Spot fake Google reviews the smart way

You may have come across many reviews on Google Maps, where something doesn’t look right. Or if you are a business owner in Google My Business, you might have been tired of tackling a lot of spam-like fake reviews on your Google Maps listing.

This blog will give you an idea on how to make sure if the particular review received is fake or real. And once you are sure about the nature of the review, there are some actions you can take as an owner or as an audience of the map listing or your business.

Even though most of the reviews published on google maps are genuine, there are a lot of fake reviews prevailing for some good or bad reasons.

Considering the below-mentioned ways you can spot fake reviews in any platforms other than Google Maps too.

There are several ways you can make a quick check of the review yourself if they are genuine or not.

First, let’s start with

Why do people post fake google reviews?

Out of the several intentions a reviewer might have about posting a wrong review of a business, these type of fake google maps reviews can be grouped into two major categories: fake positive reviews and fake negative reviews.



Fake positive reviews

Many businesses knowingly write multiple good reviews of their business themselves or ask their staff or pay third parties to write excellent reviews.

The major motive behind writing a fake positive review for a business:

  • Either to suppress the negative review(s) made by customers or
  • To make an impression on the visitor that the particular business is really good.


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Fake negative reviews

No business enjoys reading a negative review in their business listing.

Few reasons for fake negative reviews on google maps:

  • when a customer isn’t happy with the product/ service s/he receives from the business, s/he may write a publish a negative review for that business through a fake account hiding his/ her’s original identity. Even though the review may be genuine in such cases.


  • Dirty competition in the business market

Some businesses are too bad to be good. If company A and B are in the same business sector, one company may knowingly write/ pay others to write fake negative reviews for the competitor’s google maps listing. Here, I don’t need to tell you, why this is done….

  • … there can be several other reasons for posting fake reviews like personal grudges, work factors etc.

Now, we know why people write such reviews, let’s dig into the main part of our study:

How to know if a review is fake?

  1. The business name is repeated multiple times
  2. Profile photo
  3. Too fewer reviews/ contributions in total
  4. Exaggerated and lengthy content
  5. Private contribution profile
  6. Company name/ staff’s name all CAPS
  7. Staff’s name repeated multiple times with a lot of praises (or blames if negative review)




What should you do?


If you are a business owner and you have received a fake review on your google maps listing, then you can flag the review and submit it to google.

Anyone else can report a fake review on google maps to google, and google will review the request.

Visit this link for more information on reporting inappropriate reviews.

Let’s pause for a while now, even when a review you are observing meets all points listed above, it still might be a genuine review! 😀 This might look contradictory here but this post’s major intention is to give you some hints on how fake reviews look like not to guarantee.

Thanks for reading, if you have any comments feel free to write them down below. Have a great day! 🙂

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About the Author
Lakshman Basnet
Nepali Digital Media Marketer currently based in Adelaide, South Australia who apart from playing with his cat - Eleven, also enjoys developing web content, publishing blogs and YouTube videos in his free time.

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