What Are The Best Online Reputation Management Tools? 

The best online reputation management tools are:

• Detailed SEO
• YCS
• Filmot
• ChatGPT
• Yelp Improvement Calculator
• Google’s Spam Report
• Google Alerts

What is Online Reputation Management?

Online reputation management (ORM) is the process of monitoring and improving a business or individual’s online presence. The goal of reputation management is to fill the search engine results page (SERP) with positive content to give potential clients a great first impression. Reputation management also aims to help clients address and respond to negative feedback to improve business practices and resolve client issues. 

Check out our Ultimate Guide to Online Reputation Management to learn more.

Top 7 Tools For Online Reputation Management

Whether you’re an individual or part of a large corporation, managing your online reputation is no small feat. Luckily, there are some great tools online that can help you monitor and optimize your online presence more effectively. We’ve compiled a list of our top 7 online reputation management tools below. Oh—and they’re all free!

1. Detailed SEO

Detailed SEO is an reputation management extension that allows you to get a quick overview of several SEO elements on a page, including… 

When working on a business’ online reputation, it’s important to have all existing owned content optimized. This not only helps that content rank higher for your target keywords, but it also ensures that the user experience, content, and branding of the site are high-quality.

Using the Detailed SEO tool, you can look into ways to improve your website, such as updating the metadata, checking that all images have alt text, ensuring that the site is indexed, checking for broken links, and so much more. It will also help identify any bugs as well as areas for optimization, such as including your target keywords in the meta description.

2. YCS

Youtube Comment Search provides you with a quick way to search through hundreds of YouTube video comments. 

Social media management can be tedious, and while there are analytics already integrated into each social platform, they don’t help when it comes to non-tagged mentions. This becomes even harder when a video increases in popularity, leading to hundreds or even thousands of comments to sift through.

With this helpful YouTube plugin, you can easily search for mentions of your brand in the video’s comments and transcript. Not only will this aid in finding any negative mentions of your brand that need to be addressed, but it can also help you identify whether a vaguely titled video actually mentions your brand at all. 

3. Filmot

The Filmot tool allows you to search through both auto-generated and manual transcripts across hundreds of YouTube videos.

How do you find actual videos about your brand if it’s not directly mentioned in the title? YouTube search features are pretty good, but you can’t guarantee that every single mention of your brand will come up from an organic search.

This is why the Filmot startup was created. With this tool, you can search both YouTube titles and YouTube transcripts to find those sneaky mentions that you may have never seen otherwise. The tool searches through multiple languages and offers numerous filtering abilities to get as detailed as you’d like in your search. 

4. ChatGPT

OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool has many uses, from content creation to debugging complex lines of code. 

We have only scratched the surface of AI chatbots’ potential, but there are already plenty of great uses specific to ORM and SEO. The free version of ChatGPT can play a major role in streamlining business strategies, especially for small businesses or even one-man startups.

Use this tool to bounce business ideas off of or ask for advice on how to properly and professionally respond to negative customer feedback. Need alt text for a large number of photos? Ask ChatGPT to write it for you; it can analyze images. 

The tool is also helpful for coming up with engaging social media captions or ideas for social media posts in general. There are endless possibilities, so our biggest tip is to just play around, try asking the same question in different ways, and see where a tool like ChatGPT can take you! 

5. Yelp Improvement Calculator 

Go Fish Digital’s Yelp Improvement Calculator is a tool for identifying the number of new positive reviews needed to improve one’s overall star rating on Yelp. 

Yelp is arguably one of the trickiest review platforms to manage. From the ominous review filter to the no-soliciting rule, many businesses feel lost when they see low ratings for their Yelp page. Something we are often asked is, “How many positive reviews is it going to take to get an x star rating?” 

While it can be difficult to give a precise estimate, this tool can get you pretty close! Simply input the current number of reviews of each star rating,  your desired overall rating, and hit “Calculate.” 

Once you have a general idea of how many new 5-star reviews you’ll need, you can plan a more detailed marketing strategy and set milestones toward your review goal. The Yelp Calculator can also help you better understand how much weight each star rating holds in regard to the overall star rating. 

6. Google’s Spam Report 

Google’s Spam Report allows you to submit 1 or more URLs to report any spammy content you may come across.

When conducting an audit of your online reputation, it’s important to look at negative content ranking within the first three pages. Occasionally, spammy content such as random one-page sites, link farming sites, or low-quality news sites can rank for your target keywords, harming your overall reputation.

Using Google’s spam report tool, you can collect these URLs and report them as spam. After entering the URL and reasoning for reporting, you may get an additional set of questions (as pictured above) to help Google understand what exactly is spammy about the page. You can also put optional notes before submitting the form to include any other relevant information, such as the keyword that this page is ranking for. In combination with Google’s March 2024 algorithm update, you should be seeing less and less spammy content over time. 

7. Google’s Alerts

Google’s Alerts allows you to put in any keyword or keyphrase you’d like to track, then sends you periodic updates on any recent news, articles, or other activity related to that keyword in the SERPs.

Not everyone has the time to Google themselves or their business on a daily basis, especially if you own multiple businesses or have a wide range of target keywords you want to keep track of. Even if you do manually search, you may still miss an alert or get to it late.

That’s where Google’s Alerts come in. Using quotations, you can set up alerts for any and all keywords relevant to your business. This can include your business’s name, CEO, a specific product name, or really anything at all. Once set, Google will send you periodic alerts every time that keyword is mentioned in a new piece of content. This is especially helpful for any businesses that get mentioned in a lot of third-party news or blog content. You can also customize the alerts to get them the moment something is posted or have them aggregated into a once-a-week list of all mentions. You can even use it to keep track of your competitors as well!

Other Helpful Reputation Management Tools

Although these reputation management tools are not free, they can be very helpful for automated research, data analysis, and management.

• Keyhole – Monitor online mentions and chatter about your brand. Keyhole allows tracking for numerous social media sites, blogs, and more. Keyhole also applies an auto-generated sentiment to each mention, so you don’t have to manually review everything.
• Ahrefs – Conduct SEO research for keywords, link building, site audits, and more. Ahrefs also offers educational resources for those wanting to dive into the world of SEO. This tool is also helpful for looking at the backlinks that currently exist for your owned content to ensure that they are quality and not lost. 
• ReviewPush – ReviewPush is a cloud-based tool that helps businesses monitor and manage their online reviews across various platforms. It provides features for review collection, analysis, management, and promotion, aiming to optimize customer feedback and enhance online reputation.

Effectively managing your online reputation takes a lot of time and effort, but in today’s digital age, it’s a crucial and worthwhile investment. Using these online reputation management tools can give you a closer look at your overall reputation and help you be prepared if your business receives any negative press. 

At Go Fish Digital, we’ve developed custom tools to help automate SERP results tracking, reviews management, and more. We’ve also got a team of experts who know how to handle everything from proactive ORM to crisis management. If you’re interested in getting to know more about our online reputation management services, contact us today! 

The Best 7 Online Reputation Management Tools for 2024 is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Let’s dive in!

Do Online Reviews Really Matter?

Online reviews have become an increasingly popular resource for people researching a business or service. In fact, a study we conducted in 2023 found that dropping from a 4 to 3-star review rating led to a 70% decrease in consumer trust in a business. With this in mind, businesses are putting more effort toward building their online reputation, including managing their online review platforms. 

On the flipside, consumers are also using reviews more frequently to provide feedback to businesses they’ve interacted with. This feedback can be highly valuable to businesses, as they can use it to see where they’re doing well and what they need to improve on. Review platforms can also provide a direct line of communication from consumer to customer support, aiding in complaint resolution.

Why Do Consumers Leave Online Reviews?

As a business owner, you may wonder, “Why did my customer leave a negative review instead of contacting my business directly?” While there are many reasons why a customer might leave a positive or negative review, the main one is likely the convenience and accessibility of review sites. If a business does not make their customer service contact easy to find online, or require a deluge of menu options to reach a team member, a consumer may find it much easier to just leave a review. 

There is also an idea for many consumers that by leaving a public review of their complaints, they are more likely to get a response and/or resolution to their issue. Consumers know that businesses do not want negative reviews harming their reputation, so they assume that by leaving one, the business will work above and beyond to make things right. We see this idea amplified by things like review bombing, where hundreds or thousands of users leave negative reviews in an effort to tank a business’ ratings because they feel a business did something wrong. 

Can Businesses Delete Negative Online Reviews?

There is a common misconception that businesses have much more control over their online reviews than they actually do. For instance, you may have seen people online complain that a business has been “deleting negative reviews” on Yelp, Google, or some other review platform. But is this actually true? Can businesses really just delete all their negative reviews? 

To cut to the chase, no, there is no option for businesses to outright delete negative reviews across the most popular review platforms. But let’s take a look at what some of these platforms have to say about negative review removal: 

Yelp

Negative reviews on Yelp can be deleted only by the customer who posted them. Yelp’s moderators may also filter out or remove them due to a guideline violation. 

Yelp strongly encourages businesses to provide the customer with a solution-focused, thoughtful response. If a business believes a review should be removed rather than responded to, Yelp recommends that the business report the review to moderators. It’s important to note that anyone can report a review to Yelp, not just the business itself.

Reporting a review is not guaranteed to remove it, however, and attempting to abuse Yelp’s reporting options with mass reporting of all negative reviews can still get businesses in trouble. This is why Yelp has a few precautions in place, such as removing the ability for multiple users to report a single review. If a review has already been reported before, but Yelp moderators decided at that time to keep the review up, it cannot be reported again. When reporting again, Yelp will respond with a message stating that it has already been brought to their attention and they will not be re-evaluating the decision. 

Yelp has also stated that it “stands firmly against businesses pressuring customers or paying them to change or remove reviews.” While a business could technically attempt to do this to change a negative review into a positive one, it’s well known that this is in poor taste, and could lead to some serious repercussions for the business. Businesses could even risk getting into trouble with the FTC over an undisclosed incentivized review. Because of these risks, it’s highly uncommon for a business to take such drastic measures just to have a single negative review updated to a positive one. 

Google

If a business wants Google to remove a negative review, their only option is to report it. Google asks that businesses only report the reviews that “violate Google policies” and that you shouldn’t “report a review just because you disagree with it or don’t like it.”

While Google is not as detailed as Yelp on review removal, it’s clear that they want to remain an unbiased third party by stating that they don’t “get involved when businesses and customers disagree about facts.” 

As with Yelp, anyone can report a review on Google, not just the business itself. Within a Google Business Profile, businesses can open the Reviews Management Tool to check the status of a reported review. If Google finds that there were no policy violations, businesses are allowed a one-time appeal of the decision. After that, a review is unlikely to be re-evaluated for removal.

Aside from reporting, the only other option for a review to be removed is if the customer decides to delete it themselves, or if Google’s automated moderation tools find a guideline violation on their own. 

Trustpilot

Although Trustpilot offers both a free and a paid version of their platform to businesses, they make it clear that there are no differences in terms of TrustScore or flagging ability between the two versions. Trustpilot states that “all businesses—free and paid—are allowed to flag reviews they believe breach our guidelines.” They also clarify that “simply not liking a review is not a legitimate reason” to flag it. 

Trustpilot does not offer businesses the option to pay for negative review removal either, and like the other review platforms, Trustpilot aims to remain an unbiased third party in the situation. When a business flags a negative review, Trustpilot will typically reach out to the reviewer to ask for some form of proof that they had a legitimate interaction with the business’ product or service. This could be an order number, a receipt, or some other documentation. If the reviewer fails to provide adequate documentation, Trustpilot will remove the review. 

Trustpilot also states that “flagging a large number of reviews or re-flagging reviews without good reason can be considered misuse of the flagging tool.” If a business is caught repeatedly abusing the flagging tool, Trustpilot will send them a warning to stop. If misuse continues, a Consumer Warning flag will appear on the business’ page, which could lead to the complete termination of any contract the business has with Trustpilot.  

BBB

Unique from other review sites, BBB (Better Business Bureau) offers both reviews and complaints on their platform. BBB explains that “a consumer files a complaint when the consumer wants BBB’s help to resolve a dispute with a company, usually (but not always) involving a monetary claim, and wants to share the outcome with the public.” In contrast, “customer reviews allow consumers to share with BBB and the public their opinion – good or bad – about companies with which they had a marketplace interaction.”

BBB does not offer the ability to flag or report complaints, unlike other review platforms. BBB states that complaints “cannot be changed, edited, or deleted once it has been submitted.” This means even the reviewer is unable to delete their own review. 

As for reviews, businesses can respond to BBB with an explanation of their side if they disagree with the customer’s statements. The only way a review can be removed is if the review contains sensitive information, such as phone numbers or addresses, or uses hate speech or abusive language. However, the decision to remove a review for these reasons is up to BBB, and businesses cannot flag or report it themselves. 

Can Businesses Buy Positive Reviews?

Along the same vein, many believe that businesses can buy or otherwise incentivize positive reviews. You may have seen ads posted for businesses like “Leave us a Google review for 15% off your next purchase!” or “Rate us on Facebook for a free basket of fries!” Is this actually allowed? Is it poor practice? While review solicitation policies can differ amongst popular review sites, they tend to follow similar guidelines when it comes to incentivized reviews. 

Yelp

Review soliciting of any kind is strictly prohibited on Yelp. If a business is caught soliciting reviews, Yelp will enact a set of penalties based on the severity of the business’ activity. Paying for or incentivizing reviews in any way is also strictly prohibited, according to Yelp’s guidelines. 

Google

While review solicitation is allowed on Google, the platform states that “business owners shouldn’t offer incentives to customers to leave reviews.” If Google gets a slew of positive reviews for a business, and Google has reason to believe that they were incentivized, the reviews will be removed for violating guidelines. 

Trustpilot

Businesses are allowed to invite customers to leave feedback on Trustpilot, however, the platform warns users that “receiving an incentive to write, change or delete a review is a big no-no.” Trustpilot encourages users who receive an incentive to report it on their platform. 

BBB

Simply put, “BBB’s Customer Review Acceptance Policy goes beyond FTC’s legal requirements and prohibits customer reviews that are incentivized even if a disclosure is made.” Incentivizing reviews violates BBB’s Standards for Trust, and “BBB may include a notice on the Business Profile to inform consumers about the practice” if this activity is discovered. 

Does BBB Actually Force Businesses to Resolve Complaints?

While discussing the authenticity of review sites, we find it important to clear up some misinformation regarding the BBB. There seems to be an overarching idea that the BBB has direct power or control over businesses, and can actually take steps to force businesses to resolve complaints. In order to explain the validity of this idea, let’s first build an understanding of the Better Business Bureau.

What is the Better Business Bureau?

The Better Business Bureau, commonly known as the BBB, is self-described as a platform that “sets standards for ethical business behavior and monitors compliance.” This description, combined with the “bureau” in the name, has led many to believe that the BBB has government connections. 

Is the BBB Affiliated with Government Organizations?

The truth is that the BBB is yet another privately owned organization like Yelp, Trustpilot, and other review platforms. As explained on Wikipedia, the “Better Business Bureau is not affiliated with any governmental agency,” and although their “policy is to refrain from recommending or endorsing any specific business … they still advocate for business interests.”

To be clear, we do not believe that the BBB is engaging in any deceptive activities to mislead consumers into believing they have more power over businesses than they actually do. However, between the name, description, and consumer perception, the BBB has built their reputation as a leading platform for consumer-business resolution. 

Why do Businesses Care About BBB Ratings?

Businesses tend to take BBB more seriously than other platforms because they know consumers hold BBB ratings to a higher standard and that a negative letter or star rating on the platform can really tank consumers’ trust in a business. BBB also tends to rank highly in businesses’ search results, especially for a query like “[business name] reviews.” 

This, in turn, encourages businesses to resolve complaints and come to a resolution with all customers on the BBB platform. Additionally, businesses cannot maintain a good letter rating on BBB if they are not actively responding to and working toward complaint resolutions. Luckily for businesses, the BBB is happy to aid them in improving their reputation on the platform by providing an accreditation program. In order to be accredited, a business must meet the BBB’s accreditation standards, as well as pay a yearly membership fee to the platform. 

How to Spot a Fake Review

Now that we’ve discussed the popular review platforms’ guidelines on review deletion and incentivization, let’s take a look at reasons why a fake or biased review may still end up on a review site. 

Despite their policies and moderation tools, no review platform can catch 100% of false or biased reviews. These platforms can’t know for sure if a review was incentivized, whether the reviewer has a conflict of interest with the business, or if the review content is genuine. They also can’t know if a business is verbally requesting or incentivizing reviews against guidelines unless reported. 

This is why most popular review platforms offer some form of review reporting or flagging to both the business and outside parties. These tools help keep ratings honest and aid platforms in catching fake reviews that their automated filters may have missed. It’s important to note that although anyone can technically flag any review for any reason, the decision to remove is ultimately up to the review platform’s moderators. There is no magic number of review flags that automatically equate to a review being removed. 

So, how do you spot a fake, biased, or incentivized review when researching a company? Here are a few things to look out for:

• The review is overly positive or lacks detail: While you can’t assume that every positive review was incentivized, it’s always a good idea to take overly positive reviews with a grain of salt. Some review sites, like Yelp and Trustpilot, value the description of a genuine consumer experience in their reviews. If you see a review on these platforms that is unusually short and generic, it may not be authentic. Keep in mind that reviewers who had a negative experience are more likely to provide detail than those who had a positive one, so this should not be your only reason for believing a review is fake. 
• The review has nothing to do with the entity being reviewed: A big red flag when reading through reviews is if the content of the review has nothing to do with the entity being reviewed. For instance, sometimes the content of the review is just the reviewer’s name, all emojis, or some other form of gibberish unrelated to the entity. 
• The review listing features mass amounts of reviews within a short time period: If your local small-owned donut shop suddenly has 200 overly positive or overly negative reviews, you may have cause for suspicion. Mass amounts of overly positive reviews within a short period of time could suggest that a business put some sort of incentivization in place to encourage customers to leave positive reviews. Conversely, mass amounts of negative reviews could be a review bombing attack on a business. 
• Multiple reviews use the same content: If you see multiple reviews using the exact same sentence(s), it’s likely that they are bots copying and pasting the text into multiple review submissions. 
• The reviewer explains a bias within their review: This will be one of the more obvious tells, but there are some reviewers that actually write within the review content that a business incentivized them to leave a positive review. We can also see this with negative reviews in reviewing bombing attacks, where the reviewer will state that they saw something negative about the business online, which prompted them to leave a bad review. This makes it clear that the reviewer likely did not have a personal experience with the business. 

If you suspect a review is fake, biased, incentivized, or violating a review platform’s guidelines in any way, you are welcome to report that review to the platform. This helps keep review listings authentic, accurate, and free of misleading reviews. 

Research Reviews with Confidence

With the developments of AI and the increasing spread of misinformation online, it’s important for consumers to be educated and up to date on the inner workings of popular review platforms. With the right tools and knowledge, consumers can feel confident researching a business’ review listings. It’s clear that online review platforms have put many safety precautions in place to keep their review content authentic, however, it’s still important for consumers to take what they read with a grain of salt. 

Businesses should also remain up to date on each review platform’s guidelines and policies for review solicitation, incentivization, and flagging. A consumer warning posted on a business’ review listing can be detrimental to consumer trust. Complaint resolution and customer satisfaction should be the number one priority for all businesses and are ultimately what will build trust for other potential customers reading through the reviews. 

If you need assistance managing your business’ review platforms, Go Fish Digital can help. Our Online Reputation Management team is experienced in managing the most popular review platforms and can help you build a customized review management strategy that gets your business’ reputation on track. Contact us today to learn more! 

The Truth Behind Online Reviews: Can They Be Trusted? is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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What Is Online Reputation Management? 

Online reputation management (ORM) is the process of monitoring the mentions, reviews, and overall sentiment surrounding a specific business or individual. The goal of reputation management is to create a search engine results page (SERP) that features positive owned and 3rd party content, managed review sites, and optimized social media profiles, in order to give potential clients a great first impression. ORM also aims to help clients in addressing and responding to negative feedback, in order to improve business practices and resolve client issues.  

What Are The Benefits Of Online Reputation Management? 

Online reputation management has become just as crucial to businesses and individuals as word of mouth, perhaps even more so. A recent Go Fish Digital data study revealed that dropping from a 4-star to a 3-star review rating can result in a -70% decrease in consumer trust. 

But consumers and clients aren’t just looking at reviews these days. These individuals will look into recent news stories, social media comments, Reddit threads, and even watch non-sponsored video reviews before deciding to purchase a product or service. 

Additionally, if you or your business are hit with a reputation crisis, it’ll be much harder to recover from if you don’t already have your online reputation in good standing. These are just a few reasons why online reputation should be a top priority for you and your business.

How are SEO and Online Reputation Management Related? 

Online reputation management and SEO generally have two different goals. With reputation management, you’ll oftentimes be looking at ways to suppress negative articles in the search results. The goal in these situations is to decrease the visibility of specific content. ORM also looks at improving things such as online reviews or social media mentions, which SEO does not. 

With SEO, you’re generally looking to increase the visibility of owned-content. This is done through a combination of content, link-building and technical initiatives. SEO is a commonly used tactic when implementing an ORM strategy.  

Steps To Improve Your Online Reputation: 

1. Audit Your Digital Reputation

There are a number of sources that factor into your online reputation, including review sites, rich snippets, social media pages, and more. 

In order to narrow down the top priorities, you’ll want to first search your business name in Google and see what type of content appears on the first 1-2 pages. Take note of review sites and their ratings, social media pages, owned and 3rd party content, and any rich snippet features that may appear. 

Ask yourself the following questions: 

• Which review sites have below a 4 star rating? 
• Is there any negative press about my business? 
• What type of questions are being asked in Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) results? 
• Where is Google pulling its PAA answers from? 

Once you have a general idea of the sentiment of your business’ SERPs, you can begin by taking a deeper dive into the most popular reputation sources. These can include the following:

• Review sites: Yelp, Google, Trustpilot, BBB, Glassdoor, Indeed
• Social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, Instagram
• 3rd party content: Press releases, news stories, blog posts, opinion pieces, long form reviews

After you’ve reviewed your SERP results, you should have a good understanding of the negative, neutral, and positive content that surrounds your business. Any negative content or low review site ratings should be your first priority in improving your overall online reputation. If you’re still unsure about what your overall sentiment looks like, check out our SERP sentiment score calculation. 

2. Calculate Your Reputation Score

We’ve created a simple calculation to determine your overall SERP sentiment score that can be applied to each page (or every 10 results) of the SERP. 

We’ll start with a 100-point ranking system, where each rank is assigned a numerical value. Next, you’ll determine the sentiment of each URL in each rank, marking them as positive, neutral, or negative. For each neutral URL, you’ll subtract half that rank’s points from the overall score; for each negative, you’ll subtract all of the points from that rank. 

Once you’ve done this for each URL on page 1 of your SERP (or 10 total URLs), you’ll be left with an overall sentiment score. The higher the number is, the more positive your SERPs are. 

Calculating your SERP sentiment score can be a great starting point if you are looking to improve your online reputation but aren’t sure what to tackle first.

3. Define Your Online Reputation Strategy

Now that you’ve identified your overall sentiment score and what negative content you’ll need to target, we can start building out a reputation improvement strategy. Your strategy should be based on what specifically you’ll be targeting. 

For example, if you’ve found that your Yelp, BBB, and Google reviews have low star ratings, you’ll want to build out a strategy focused on gaining new positive reviews, flagging negative ones, and responding to customer complaints. 

If you’ve discovered several negative news articles or blog posts, you’ll need a content strategy focused on creating new, positive content surrounding your business name and related keywords. 

While your online reputation strategy will vary depending on your situation, below you can find some examples: 

1. Suppress negative articles ranking well in the search results
2. Improve Yelp star ratings
3. Remove negative Yelp reviews
4. Clean up social media mentions
5. Improve the rankings of branded pages in the search results
6. Improve your Glassdoor rating

4. Suppress Negative Search Results

You’ve identified the negative URLs ranking on the first 1-2 pages for your business name, but how do you get rid of them? One method is to optimize positive content ranking below the negatives, so that it has a better chance of outranking those negative URLs. Take these search results for “pete davidson” for example:

We can see here that there are multiple articles discussing a controversy between Davidson and PETA. The Rolling Stone result is ranking above the more favorable People result, so how do we get those to switch places? 

The first thing we’d recommend is to go in and make updates to the People article. Perhaps it’s a bit outdated at the moment, or there are new accomplishments in Davidson’s career that can be added. We can also update things such as the photos, meta description, and even title if possible. Changes like these send signals to Google that this page is fresh, relevant, and accurate. 

Next, we’d focus on increasing positive engagement to the People URL. There are several ways to increase engagement, which include sharing to social media, creating backlinks from owned assets, and optimizing the page content for Featured Snippets. All of these methods can help increase visibility and organic click through rate (CTR) to the positive URL. Once Google sees more positive engagement is going towards the People URL vs the Rolling Stone URL, it may determine that users value the People URL more, thus pushing it above Rolling Stone.

Apply this strategy to each positive URL that is ranking just below the negative results, and be sure to track your SERP sentiment score and URL ranks to catch any changes. It will not happen overnight, but eventually you should see things start to move around and the positive URLs rise above the negatives. 

5. Create Positive Content

Content creation is another great strategy for suppressing negative search results. However, you shouldn’t limit your content creation strategy to things such as your primary site’s blog posts or press releases. When working with clients to create new content, we look into any unclaimed social and business profiles as well. 

The first profiles we’ll look at are typical professional ones, which include Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and Inc.com. These sites typically rank very well for a business brand search, and provide positive, owned content regarding the business that’s separate from their primary website. 

If social media plays a significant role in the client’s business space, we’ll look into optimizing those profiles as well, including the bios, captions, and keywords. 

If you do want to create new blog content, try looking into posting that content on a microsite instead of your business’ primary website. This is because typically a business’ website already ranks in the top 10 when searching the business’ name, and any additional content on that site may not be pulled out as a separate result by Google. 

Microsites are typically one-page sites that have positive content that can rank independently in your SERP. You’ll want to make sure that any content posted on these microsites (or any 3rd party site) is unique from your existing content. 

For example, if you took a blog post from your primary site and simply reposted it on your microsite, Google would most likely see this as duplicate content and therefore not rank both. This would defeat the purpose of having a microsite. 

Content creation should be considered a long-term strategy if you’re hoping to keep those negative results suppressed. It will also come in handy if any other negative press comes out about your business, as you’ll already have your SERPs filled with fresh, positive content. For more ways to suppress negative content, check out our blog post on How to Remove & Suppress Negative Search Results. 

6. Find Third Party Contribution Opportunities

Another effective way to create positive content is to find third party sites that are completely independent of your business’ website. These can include sites like IdeaMensch, Medium, your LinkedIn blog, and any other niche blogs that are relevant to your business’ field. 

This new, positive content can be just what you need to suppress negative search results. Take Chris Orsaris’ SERPs for example:

Despite the New York Post article being 10 years old, it still ranks in Orsaris’ top 10 results. However, it appears Orsaris created positive content for IdeaMensch, which shot to the top of his SERP and outranked the negative article. 

As always, you’ll want to make sure that all your content on these various third party sites are independent of each other and of the content you post on your business website. Be creative with this strategy; you can write content about the CEO on IdeaMensch, thought leadership content on Medium, and content featuring tips or recent achievements on LinkedIn. Just be sure to remain consistent with posting amongst these sites, whether it’s once a week or once a month, you’ll want to show Google that these sites are frequently updated with valuable information. 

7. Generate More Positive Reviews

Before going out and requesting new reviews for any review site, you’ll want to be sure to thoroughly read each review site’s guidelines. 

For instance, Yelp has very strict guidelines when it comes to review requests, whereas Google is a bit more lax. 

After understanding the guidelines of the review site you’re targeting, the next step is to decide what review request strategy makes the most sense for your business. Below are a few options that our clients use for review sites other than Yelp:

1. Ask in person or over the phone after a positive interaction – “We’d love to hear feedback about your experience today, please take a moment to leave us a review on [review site]”
2. Create a new email campaign with links to your different review sites, or add links to your existing email campaigns
3. Add a QR code that links to a review site on your print media that can be handed to in-person customers or posted on flyers and other promotional materials
4. Share positive customer feedback on social media channels, with a link for other users to leave a review as well
5. If your site uses a chat functionality, request reviews after positive customer experiences

8. Remove Negative Reviews

Similarly to requesting reviews, each site has its own guidelines when it comes to flagging reviews. 

In order to have the best chance at getting a flagged review removed, you’ll want to only flag reviews that actually violate the site’s guidelines. If a review site’s flagging process has the option to leave additional context or messaging, try to point out the specific guideline that the review is violating. 

Here are some of the most popular review sites’ guidelines:

• Yelp 
• Google
• Trustpilot 
• Indeed 
• Glassdoor

Not all review sites send updates about a flagged review, so you’ll want to create a tracking sheet of all flagged reviews and check back in periodically to see which ones have been removed. Sites like Yelp and Trustpilot may also limit review flagging, if a review was already previously flagged or if you’ve flagged too many reviews at a time. 

Avoid appearing spammy to these review sites by sticking to the guidelines, flagging only a few at a time, and avoid spamming a single review with multiple flag requests. 

9. Respond To Negative Reviews

While it’s not always pleasant to respond to negative critique about you or your business, it’s important to always respond to negative reviews when possible. There are of course exceptions to this rule, as there are some negative reviews that are purely insulting, spammy, or make serious accusations that your business may not want to make a public response to. However, for the standard negative reviews, here are a few tips on responding to them:

1. Thank the reviewer for their feedback. Yes, even negative feedback can still be just as important as positive feedback, as it can give you an idea of possible changes or improvements you can make to your business. 
2. Address their complaints directly (when applicable). There’s nothing more frustrating for reviewers than leaving a genuine complaint on a business only to get a robotic, generic response that doesn’t acknowledge the issues. You should specifically mention their concern if possible and make it clear that your business takes any and all complaints seriously. 
3. Share customer care contact info. This can be email, phone, or a link to a contact form on your website. This allows the reviewer to decide if they’d like to follow up on the issue with your team directly, and provides them an avenue to come to a resolution. 

Below is a great example of a well done response to a negative review of Meow Wolf Denver:

Remember, responding to negative reviews is not just for the individual who left the review, but it also shows other users who may be reading the reviews that your business genuinely cares and considers customer/client feedback. By leaving unique responses that acknowledge the reviewer’s concerns with an offer for further contact to resolve the issues, you’re showing how much integrity and care your business has for its customers. 

10. Monitor Your Brand Mentions

There are several tracking tools you can use when it comes to monitoring mentions. A few of our favorites at GFD include Keyhole or SproutSocial for social media, Google Alerts for SERP mentions, and Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner for keyword tracking. 

However, it’s important to note that while these tools are extremely useful, they may not capture everything. 

This is why you should have a team dedicated to manually monitoring mentions as well. They can do this by searching your business name and relevant keywords on various social media sites, comment sections, Google, relevant blogs or forums, and anywhere else you may have a presence. 

Remember that someone may be talking about your business without using your full name or tagging the business directly.

11. Proactively Manage Your Online Reputation

You don’t need to have an active reputation crisis to manage your online reputation. In fact, you’ll be in a much better position to handle a reputation crisis in the future if you already have your day-to-day reputation under control. This includes consistent monitoring of your online review sites, creating fresh content optimized for your target keywords, and tracking your SERP sentiment scores. 

These tracking and monitoring duties should be assigned to specific team members to check in on at least once a month. The easiest way to keep track of things is to create tracking sheets of data such as your month to month SERP sentiment score, social mentions, new content ideas, and review site ratings. 

If you know you have something big coming up (yearly sales, press releases, C-level staff changes, etc), then your team should keep an extra eye on things during that time. Even when announcing something positive about your business, there is always a chance that the extra visibility may motivate any unhappy parties to share negative sentiment online. 

If you know the current state of your reputation, and are actively monitoring for any new mentions or press, then you should have plenty of time to respond to and handle any new negative sentiment that comes your way.

Online Reputation Management Tools

Google Autocomplete API

When a person enters a query into Google’s search box, Google Autocomplete provides predicted phrases to finish that query. Most searchers can only see 4 out of 10 Google Autocomplete results, which does not provide a full picture of the predictions associated with that query.

The Google Autocomplete API online reputation management tool allows users to see all ten results, making it possible to strategize if any negative phrases come up in the predictions associated with your business, such as “scam” or “complaints.”

Complaint Website Search

Complaint websites are as they sound: websites for people to leave negative feedback about businesses. If left unaddressed, seeing these complaints can lead other consumers to avoid your business. Though you can look through the SERPs manually to find these reviews, there may be complaints on the web that aren’t ranking yet but may in the future.

This complaint search tool searches 40+ complaint websites to see if your site appears so you can tackle negative feedback head-on.

Yelp Improvement Calculator

Yelp is one of the top review sites currently on the web. These ratings can significantly contribute to the well-being of your business. Our Yelp improvement calculator lets you evaluate how your ratings play into the overarching average. Use the tool to determine how many five-star reviews you need to bump up your rating. If your goal is five stars, this calculator makes it easy to see how close you are.

Whether you’d like to be proactive about your online reputation, or you’re currently facing a reputation crisis, our Online Reputation Management team is ready to help. Reach out to get started today!

Related Articles

• How to Remove & Suppress Negative Search Results
• How To Repair Your Online Reputation
• How To Calculate Your Online Reputation Score
• How to Increase Your Yelp Rating Using Yelp’s 7 Content Guidelines
• How to Remove Negative News Articles From Google
• Preventative Online Reputation Management

The Ultimate Guide To Online Reputation Management is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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• Online Reviews Management
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How many consumers turn to online reviews before making a purchasing decision?

Around 98% of consumers answered that they are likely to utilize online reviews while making a purchasing decision. More than half of respondents specified that they are “extremely likely” to use online reviews.

Takeaway #1: Online reviews have become a large factor in helping consumers decide whether or not they are willing to make a purchasing decision. 

Do online reviews have any affect on consumers’ purchasing decisions?

Just over 99% of consumers answered that online reviews are at least “somewhat important” when making a purchasing decision, while 84% of consumers specified that online reviews are “very” or “extremely” important to their overall decision. 

Takeaway #2: When researching a product or service, consumers value the feedback in online reviews, and take that feedback into serious consideration before making their final decision.  

How comfortable do consumers feel about a product or service based on the star rating?

1025 surveyed said they would trust a 4 star product or service. However only 307 said they would trust one with 3-stars. This results in a -70% decrease in trust when moving from 4 stars to 3 stars. This number drops even further to less than 1% with a 1 to 2-star rating.

Takeaway #3: Dropping just one star from a 4 to a 3 star rating on a product or service can drastically affect a consumer’s comfort level when it comes to making a purchasing decision. consumers value customer feedback and begin to question their decision when seeing that the overall sentiment surrounding a product or service is less than a 4 star rating. 

Can age factor into the likelihood of a consumer researching a product or service before making a purchase?

Based on the data from our survey, age does play a role in the decision to research before making a purchase. Consumers 18-40 years old answered that they would research a product or service at any price point before making a purchasing decision. Conversely, over half of consumers 57+ answered they would not research before making a purchasing decision, regardless of price point.

Takeaway #4: Despite some older consumers not taking time to research a product or service online before making a purchase, it’s clear that the majority of consumers still rely on online reviews to help make a decision. For many consumers who took part in our survey, the price point does not matter as much, as they are interested in reading online reviews regardless of how expensive a product or service is. 

How many negative articles would it take to stop a consumer from making a purchase during their research of a product or service?

55% of consumers answered that it would only take 2-3 negative articles in the search results for them to decide against purchasing a particular product or service, while 2.6% said it would only take 1 negative article to stop them. 

Takeaway #5: Reviews are not just in the form of star ratings or Yelp listings. consumers look at the top ranking articles as well when researching a product or service, and seeing multiple negative articles can bring their research to a halt, ultimately deciding to not follow through with their purchase. 

Methodology

We surveyed 1,070 people to ask their opinions on online reviews and how much they influence their purchasing decisions. We analyzed this data to find key consumer insights based on their survey responses as well as key demographic information.  

As this data confirms, online reviews can heavily influence a consumer’s ultimate decision when considering purchasing a product or service. This means that it’s important now more than ever to keep your online review sites well managed and optimized. This includes responding to reviews of all sentiment, understanding each review site’s guidelines, creating a review request strategy, and more. At Go Fish Digital, our Online Reputation Management team is well-versed in online review management. To learn more about our services, contact us today!

3-Star Reviews Result In A -70% Decrease In Trust [Data Study] is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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• Online Reputation Management
• Online Reviews Management
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In recent years, we’ve seen that review bombing has no limits. From media like Marvel’s Eternals to local restaurants, it seems nothing is safe from review bombing. 

What Is Review Bombing?

A review bomb is an internet phenomenon where a large group of individuals, sometimes referred to as trolls, purposefully leave negative reviews on rating sites with the intent of tanking ratings of businesses, media, or individuals. These negative reviews often contain false information or misinformation, and come from users who have not had a personal experience with the entity they are reviewing.

Does Review Bombing Actually Hurt Businesses?

To some, a few fake or exaggerated negative reviews may not sound like a big deal. However, online reviews can make or break a business, and can be a deciding factor in whether or not a consumer wants to engage with that business. In a standard review bombing, especially when amplified by social media, there can be hundreds if not thousands of negative reviews pouring in at once. This can easily tank a business’s online ratings, even if the reviews are false, and negatively affect its online reputation as a whole.

How Can Social Media Apps Like TikTok Amplify Review Bombing?

It seems that there is a new viral video or post on social media almost every day. Sometimes this virality is due to the creator already having a large following, but other times a video can be so enraging, polarizing, or downright unbelievable that viewers share it like a wildfire. With mass amounts of views comes mass amounts of comments, allowing both information and misinformation to be shared very quickly. It only takes one comment to drop a store location, an employee’s full name, or a phone number to create a snowball effect that can lead to a review bombing. 

One of our ORM clients experienced this firsthand last year. A TikTok creator posted a video of a rogue customer at their place of work, and the video quickly went viral. Within the comments, someone incorrectly stated that the individual worked for our client, hinting that other users should leave our client poor reviews. As is typical across the comment sections of most social media platforms, TikTok isn’t known as an online environment where fact-checking commonly occurs. 

Once other users saw the name of our client, they rushed to Google, Yelp, and other review sites to leave negative ratings. Luckily, our client brought this to our attention before the review bombing got out of hand, and we were able to take action on the spot to put a halt to the attack, as well as publicly correct the misinformation. It also helped that the individual in the video did not in fact work for our client’s company as of present day, so the false reviews were even easier to remove.

Do Review Sites Allow Review Bombing?

Review bombing typically violates most popular review sites’ guidelines, as the reviews are false, hateful, or otherwise ingenuine in nature. Let’s see what policies are in place at the most popular review sites to combat review bombing attacks.

Google

According to Google, review policies were updated to better protect businesses after the company saw an increase in reviews criticizing businesses’ COVID-19 protocols. Google stated that once a new policy is implemented, “it’s turned into training material — both for our operators and machine learning algorithms.” Even with training, the algorithms cannot always flag every single review from a review bomb attack, so it’s important to learn how to manage and report Google reviews as well.

Yelp

Yelp followed in Google’s footsteps by updating their own review policies. Yelp stated that their moderators have a system in place to notify when mass amounts of reviews are hitting a business’s page in a short period of time. “If warranted, our team of moderators will investigate and may temporarily disable the ability to post as we place an alert over the business’s reviews.” Yelp will also make an effort to “clean up” the review page once incoming reviews have returned to their normal rate, aiming to preserve only the accurate and truthful customer experiences on the page. 

Facebook

Facebook does not appear to have a specific policy in place to prevent review bombing, but they do offer the option to disable reviews and recommendations. You can also gather all the reviews from the review bombing attack and report them for violating Facebook’s guidelines. 

Help! My Business Is Getting Review Bombed—What Can I Do?

While it may feel like everything is on fire, it’s important to take a moment to calm down and analyze the situation. First, try to identify the following: 

• Which sites are the negative reviews coming through? 
• Is there a specific location or individual who is being targeted within the reviews? 
• Which employees or managers have the login info for the targeted review sites? 

After gathering this info, follow these five tips to save your online reputation:

1. Prevent new reviews from coming in. Some review sites, like Facebook, have an option to temporarily disable reviews. If you have other social media accounts, you may also want to disable comments and direct messages to prevent those pages from being bombarded as well. In extreme cases, you may find it necessary to temporarily private your social profiles all together. 
2. Verify that the review bomb is actually meant for your business. Like the case with our ORM client, users incorrectly stated that the individual they were targeting worked for our client, and so our client was wrongfully attacked. Misinformation can spread quickly online, so it’s important for you to figure out the reasoning behind the review bomb and if it’s even meant for you or your business. You can usually figure out what the issue is based off of the reviews themselves, as users will often name a specific employee, location, or describe an incident they saw take place in the video or post.
3. Make a public statement addressing the issue (if appropriate). Whether or not to make a public statement should be decided on a case by case basis, as it is not always appropriate or necessary for every review bombing. If you decide it is right for your business to make a public statement, be sure to take the time to create a well-thought out and intentionally worded statement. Be aware that there is always a risk the statement can be used against you. In the case of our ORM client, it made sense to make a public statement saying that the individual in the TikTok does not currently work for the company. Our client also felt it necessary to publicly denounce the behavior of the individual in the video as well.
4. Make note of how reviewers are writing about the individual or incident that took place. TikTok and other social media apps tend to have a younger audience, so it can be easy to identify which reviews were part of the review bombing and which reviews are genuine. Some of the reviews from our client’s review bombing incident even stated that they “came here from the TikTok video.” Statements like this will be very useful when it comes to attempting to remove negatives, so keep an eye out for them.
5. Gather a team to begin identifying and flagging reviews that came from the review bombing. This team can be composed of trusted employees, friends, or family members with an account on the targeted review site. You’ll want to specify the date and time that the review bombing started to help narrow down the list of negatives your team will need to flag. You’ll still need to follow appropriate guidelines when it comes to requesting employees to take on this task (i.e. employees should not feel forced or in fear for their job security if they choose not to participate in flagging). Likewise, don’t offer incentives to friends or family for flagging a review, as this could negatively affect your reputation as well.

Under an active review bomb attack, making the wrong move can reflect poorly on your online reputation, so you’ll want to carefully evaluate each suggestion to decide what will be best for your business as a whole. 

Need Help With Your Online Reputation?

Our online reputation management team can help to optimize your review sites, gather new reviews, and give you the tools to fight future review bomb attacks. To learn more about what online reputation management can do for your business, contact Go Fish Digital to get started today!

Review Bombing: 5 Tips to Save Your Online Reputation is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.