An example business I was looking up just now... In Google Maps and the first page of Google Search etc it shows then as having 4.5 star review average over 693 reviews.... But if you click and get the sidebar pop up, it shows reviews from the web which are far less flattering.
This seems to be super common. Google reviews are always glowing, but other sites are far less favourable. What's the most likely reason for this?
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Google results are more realistic because Google prompts for reviews more frequently and thus more people are likely to leave a review which gives a more realistic result? Whereas the only people going to TrueLocal and Product Review are the very unhappy customers?
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Or that Google is completely gamed by SEO "experts" who spam fake reviews for cents and thus make Google Reviews completely bollocks by overpowering any genuine reviews with paid glowing testimonials?
If its the latter, I feel Google needs to solve this cause at the moment I have zero faith in their review system.
(I've blanked the name just because that's not really the point of this post.)
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It's 100% this, fake reviews are everywhere online but particularly on Google Maps. There's an excellent YouTube channel called 'Fake Review Watch' that is dedicated to tracking and reporting suspicious review behaviour across many different platforms. Companies from all around the world will pay the same third party to generate fake reviews for them, so you end up with these very traceable patterns of Google users reviewing the same US West Coast dentist, Central US hardware store and Melbourne hairdresser or something along those lines. It's quite funny how blatant it is.