Do businesses get notifications when a review is about them?

When a customer posts a Google review, an email is sent to the business in question and can respond to the review. When a company responds to the customer's review, the customer receives a push notification, and the response is uploaded five minutes later under the customer's review.

How to delete a Google Review

Unfortunately, the only thing a company can do when they want to delete a review is flagged as inappropriate, and Google takes a look at it. But if the person who wrote the review is the one who wants to delete it, he can follow this procedure:

• Click on the More icon, which is usually three dots on the side of the review.
• You can proceed to delete the review completely or simply edit it.

Generating quality Google Reviews

Companies can acquire quality Google reviews when they employ good customer satisfaction and retention practices like;

• Contacting customers either through email or telephone to do a follow-up after a business transaction.
• Responding to customers' query and offering a solution to a service or product problem.
• Asking customers directly to leave good reviews after visiting your site.
• Educating the customers on navigating your site as the difficulty of navigating a site can trigger customers to leave a bad review.

The process of posting a Google review

It is easy for a customer to perform a Google review; here are three simple steps that you can follow to leave a review.

1. Log in to your Google account and search for the business website you want to write a review about.
2.  Locate the review section area and click on the blue posts that say, "WRITE A REVIEW". The review section is located next to the star rating or under the company's name in the sidebar of the Google search.
3. Share your experience about the company's product and leave star ratings guided by your knowledge of the product.

How to respond to Google reviews

We're frequently asked if it's important to respond to consumer feedback. To that question, the answer is a resounding YES. Not only because that's how good customer service should act, but also because Google tracks the amount of time it takes to reply to each review. A prompt and serious response demonstrates that the organization is concerned about its customers' opinions of the company and its reputation.

When customers leave reviews about a company, the company is notified and can respond to the review. Companies can respond either by offering a solution to the customer's complaints or just thanking them for leaving a review if it is good.

Can businesses legally add Google reviews on their site?

It is illegal for a business to repost Google reviews without their permission. Google owns the rights and citations of the reviews; this includes the name of the customer's reviewers, some Google logos, among other information. Once the business acquires the permissions required to post Google reviews, they can go ahead and do so. Posting positive Google reviews has an impact on the position of the SEO of the company's website.

The best way to deal with negative Google reviews

Even the best of business can receive a negative Google review; they must correct the negative review as it has dire consequences to the business's image. Here are steps that a business can follow when dealing with a negative review;

• Respond to the negative review as quickly as you can.
• Take time and research on the time the customer interacted with the business, what they bought, and their transaction history. Investigate whether they are regular or new customers.
• Address the issue that has been brought forward and keep the response short and straight to the point. Take responsibility for the problem and apologise to the customer for the problem.
• Offer a solution to the problem and follow-up to make sure that the problem is solved.
• Apologise to the customer once more and thank them for spotting the problem and leaving a review.
• It's vital that the most recent reviews are favorable — one of the most common methods to examine listing reviews is to start with the most recent. If the most recent reviews are unfavorable, we strongly advise putting extra effort into collecting newer reviews that will outnumber the negative reviews, making them less noticeable.

How to remove fake Google reviews

Fake Google reviews are common, and there is a process by which a company can remove them. Fake reviews can be removed by clicking the review and locating the three vertical dots to the right of the review; once you click the dots, an option to flag the review as fake will pop up, and you select it.

However, if the review is stuck as your most recent review, you may want to work a little more as a firm to generate fresh, more positive ratings to offset the negative ones. It will not draw anyone's notice and will be pushed down if you do this.

Adding and displaying Google reviews in WordPress

You can add and display Google reviews in WordPress by following these steps.

• Log in to the admin area of your site and navigate to plugins
• Using the sidebar menu add NEW
• In the search field, Enter 'Google places Reviews' from the add plugins screen.
• Install the first item that is listed in the results.

Is there a limited number of reviews one person can leave?

Google allows one account to leave reviews with an unlimited number of words. This means that a client can leave one word or write a whole paragraph, be it good or harmful sentiments.

The only thing Google does not accept is someone using multiple accounts to leave negative comments on the same experience. In such cases, those particular remarks are flagged, and Google removes them.

The best way to buy Google reviews

A business can purchase business reviews, but most experts strongly urge them not to buy as it can backfire and hurt the image of their business tremendously. Google review policies prohibit buying reviews and doom every review they discover you have bought them. These reviews are automatically removed, and the account is issued a warning.

Instead, the business should aim at acquiring authentic reviews through pre-screening their customers as they can leave numerous positive reviews.

However, there are some situations in which a business owner has no choice but to buy reviews, such as when his firm is being targeted by unfavorable reviews left by a competitor, and those evaluations "stick" and are not eliminated by Google. There are certain services available on the internet that act as a marketplace for reviews in such circumstances (but we do not recommend this approach legally). For instance, take a look at www.reviewzerz.com.

The benefit of such markets is that actual individuals write evaluations from local areas (as opposed to bots or firms from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, or other Asian countries), which Google can easily discover and delete from suggestion results.

How to send user-generated reviews from a site to a Google Place or Business Search listing

Suppose you want to transfer user-generated reviews from your site to a Google Places/business search listing. In that case, you can use a WordPress plugin that sends the user-generated reviews to your Google places and Google location site. Although this is a new future that Google is developing, it can still perform that feature.

Bottom line

Google reviews are essential to a business as they influence their SEO position, influencing customers purchasing their products. Therefore, companies should aim at maintaining good Google reviews as they will help them attract and retain customers.