How We Recovered From 1-Star Review Spam

A local restaurant I worked with got hit with a wave of fake 1-star reviews (about 15 in 2 weeks). Their GBP rating tanked, and calls dropped by almost 30%. Here’s what we did:

• Reported the obvious spam reviews to Google (about half got removed).
• Asked loyal customers to leave fresh, honest reviews.
• Added review snippets to the website with schema markup.
  Within 6 weeks, their average rating climbed back from 3.6 to 4.4, and visibility in the map pack bounced back. It’s a reminder that reputation management is SEO.
  
  

why didnt the loyal customers leave reviews before? did u give them an incentive?

xavierfok said:

why didnt the loyal customers leave reviews before? did u give them an incentive?

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Good question Most loyal customers usually don’t leave reviews unless they have a reason or are reminded. In this case, they were happy regulars but just never thought about writing one.
We didn’t give any direct incentives (since that can violate Google’s guidelines). Instead, we simply reached out personally, explained that the business had been hit with unfair spam reviews, and asked if they’d be willing to share their genuine experience.
That personal touch worked really well — people actually wanted to help balance out the fake reviews.

the question was it a random targeting or delibereate ?