The 'secret' impact of professional review management

What could be so 'secret'? The business invites reviews, and HelpHound moderates them to, as far as possible, eliminate factually inaccurate or potentially misleading reviews. The reviews are posted to the business's website and then copied to Google. Job done.

Or so you might - reasonably - think. But there's more to review management than simply inviting, moderating and posting reviews. There is the 'secret' impact on management and staff.

Case history

Business 'A', an estate agency, joined HelpHound in August of 2017. This is what they looked like on Google back then:

4 five-star reviews and one one-star review

And this is what they look like now, eight and a half years later:

This for a business employing less than a dozen staff (if you don't count the office dog). Mind you, they have opened another branch in the past year!

So what did we advise them to do, and what did they do, in reality?

Our advice

This was straightforward: we advised them to invite everyone to write a review. Buyers and sellers, landlords and tenants, professional connections and those they had advised but who had not, for whatever reason, conducted business. 

We provided them with our recommended wording for the email inviting the review (this is more important than you may imagine - both to send the invitation by email, not text, and to use precise wording), and our software - API - to enable them to prominently display their reviews on their website.

In less than a week, they went live. The very next day, the reviews began to roll in.

The reasoning behind that advice

There is no law that says a business must invite anyone and everyone to write a review; what the law - in the person of the Competition and Markets Authority's regulations - says is that 'if a business invites anyone to write a review it must allow everyone to do so'; in other words: no cherry-picking, no hand picking definitely happy customers only and then only inviting those to write a review.

So why does HelpHound invariably advise businesses to invite 'everyone'? For one simple reason: the one person you exclude from the invitation to write a review may - even will - be the person who goes directly to Google and writes a factually incorrect, potentially misleading or just plain unfair review. And there's no moderating a Google review once it is posted.

Gaining the confidence that moderation works

Business 'A', as is the case with virtually every high-value business client of HelpHound's, took our advice, initially at least, with a grain of salt. They invited 'nearly everyone'; until they saw some people who they hadn't invited do one of two things...

• Write a review directly to Google

or...

• Follow the button on their website that a) keeps the business fully compliant with the CMA regulations and b) allows them to write a review without being first invited by the business

Once these two things had happened a few times, they reassessed our advice and their approach.

What did they do next?

They stumbled upon the 'secret'. And that secret? If all the business's staff, from CEO to the newest recruit, adopted a strategy that assumes that every single person they come into contact with will write a review, then the service they provide will be as near perfect as makes no difference. 

Reviews were no longer simply the responsibility of sales staff, or marketing staff, or client services staff, but of every member of staff. In no time at all, a senior member of staff was chosen to devote themselves full-time as the business's dedicated 'head of reviews'.

And every customer is now warned, at the first point-of-contact, that they will be expected to write a review - to help others choose the right business and to help the business provide a really tip-top service to its customers.

The results

In purely review terms: a constant flow of 5* reviews (19 in the last month, so no slacking off, quite the opposite); importantly, and just about uniquely for a London estate agent dealing with multiple sales an d letting a week, the business hasn't had a one-star review for over three years, which has meant it has maintained its overall Google score at 4.9. In business terms? Imagine you were a competitor? They have doubled their payroll and opened another branch as well.  

Another bonus? Here are the most recent two reviews...

These reviews came as a result of an email invitation. We have tested inviting reviews by text. The result? Short one-line reviews. Far less helpful (and far less convincing)

What do we notice? That they are thorough and, as a result, informative and extremely helpful. In short, the kind of review that encourages a potential client to make first contact. Job done.

Now, for a fact that may surprise some

There is no reason whatsoever why this scenario cannot be replicated for any well-managed business with dedicated staff.

But what about a notoriously difficult sector? Women's health, say? Where people often find themselves under severe physical and emotional stress, and, on top of that, are extremely sensitive to personal privacy.

Like this...

How do you think this business feels, seeing this review as Google's 'Most relevant' at the head of every search?

Nothing like the volume of reviews, but starting from scratch in 2020, a steady average of roughly a review a month has seen this clinic build up critical mass, to the stage where their reviews are all a potential patient needs to give them the confidence to make an appointment.

We are continually astonished at the wonderful women who are so conscious of the confidence they were given by reading the clinic's reviews that they not only write one themselves, but a great many, such as the one above, are content to see their name attached to it as well.

We can do this for your business

What if you are keen to see your business reap all the benefits of great professional review management, but remain concerned that you may attract unfair, inaccurate or misleading reviews? What is our candid advice? What is the safest compliant way of testing if HelpHound will work as well for your business as it so patently has for the two examples above?

The key word in the sentence above is 'compliant'. Any business can cherry-pick its way to a score of 4.9 in the short term. All it has to do is select the cream of its happy customers and just ask them, and them alone, to post a review. The fact that this tactic will be obvious to regulators and their competitors (not to mention their staff, some of whom will one day be ex-staff working for those competitors) doesn't put some businesses off adopting this 'strategy'. Unfortunately, apart from the legal issues, eventually its less-than-happy customers will find their way to Google, and that near-perfect score will begin to dwindle.

So let us begin with a compliant solution, shall we? This will involve placing some code on your business's website to enable your business...

1. To allow you to ask customers to post reviews there 
2. To allow us to moderate all your reviews pre-publication
3. To show your reviews to everyone who visits your website (potential customers)
4. To benefit from the SEO kicker - Google loves websites that host reviews
5. Get those reviews copied across to Google
6. Get you a great Google score 
7. Get you a consistent flow of great - factually accurate, and helpful - reviews

Just like the businesses at the top of this article.

What if it doesn't work?

As you can probably imagine, with our 'no minimum period' contract and money back guarantee, we are loath to take on businesses where our magic will fail. We will conduct a full audit of your CRM and make the processes crystal clear before you go live (we are far more than just a great piece of software; unlike some businesses in this sector, we always answer the phone and respond to emails). So no risk there.

What remains to be done?

Speak to us. Meet us. Get HelpHound working for your business. You won't regret it.

Further reading

• Moderation - the cornerstone of all we do for our clients

• CMA regulations - why it is so easy, and important, to obey them

• Results - see for yourself, hard numbers

• Our guarantee - HelpHound really is a win/win - two years and counting, an no one has invoked it

• Our fees - all of this for so little? Yes!

Trustpilot - surely enough is enough?

As regular readers will know, we monitor all review channels on a continuous basis. For the benefit of our clients and their customers. Our only loyalty is to both of these constituencies. If a new and better solution to reviews emerges, or a currently great review solution makes a misstep, we need to know so we can advise our clients accordingly. We have no contract or financial arrangements with any of these solutions, and we never will. 

Trustpilot - again

One such solution is Trustpilot, the Danish-based and London-quoted review site. It makes much of its AI fake-review detection. 

We recommend you park this video for later and read on (we have viewed all 40 minutes on your behalf); in this article, we are just going to test one sentence from Anoop Joshi, Chief Trust Officer at Trustpilot, and that is his assertion that 'it is incredibly difficult to spot what is genuine and what is fake'. And remember, when you read our findings, that we have no access to any of the multitude of data points that Trustpilot's software is able to pick up

So we decided to put their much-vaunted AI to the test by giving two of our moderators a challenge: find us 20 definitely fake or fraudulent reviews on Trustpilot in half an hour. Here are the results (click on individual images to enlarge).

Oh, and while you're at it...

Now another, this time based in the UAE...

Red Flags

Almost too many to count, some apply to all, some to individual reviews...

• All reviews were written on the same day
• None of the reviews are of businesses in the reviewer's home country
• The spelling and grammar are suspect
• The content of the review bears no relation to the product/service reviewed
• The content of the review is patently irrelevant 
• The spectrum of reviewed businesses is untypical of a genuine reviewer: parking services in San Francisco, a T-shirt retailer in South Carolina, an AI tech platform (!) based in SF, L Ron Hubbard's publisher in LA, a quilt manufacturer in the Italian Dolomites, a Tennis coaching business in Queensland, a music label in Berlin, a baby stroller rental company in Orlando, and the list, as you can imageine, goes on in a similar - and similarly unlikely - vein.

Take the first review written by 'Ganesh Awate': it purports to be of Hollywood Mirrors, a makeup mirror supplier based in South Yorkshire. The review begins 'very comfortable...' A 'comfortable' mirror? His second review is of Photon Brothers, a solar panel installer from Denver, Colorado. What would you expect a review of solar panels to say? 'Great installation'? 'These panels saved me money'? No such thing. Instead, we find gibberish.

Fazullah Mohammed - who has written 262 reviews on Trustpilot - is a Trustpilot 'verified user'...

...and has written 282 reviews, all the same (nonsense), this one for Mochi health is particularly interesting...

...because it even elicited a thank you from the business, which is intriguing, since they almost certainly paid for the review in the first place, which leads one to wonder...

...just how many more of those nearly 15,000 reviews are genuine? And please bear in mind we are not dealing with reviews of a pizza parlour here. Fake reviews of such a business? A second-rate pizza and it's £10 down the drain. This is a Healthcare business!

And it explicitly contravenes the UK CMA regulations by selectively showing only 5* reviews on its own website. When it has been rated one-star by over 1400 people, including 8 in the last week.

We took a closer look at both these businesses and make the following comments:

The great upside of AI is that once developed and implemented, it is effectively free (for the business); on the other hand, human moderators, such as those here at HelpHound, are highly trained and experienced salaried specialists. But we have always been very much aware that the reviews we moderate are used by consumers to make potentially life-changing or decisions that will have long-term impacts on their financial and even physical well-being; reviews such as those you see above would never be relied on by anyone in their right mind when choosing any kind of business or service, but that's the core issue: Trustpilot reviews are virtually invisible once posted, they are rarely returned in Google searches - Google reviews are what the majority of consumers see; it is the overall score that businesses are looking for, to bolster the kind of marketing you see Mochi above

1. Our moderators found these reviews, undoubtedly all fake and paid for, within minutes (the individual reviews within seconds), yet they evaded Trustpilot's AI moderation
2. These reviews are not difficult to spot with the naked eye
3. We use our own AI for basic functions such as identifying foul language in reviews, but we would not dream of using it to moderate reviews 
4. None of the above reviews would make it through HelpHound moderation. 

In addition, Trustpilot already admit they remove millions of fraudulent reviews. This raises another question: just how long do these reviews remain on the site before removal?

Both the company listings and reviewer accounts remain live on Trustpilot as of today's date; we will monitor them going forward to see what action, if any, is taken.

Conclusion

Adrian Blair, current CEO of Trustpilot, is quoted in the article above as saying 'More and more people are using us every month because they see us as a trusted source. A lot of people are saying just that in their Trustpilot reviews.

“And why is that? Because we go to enormous lengths to ensure that the content on Trustpilot is trustworthy.

“We have more than 350m reviews on our platform. Every one of those reviews has metadata attached to it.

None of the above reassures us, or should reassure users - business or consumer - of Trustpilot. Or the CMA. 

The fact that 'more and more people are using [Trustpilot]' is simply a factor of its sales success, not because consumers 'see [Trustpilot] as a trusted source'. If the likes of Octopus Energy (740,000 reviews on Trustpilot and counting) are using Trustpilot of course 'more and more people are 'using' it. But we need to define 'using'.In the main this 'using' is simply the act of writing a review when requested by the company, not, as in the case of Google, reading those reviews (Trustpilot reviews are surprisingly hard to find in search, unless one goes directly to their site, which we are sure few people do - except, as perviously mentioned, to write a review.

'Enormous lengths'? We feel we have already adequately covered that point.

'Metadata attached'? We've said it before: metadata -  time of writing the review, location of the review writer's IP, IP address, device, etc. - might be useful to support real-world moderation, but in and of itself, it is very nearly useless. 

This headline from December 2025 should ring alarm bells for any CEO. More so, the readers' comments, which are mostly in this vein...

The 'likes' only serve to reinforce the comments

We - and many others - have been highly critical of many aspects of Trustpilot's business model, modus operandi and systems for many years now. Because the whole universe of online reviews, which we fervently believe to be a force for good, stands and falls on their credibility. 

Link

Being able to trust reviews is vital, maybe not so much for online retail (you can return most products bought online these days - irritating, but you remain unharmed), but for an oncologist? A wealth manager? A family lawyer? We are sure you are getting our drift

Companies such as Yelp, in the US (no longer trading in the UK and EU thanks to compliance issues too many to mention in this article), and others that have prioritised traffic over moderation will, eventually come to the attention of the "woefully underfunded and therefore underresourced" (we quote) CMA - which recently announced AI all of its own to track down companies that host fake reviews. 

Comment on Trustpilot's annual report

And when they do, we hope they wish they had used some of their investors' cash and/or profits to moderate the reviews they expect consumers to trust and rely on to choose really important - often life-changing - services.

More from the web...

• The CMA documents detailing the compliance issues surrounding publishing fake reviews

• The CMA's Fake Reviews guidance 

• Fake Review Report - by Fake Review Watch

• Money Saving Expert - a forum thread entitled 'Trustpilot - can they be trusted?'

• An interesting Reddit thread - entitled "Trustpilot isn't a review site, it's a protection racket for fake reviews.'

• Grizzly Research's report - entitled 'The Trustpilot Mafia, how the extortion model destroys Trustpilot's value proposition.'

• Richman SEO's deep dive - dating back as far as 2019, but not a lot has changed since then

Our guarantee - updated

Exactly two years ago today, we introduced our guarantee. This article is best read in conjunction with the one behind that link, but for those who know about the guarantee, we hope it provides a useful refresher/update.

Read the full article here

The HelpHound guarantee consists of the following...

• Full compliance with the CMA regulations and Google's terms of service

• A Google score of 4.8 within three months of joining

• A ten per cent uplift in enquiries through your own website and through Google

• A specified and agreed target for the number of reviews achieved on your business's website and on Google for any given timeframe

The article behind the link gives specific examples of businesses that will benefit. In this article, we will expand on the four points above.

1.  Full compliance

We hear the groans! No one's favourite subject is it? But, where reviews are concerned, it is just about to become a whole lot more important. Why? Because the CMA's ongoing investigation into online reviews, which is now years long, is nearing completion, aided by a recent introduction of some powerful AI detection tools, announced last August. Businesses, and they are legion, involved in either of the following...

• cherry-picking - the act of identifying selected customers more likely to write 5* reviews and then only inviting those customers to do so

• gating - the act of using a mechanism - usually a questionnaire or email - to pre-qualify such customers

...will now run a far higher risk of sanction by the CMA. Up until now so many businesses have said, to us, directly, that they would rather run the risk of CMA action than comply with the law, as the CMA sanction seemed, to them, to be unlikely, and it they were more certain to score highly if they continued to cherry-pick. And we had - notice the past tense - some sympathy with their view; after all, how was a business going to look great, and compete with its competitors, if it failed to achieve a really impressive Google score? And that 'impressive' score? It used to be anything over 4.0, now it is more like 4.8 and over, especially for high value service businesses and the professions.

So, how can HelpHound guarantee compliance alongside success with reviews? Take a business, any business, it could be an investment bank with few reviews, such as this...

...or an estate agency office with many, like this...

The former has avoided engaging reviews altogether, and the latter has been cherry-picking its 'nailed-on happy' clients for nearly ten years. 

Both of them can achieve compliance and increased review volume overnight by adopting a moderated review management process.  In short: employ an outside agency such as HelpHound to read every review as it comes in, challenge those that contain errors of fact or statements likely to mislead the reader and allow the reviewer the opportunity to correct them. No need to fear reviews (the investment bank) or flout the law (the estate agency) any more. 

2.   A Google score of 4.8 within 3 months of joining

 This client had 5 Google reviews when they joined. 

If this were not achievable, by every single one of our clients, we would have had claims on our guarantee. But we have not. Two years and counting (as of tomorrow). 

Just how can we promise this? It's simple: we conduct an audit of all our new clients' CRM, if we consider that it needs improvement we will tell the business what improvements, in our opinion (based on well over ten years' of experience), need to be made; then, and only then, will we embark on our review management journey together. 

But most new clients pass this audit with flying colours, because we tend only to attract businesses that take their custmer relations seriously in the first place. For the others there are review sites available that will award stars (and more) a plenty. Our clients want their reviews on the only platforms with visibility and credibility - Google and their own websites.

The above client's website: reviews - all 770 of them - fed through from HelpHound, having first been moderated. In only 7% of cases do our moderators become involved, but those 7 in 100 reviews, containing errors of fact or misleading statements (or even just badly mangled grammar), are crucial when it comes to maintaining a fair view of our clients' businesses, on their own website and on Google. The 'Write a review' button on the left is critical for compliance, and the 'What is HelpHound?' button on the right reassures the reviewer that third-party moderation is a boon for all concerned.

 

Your business passed the audit and your management and staff have been briefed as to the tried and tested way in which results such as those above have been achieved (there's far more to HelpHound than just great software). Reviews begin rolling in, first to your website - to be shown there and to enable them to be moderated by us - and then to Google. History and long experience shows us that a business employing independent moderation will score between 0.3 and 0.7 better than it would without, and that businesses starting out with scores at the lower end will show the most marked improvement. So a business joining with a Google score of 4.2 and a business joining with a Google score of 4.5 should both achieve 4.8 in short order. And hopefully more; we have many clients scoring 4.9 like the one above, but 5.0 is rare, as businesses may be as close to perfect as makes no difference but, as we all know, even perfect businesses have imperfect customers, and the law unequivocally states that their opinion must be pubished. Moderation is accepted, even welcomed by most customers, but there is always the odd salmon that will insist on swimming against the flow, so 4.9 it is!

 

 3.  A ten per cent uplift in enquiries though your website and through Google

 

It is a pity Google stopped publishing the actual numbers - see example above - (we suspect that they were undermining Google Ad sales), but we were lucky to be around in the days when they did. Here's an example of the improvement in clicks and calls in one month after joining HelpHound and getting the reviews flowing. Google still gives SEO credit for reviews hosted on the business's own website.

As you can see, the 10% 'promise' is conservative. Nowadays, we rely on our clients to feed back results from their own data, and we are absolutely sure our guarantee would be invoked if this were not the case.

4.  A specified target for numbers of reviews

The client in our example has received 19 reviews in the last month. They received their last 1* review over three years ago, and it was one of the best learning experiences they could have had. A complete review of their CRM resulted in a dedicated member of staff being brought in to head up their review management

 

Flow is crucial, and not just for maintaining a great score (as important as that is). Consumers are becoming more and more sophisticted in the way they analyse businesses before making that vital first contact and online reviews form a big part of that analysis; if a business has few reviews or if the first review the consumer is faced with is credibly negative then consumers have a habit of adopting the line of least resistance, a competitor is always just a click away.

A simple answer to the question 'How many reviews should we expect?' is our 'rule of fifty per cent': get half of your customers to write a review to your website and then half of them to copy their review over to Google (our software and Google's interface makes that easy). Business such as the one referenced here comfortably exceed tose figures month by month.

So: the best way to prove this for your business? Join us and our successful clients who are making the most of online reviews without breaking the law - or the bank! Make 2026 the year your business begins to benefit from professional review management. We promise you will never look back.

Further reading...

• Results - what professional review management is all about, making your business money

• Moderation - a detailed explanation

• The CMA regulations - the law as it relates to reviews and your business

• Our fees - how much is all of the above worth for your business?