How Google wants to stop the ‘one-star’ review scam from India – Times of India

Quite often before people want to try a new establishment — restaurant, salon, among others — they tend to read the reviews of it. Google encourages users to post reviews of businesses on Maps, Search, and even YouTube, so that others can get an idea of how the place might be. A bad review can be bad news for a business and the ‘rating’ does fall considerably. A report by The New York Times reveals how scammers — mostly from India — give one-star reviews to businesses and then indulge in extortion to remove those reviews.

Quite often before people want to try a new establishment — restaurant, salon, among others — they tend to read the reviews of it. Google encourages users to post reviews of businesses on Maps, Search, and even YouTube, so that others can get an idea of how the place might be. A bad review can be bad news for a business and the ‘rating’ does fall considerably. A report by The New York Times reveals how scammers — mostly from India — give one-star reviews to businesses and then indulge in extortion to remove those reviews.
How does the one-star review scam work?
The report by The New York Times reveals that many of these one-star reviews come from India. What the scammers do is post negative reviews of establishments and then ask for a Google Play Gift card to get the review off. If their ‘demand’ isn’t met, they threaten to post more negative reviews.
The report quotes the ‘threat’, which is sent via email. One of the emails was quoted in the New York Times report and reads like this: “We sincerely apologise for our actions, and would not want to harm your business but we have no other choice. The fact is that we live in India and see how other way to survive.”
The scammers don’t really make outright threats but play on the emotional quotient. It doesn’t end here, as they literally ‘beg’ for the money. “We are begging you to send us Google Play gift card worth $75”, before adding, that they intend to further sell the gift card to provide income for the family. “After selling this gift card we can earn approximately $50, which is three weeks of income for one family,” the email reads. Scammers use gift cards as a mode of ‘payment’ as they are quite often difficult to track back.
How is Google planning to deal with the issue?
The thing with negative reviews is that they aren’t easy to remove. A business cannot hide or remove the review without Google’s intervention. Google, in a post, on one of its community forums said that it is aware of the problem. “We’ve recently become aware of a scam targeting businesses on Google with the threat of 1-star reviews unless they send money via gift cards,” Google said that it insists reviews must be based on real experiences. “Our teams are working around the clock to thwart these attacks, remove fraudulent reviews, and put protections on business profiles that may have been affected.”
What to do if you get one-star reviews?
Google has categorically stated that one shouldn’t pay if one gets bad reviews. “If your business is being targeted by these scammers, please do not pay them,” said Google. The company wants businesses to flag these reviews — there’s an option available to do that. If that doesn’t work, then businesses are encouraged to reach out to Google. The company said that it will review — and if deemed necessary — “remove policy-violating content.”