I find myself often defending the validity of the review section in Google Maps almost immediately after telling someone that I work for the local division of an interactive direct marketing company. “Those things aren’t real,” they say, “those are written by the owners themselves”. At first, I was surprised that people were so cynical about reviews, but lately, something has happened. I feel my brow furrowing as I examine the review section because of some of the things I see. Things like names of competitors in reviews that had such bad service that the customer had to turn to the business that provided them with excellent service. Or the same review by the same name on the same day in different channels, all pulled in by Google to create one suspicious looking review section. Or, maybe the same person feels the need to write one review for multiple locations of a same business. The latest favorite, the inclusion of names in reviews written by, get this, a person with the same name (sometimes with a competitor’s business name spliced in for good measure). I now understand why the reviews in local results have the stigma that they do.
~Search Diva
