Reviews and trust - there is no future for the first without the second

Yet again the regulators have seen fit to step in - this time in relation to fake reviews, specifically those posted to Google. It is time we revisited the rationale behind regulation and reviews.

In an ideal world...

Everyone who wrote a review...

• Would be in a position to understand everything to do with whatever product or service they had been sold and were reviewing

• Would be in a positive - or at the very least, benign - frame of mind, both at the time they interacted with the business that sold them the product or provided them with the service and later, when they came to write their review

• Would have perfect command of the English language, or whatever other language they wrote their review in (Google accepts reviews in 149 languages)

And every business that asked its customers to write a review...

• would welcome every review with open arms

• would not place any barriers in the way of someone wanting to review their product or service

• would respond to every review posted - anywhere

And every review platform would conform to these basic tenets...

• it would favour neither business nor consumer

• it would ensure that no barriers were placed in the way of a consumer wishing to post a fair and accurate review

• it would offer an effective appeal route for the business under review against inaccurate, potentially misleading or plain unfair reviews

• it would ensure that its reviews were as visible as possible to consumers

The current regulatory situation

In the UK, as regular readers know, online reviews are regulated (by the Competition and Markets Authority - 'CMA'), and such regulation is backed by the force of law.

The CMA has been conducting an ongoing review into the use and abuse of reviews for many years now. Here is their advice to businesses - which remains current to this day. Periodically the CMA will announce action it is taking or agreements it has come to - here is its latest, this time with Google.

At this stage we should mention that, in the UK at least, there are examples of businesses taking reviewers to court for posting defamatory reviews. Here is one such. For obvious reasons, both commercial and reputational, this is a rare occurrence, as the legacy press and social media rarely shine a favourable light on 'big business' taking customers to court. This makes a fair and evenhanded regulatory and legal approach to reviews even more important. But such action does conclusively prove one thing: that businesses would do well to take every measure to avoid such negative reviews, especially the 'unfair' ones.

The future

So far, quite reasonably, the regulators have focused their attention on the sites that host reviews. They are also right to refine that focus to concentrate on Google, as it now hosts four out of every five reviews on the web (see its remarkable dominance here).

This was reinforced when we were privileged to have an in-depth conversation with a senior staffer at the CMA last year. The central thrust of his message was 'Just because the CMA doesn't constantly repeat the fact that we have an open investigation into abuses of online reviews does not mean that we have closed the file, the opposite is true.'

So the next logical move by the regulators will likely be on the following two fronts...

• against the legacy review sites that have been driven to offer more and more questionably legal benefits in order to compete with Google reviews (bearing in mind these sites invariably charge businesses and Google does not). These range from control over who is able to write a review to the ability to challenge a genuinely held customer opinion in the hope that the customer will simply give up and not insist on their review being published

• against businesses that are in contravention of the CMA's core regulations - the main ones being 'cherry-picking' only demonstrably happy customers to invite to post reviews and 'gating' - identifying that same cohort using a questionnaire 

We also hope they will widen their remit in relation to the review sites...

• sites that offer businesses boosted prominence in rankings in return for financial reward
• sites that muddy the water by selling leads to businesses on the back of reviews
• sites that discriminate against reviewers who are unable or unwilling to provide proof of purchase*

*this, on the face of it, would appear to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It is only when faced with a real-world situation when the consumer has genuinely lost their receipt or cannot see why they should be required to provide one to a third-party review site that the injunction by the CMA to allow the review to stand must apply.

To summarise

From a business's standpoint, today in 2025, there are few* reasons to use a review site and many reasons to use Google reviews...

• they are the first reviews any prospective customer sees of your business
• every one of your business's locations will have a distinct Google profile with reviews attached
• they have greater credibility than other kinds of review, simply by virtue of readers understanding that Google knows a great deal about the poster
• just about everyone on the planet is able to write a Google review without 'joining' or 'registering'

*these 'few' reasons become fewer by the year. The exception is retail which understandably requires stand-alone reviews for each and every product they sell. So sites such as Bazaarvoice still have a role to play. Our advice to all service and professional businesses is to focus entirely on Google reviews; should they already have a presence on other sites that should be maintained, at least for the time being, alongside Google.

A very important question for businesses that already have an established presence on Google

How do you collect your Google reviews? 

Many - most? - businesses, if they are being candid, will admit that they are selective in inviting customers to write a review to Google. This is against the CMA's aforementioned core regulations - against the law. 

So what? - we hear people say all the time. And our answer? We have sympathy, but your business does not exist in isolation. We agree that it is highly unlikely that your business, of all the 5.5 million in the UK, will be the first to be sanctioned by the CMA (although the long list of those fined by HMRC for breaches of AML should at least give you pause for thought - imagine your business appearing on a list like this - and then featuring in the local/national press as 'ABC Plc fined by government agency for breaking rules relating to their customers' online reviews.'). 

Look at it this way: you know your business is in breach by cherry-picking 'happy' customers to invite to post a Google review. So your staff know as well. And they move on - sometimes to direct competitors. How do you suppose a competitor will use that knowledge? Is there even an outside chance that, when faced with a potential customer, they will be tempted to say something along the lines of "Yes, their Google score and reviews are excellent, aren't they? Perhaps if they complied with the law and allowed all their customers to write a review, as we do, then maybe they wouldn't look quite so great?"

This innocuous link - 'Write a review' - makes the business compliant with the CMA regulations at a stroke - it also leads to the key benefit of review management: moderation

Resulting in the business looking like this on Google...

Initial search (left) and their Google reviews tab (right) showing their score and all their reviews collected since they joined HelpHound...

From 5 to 500 - not so hard when you combine a great business with the correct - compliant - review management

The key here is that no well-run business needs to remain in this position (few reviews or in breach of the CMA regulations). By the simple expedient of employing moderated review management it will a) protect itself from factually inaccurate or potentially misleading reviews - that's what gives our clients the confidence to be so proactive in inviting reviews - and b) achieve a great score on its own website and on Google.

It will also be demonstrating that its reviews can be trusted - both those on its own website (see above) and those on Google.

Google - penalising schools and parents

After Google's announcement to schools in the UK and Ireland...

We published our initial response last Monday. Since then, we have spent time reviewing that response and the response of the educational community, including specialist sites such as Edugeek and Schoolsweek and sites used by parents, such as Mumsnet. 

We get Justin Cowley, the deputy head of Mendell Primary's point - he petitioned Google on behalf of 60 other teachers and schools, on the basis that 'out-of-date and off-topic reviews were of no help to anyone, parent or school'. But only so far as it goes.

We have commented, year-in year-out, on the fact that the responsibility for ensuring that Google reviews add value - in this case: for parents searching for the right school for their child is split, equally, between Google and the schools. 

Google's responsibility

 

Every teacher on the planet will recognise this kind of review. The question is - was - how would Google not have a mechanism to allow the school to have them deleted? They certainly don't add vlue for Google. One click - on the three dots to the right of the review ('report this review') and job done.

 

Google allows appeals against reviews publsihed on its site. The problem is, and always has been, that those appeals don't cover the kind of 'Mrs S hates me' or 'All the kids at [insert name of school] are snobs' review that so dilute the overall value of the reviews they host. But they should. Schools should be able to have this kind of review deleted. Full stop.

The school's responsibility

 

If estate agencies, with half-a-dozen staff and a similar amount of clients - per month, can achieve these results, why not schools? 

 

...is - was! - to mobilise it's parents to write on-topic valuable reviews of their own, and their children's, experiences of the school. But so few have. Schools will invest time - and somethimes even valuable financial resources - promoting themselves. But so few have taken the opportunity to mobilise Google reviews. Is anyone seriously saying that a Google review such as this...

 

 

...is not helpful? To both future parents and the school concerned? The review was deleted by Google this month.

Conclusion

The plethora of agencies already offering to replace - at a cost to schools - Google's imperfect but easily fixed free reviews service proves our point. Commercial entities are always the first to fill a vacuum. Let us know if you receive a sales call for Trustpilot or any of the other review sites. The very first to do so? You guessed it: Google...

The first page of a local search - full of schools now paying Google to appear before the organic listings (some still don't realise that 'Sponsored' listings are paid for by the entity listed) - no reviews by parents of course! And the cost of the advertisement? Up until recently between £3 and £4 per click through to the school's website. Now, with more schools forced to use that avenue? Please let us know in the comments below.

And finally...

We thought all of you English teachers out there would appreciate this - genuine - Google review, still showing for a school in Derby in spite of Google's recent announcement...

Further reading...

• Google - forcing schools down the Ads route?

Google - forcing schools down the Ads route?

The best solution Google can come up with? We don't think so

We are back at the beginning of this century, and the biggest search engine on the planet - by far - decides that it would be helpful for all concerned if its users were allowed to post reviews of the businesses and services it listed. 

Helpful, no? Helpful for fellow consumers and helpful for the businesses and services under review. The best would stand out and the market would be made more efficient. Apparently not - certainly in the case of education. Three weeks ago Google quietly extended the patchy trial it had been rolling out in the US, whereby it deleted all existing reviews of educational establishments (but, somewhat bizarrely, only primary and secondary - you can still review pre-schools, colleges and universities) and denied users the ability to write future reviews.

Its reasoning? We'll let Google speak for itself, courtesy of today's piece in Schools Week.

The Guardian has this interesting comment...

So Google has turned off 'the first place parents turn when researching a school'.

At HelpHound, we get Google's reasoning, but we reject it, utterly and completely. The fact that schools have failed to engage with Google reviews is not entirely their own fault - even we have been known to describe Google reviews as akin to the Wild West on this blog. But for both to say 'we can't find a way to make Google reviews relevant' is a cop-out worthy of derision, in both cases: schools should have engaged with Google reviews by now, by asking parents to post them and responding to those posted (responding: most of the low/no value reviews posted for schools would not have been posted in the first place if the school in question had responded to its earlier reviews - knowing your review will be responded to has a definite and proven tendency to neutralise this kind of review). Google should have asked itself 'Why are educational reviews on our platform adding so little value?' Few would choose a lawyer or estate agent without - as the Guardian says above - first reading their Google reviews, so what makes education an outlier?

HelpHound has openly stated here, on more than one occasion, that Google owes it to its users - those who generate every cent of its $350 billion revenue - that's $350,000,000,000 - and $100 billion of profit, to clean up its act in relation to Google reviews. Specifically...

• the process of appealing against a factually incorrect, potentially misleading or just plain ridiculous review

Currently, it is effectively impossible for any entity receiving a Google review to successfully appeal against such a review unless 'it contravenes Google's Terms of Service'. Here they are.

At HelpHound we probably have more experience than any UK operator when it comes to advising on and drafting appeals on behalf of clients. Guess just how many of the 'factually inaccurate, potentially misleading or just plain ridiculous' reviews clients present us with do we advise them to appeal? Under 5%. Fortunately, few of our clients are subject to reviews that include 'Terrorist content', 'Violence and gore' or even 'sexually explicit content'. So we - and they - are left with the catch-alls: 'Misinformation' and 'Misrepresentation'. 

Of those where we advise there is a chance of a successful appeal (it helps if the reviewer has accused the business of theft, racism or any other kind of law-breaking) - and any outside chance whatsoever is clung to by most respectable businesses, as you can no doubt imagine - very few succeed. How so? Because Google is judge and jury - you get one chance at an appeal and Google's decision, delivered by email, is final. We also suspect that extremely 'Californian' notions of consumer rights are applied. Our impression - wrongly or rightly - is that the consumer is always right unless the business has cast-iron proof to the contrary. Very difficult when the reviewer is often unknown or unidentifiable because they have used an avatar - or even where they don't. 

We had a recent case where a French hotelier had a spat with a London-based doctor client of ours during their stay in Paris. Both the hotelier and a colleague wrote a completely fictitious review on the practice's Google listing using their real names (and they were traceable with the minimum of searching to the hotel in question - information we provided to Google with the appeal). Guess what? One appeal succeeded. And one appeal against the demonstrably fake 1* review of the doctor's practice written by the French hotelier failed. The review stood.

Google's business model

These four schools are just a tiny part of Google's money-printing machine - up until now prospective parents could check out their reviews before clicking on the 'Sponsored' link. No longer. And 'sponsored'? Here's Google's own AI definition of the word 'sponsored': '"Sponsored" means something that has been financially supported by a person or organization. The support could be for an event, program, or content. In exchange, the sponsor usually receives some type of recognition or promotion.' They used to get headed 'Ads'; maybe that was a more accurate definition? In our experience, the word 'sponsored', certainly in the context of schools, has softer connotations.

It is 100% advertising driven. You don't for minute suppose that it is easier to sell advertising to a school if it has no reviews? We know for certain that we save our clients large 4 and even 5 figure sums by enabling them to shine in reviews so they don't need to pay for Google advertising. Just look at this example...

...it is many years since this client has needed to pay for Google ads - can you imagine the howls if all its Google reviews vanished overnight?

Some will say 'Why should schools divert resources to manage their presence on Google, after all, they are not commercial entities like estate agents?' Our response is 'If that were the case then simply exempt private schools from this new policy' although we still remain firmly of the opinion that all educational establishments should be subject to open review on Google; after all, it takes very little time to manage such engagement effectively. 

And finally...

Here's the most recent Google search on 'Eton College reviews'...

...more helpful than Google reviews? You decide.

We will keep an eye out for the next sector to have reviews 'turned off', and be sure to let you know when it happens.

Further reading...

• Google - penalising schools and parents

4.9 is the new 4.5

In 2020 a Google score of 4.5 was OK, in fact it was more than just OK. That is no longer the case - for service businesses and the professions anyway. For our reasoning please read on...

The way consumers use reviews is constantly evolving. Over the last ten years the major shift has been away from Facebook (now less than 1% of online reviews) and the review sites (altogether then likes of Yelp, Trustpilot, Feefo, Yell, and Reviews.io make up less than 20%) towards Google (at 79%).

In doing so, consumers have refined their shorthand to shortlist potential businesses. In the early days, any score over 4.0 would do. Then consumers began to realise that reviews broke down into two distinct categories: those for products and those for services.

Product reviews

Few of us bother to read product reviews, as long at we see four stars 

These are increasingly used by consumers to validate that the product they are about to buy 'does what it says on the tin'. Savvy consumers are more likely to read professional reviews of products and just use online reviews - Google or otherwise - to check out delivery and after-sales reliability. The fact that someone occasionally gives a camera, a washing machine or a pair of trousers a 1* review is neither here nor there.

Service and professional reviews

Reviews of services on the other hand - here a womens' health clinic - are increasingly relied on by consumers. If you read the review above, which appears on the client's website and on Google, you will see what we mean 

Now we get serious. Reviews - Google reviews - of services and professions - from medical, to financial, legal and so on, are approached with far more scrutiny by consumers than those of products. For two very good reasons: the businesses we are speaking of here offer potentially life-saving benefits on the upside and the flip side - of choosing the wrong solution - can be equally life-changing. So many consumers slow the process right down from 'Nice shoes, score 4 out of five, click and buy.' to 'Let's make a shortlist based on the business's headline Google score and then take time to mine down into the individual reviews themsleves.'

We are sure you are with us thus far. If fact we are sure most readers will recognise this behaviour because they will have conformed to it to a greater or lesser extent. So - back to our headline: if your business's competitors are scoring 4.5 - 4.8 (maybe up from 4.1 - 4.4 a few years ago) yours had better be scoring 4.9. In fact, just to be sure, best score 4.9 whatever the competition is scoring.

If ever there was any doubt as to whether or not Google reviews of professional services are read then this screenshot will dispel that, once and for all. Last week Google added the clickable ❤️ and 🙏 emojis under each review (mobile only for the time being) - and just look how many the latest review for this client has garnered already - in just two days!

So - action to take

Take a long hard look at your business's approach to reviews. Make use of our experience - after all we have been advising clients - and learning their, as well as our, secrets of success for well over a decade. The easiest way is to speak to us, we can examine exactly where your business is on the learning curve and advise accordingly. Reading one or more of the following articles will also help...

• Moderation - the golden key to protecting your business from factually inaccurate, potentially misleading or just plain unfair reviews

• Compliance - comes under the heading of 'boring but important'; the CMA is on the warpath against businesses playing fast-and-loose where reviews are concerned

• Results - once a business has review management cracked the impact on both enquiries and the quality of the individual pieces of business transacted will rise, as these comparisons conclusively demonstrate (one of our clients in this example has recently opened a new office to service demand in the same area)

...but the ultimate test is to put our advice into action, inviting reviews to your own website and then on to Google (that is the only way to benefit from the safety net of moderation, with inaccurate or misleading reviews being and get the stars in search you see here...

...so look at our fees (remembering there is no contract period) and our guarantee of success. Then call us.