KwikChex launches ‘Google Maps Reviews – Improve Or Remove’ Campaign

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:59:44 +0000

KwikChex has launched a campaign to help tackle the problems created by rogue posters using Google Map Reviews. Many reputable businesses are being attacked online by fake, malicious and unfair reviews – and then they experience severe difficulties in getting them removed or even responding effectively to them, which is resulting in financial losses in many cases. The map reviews are also being used by dishonest businesses and scammers posting fake good reviews to dupe consumers.

It is just too easy to abuse the Google Review system and too difficult for most businesses to resolve and although KwikChex has been very successful in removing fake reviews for members and Google have sped up their responses to KwikChex fake review reports, the real solution required is for Google to make improvements that help authenticate reviews. If they can’t get more honesty into the system then the only way that reputable businesses and consumers can be better protected is for Google to withdraw their own review resource completely.

A KwikChex spokesperson said “Whilst we have been able to help businesses with this problem, it is not fair that they are having to pay to address flaws that Google are responsible for. We would rather be focusing on our core services, which are authenticating and promoting reputable businesses.”

The campaign has been set up on Google Groups and is called Google Maps Review – Improve Or Remove. Businesses wishing to join can visit KwikChex.com, click on ‘Fake Reviews’ and link to the campaign.

Or click here to go directly to the campaign group

Google Removes Fake Review In Response To Latest Report From KwikChex

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:33:12 +0000

One of the worst examples yet of a fake and malicious review on Google Maps has been rapidly removed after KwikChex verified the facts.

Storm Photography of Colchester in the UK had a malicious review posted on Google maps a month ago (16th Feb) and had not managed to have it deleted.

At first glance the review appeared to have come from another photography business in Crewe, Cheshire.

In fact, this company, Cream Wedding Photography was an even bigger victim of malicious Google Review posting.

KwikChex had verified that both businesses are reputable. A third party mounted a campaign which makes it appear that Cream were posting insults and spam on photographers websites across the UK. Cream have published the facts on their website www.creamphoto.co.uk in a bid to protect their own reputation.

KwikChex sent an independent verification report to Google and the offending review in this case was removed 10 minutes later.

We would like to thank Google on this occasion for their rapid response and urge them to continue responding to our authenticated notifications in this way.

Update on Google Map Review issues

Google state that they take these issues seriously and we are seeing evidence that this is the case. KwikChex will continue to provide independently authenticated reports to Google – and to offer to provide solutions.

We are also aware that they appear to have some more complex problems when it comes to removing reviews pulled in to Google Maps from third party sites. it seems that even when successfully removed from the original site, Google’s search system has difficulties in purging the result, and the offending reviews are therefore staying live on Google. This explanation is not much comfort to reputable businesses that are having their businesses damaged, but we understand that Google are aware of it and working on the problem.

We would urge people to continue to notify us us of fake and malicious reviews.

Join our facebook campaign ‘Web of Lies’ to rid the web of fake and malicious online reviews – Click here

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KwikChex launches ‘Google Maps Reviews – Improve Or Remove’ Campaign

Google Removes Fake Review In Response To Latest Report From KwikChex