Conflict of interest.
• Slurs, threats or attacks on a named member of staff: Abusive language.
• A real customer with a harsh opinion: no rule broken. This one gets a calm reply, not a report.

The free review check on this site does this sort for you. Paste your Google Maps link and it reads every low review and labels each one with the policy it breaks, or No rule broken.

1. 1

   Money demanded? Use the extortion form first

   If someone asked for money, goods or services to stop or remove the reviews, Google has a separate merchant extortion report form. The guide on that form walks through each field.

2. 2

   Report each review under its policy

   In the Reviews Management Tool, confirm the account linked to your Business Profile, choose your business, select Report a new review for removal, then Report next to each review and pick the reason that matches your group.

3. 3

   Report the accounts behind a pattern

   If one reviewer posted the same text on many businesses, note it in your log. That pattern is what Google's policy calls repetitive content from the same or multiple accounts.

Future customers read your replies more closely than the reviews. Pick a short, neutral reply you can use on reviews with no visit behind them, and leave threats and abuse unanswered. The guide on replying during a review attack has wording you can copy.

Worth knowing: Do not ask friends, family or staff to post five star reviews to balance the wave. Google treats reviews not based on a real experience, and reviews from people with a conflict of interest, as fake engagement, and it can restrict a profile for it.

Go back to the Reviews Management Tool to read each status. Decision pending means it has not been evaluated yet. Report reviewed, no policy violation means Google kept it, and you can submit a one time appeal. Keep adding any new reviews from the wave to your log, and report them the same way as they arrive.

Google publishes no timeline, so a status can sit at Decision pending for a while. A review Google keeps still belongs in the log, because a later review from the same account, or the same text on another listing, can change the picture. Once the wave stops, compare the log with your listing every week for the next month. Some attacks come back in a second wave, and you will spot it on the first day instead of the third.