Same Reviewer Posting Identical Negative Reviews Across 15 Locations and Three Organizations

-

I recently tackled one of the more challenging tasks in local SEO — getting a fake Google Business Profile (GBP) review removed. Here's a full breakdown of the process, the roadblocks, and ultimately, how we succeeded.

The problem

Upon analysis, I discovered that the same review text had been posted across approximately 15 different Google Business Profiles, spanning multiple locations and three separate companies:

  • Southern Cross Group Services
  • Southern Cross Protection
  • Southern Cross Investigations


My client had no record of any customer interaction or engagement with this reviewer whatsoever. Furthermore, my client is an independent entity and is not affiliated with Southern Cross Protection or any similarly named organizations.

Initial actions taken

I began with the two standard methods available for flagging a fake review:

  1. Marked the review as "off-topic" directly on the listing.
  2. Submitted a formal removal request via the Google Review Management Tool.

Unfortunately, both of these methods rely on Google's automated detection system, which failed to identify or remove the fake review in this case.


Escalation steps

My next step was to escalate the matter to Google Business Profile's manual review support team, where I could present direct evidence. To build credibility and document the issue publicly, I posted details in two community forums:

  1. Local Search Forum thread
  2. Google Business Profile Community thread

I also reached out directly to Hava Ha, a GBP Silver Product Expert, through the Google Business Profile community forum (linked above). To support the escalation, I compiled all relevant evidence — affected listings, review URLs, and screenshots — into a shared Google Sheet:

View the evidence spreadsheet →

The outcome

We successfully resolved the fake review issue across all affected Google Business listings for my client, Southern Cross Group Services. Google accepted our third appeal, processed through a GBP Product Expert escalation. The entire process took approximately three months and required persistent, multi-channel effort.

~3
Months to resolve
15+
Listings affected
4.1 → 4.3
Rating improvement

As a result of the removal, Google also took down all reviews from the account "Don M": view profile →


The original fake review URL is no longer active: maps.app.goo.gl/puqhtgVWeNVEdQpo7

My client's overall Google rating improved from 4.1 to 4.3 following the cleanup — a meaningful result for a multi-location business.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Recovered from Spammy Structured Markup Penalty: How I Helped a UK-Based Business Increase Website Visits

-
Image
I was working at Prateek Technosoft India Pvt Ltd company when I helped one of our clients recover from a Spammy Structured Markup penalty. The client, "Jewels-Airport-Transfers," is a UK-based business that was facing a significant "Rich Result" drop in Google SERP for the website. When I audited their website, I found two major issues: a doorway page issue and a Spammy Structured Data problem caused by the previous SEO agency's incorrect guidance. The Spammy Structured Data issue was confirmed by using Google's Structured Data Testing Tool, which showed 11 errors and 5 warnings, as well as the disappearance of the site's rich snippets in organic search. I had access to the Google Webmaster Tool (Google Search Console) to monitor the structured data report. The Search Console notification read, "Spammy structured data for http://www.jewels-airport-transfers.co.uk/ might be dropped from search results." Screenshot 1: "This Spammy Structur...
Read more

How I Achieved First Page First Position for High Search Volume Keyword on Google SERP

-
Image
In this post, I would like to share my experience of bringing one of our clients to the first page first position on Google SERP for a high search volume keyword. The client, Pothys, is a big brand in the textile industry with a strong reputation in offline marketing. However, their website was not optimized for basic SEO practices, which I discovered during my initial audit. Pothys was facing a common challenge among businesses - ranking high on Google for a high search volume keyword, "Silk Sarees." When I first analyzed the keyword position, the website was ranking at 7th position on the first page of Google SERP. But Pothys was determined to reach the first position. The search volume of the keyword "Silk Sarees" is (49500/month). I identified several issues with the website that were hindering its search engine ranking. These issues included: Keyword cannibalization : The same keyword "Silk Sarees" was targeted on multiple pages on the site, which was...
Read more

Duplicate Meta Tags Due to Paginated Pages Index

-
Image
I recently identified the SCG blog posts had duplicate meta tags issues. It is identified by the technical SEO discussion with the SEO industry person about the topic “Pagination”. During the discussion I said, the paginated pages should be indexed . After my discussion, I deep dive on the topic and analysed the paginated pros and cons. The SCG blog posts duplicate meta tags issues is technical problem, it is occurred because paginated pages were indexable. Mostly the paginated pages essentially add no value despite being indexed on SERP. Pagination is a clever way of distributing content across pages and users may even click those pages to discover the content. However, on SERP they bear the same meta tags and context as they did on the level 1 page. Consequently, issues like keyword cannibalization, duplicate content cluster, and index bloat arise. Aiming to improve the bot experience on the site blog posts, I non-indexed and followed all the paginated pages encountered. Be...
Read more