Google has confirmed that anonymous reviews have been removed from the Google Reviews attached to millions of businesses. For many years, reviews were allowed from “A Google User”. This has caused many sleepless nights for more than one small
business owner. Although the average anonymous Google review was 4.1 stars, and the average named review is 4.4, some reviews were much lower including 1-star reviews. The contention among business owners has been that these anonymous reviews were, in fact, bogus reviews written by competitors.
So what’s this mean to you? If you have been in business for many years chances are very good that you have received anonymous Google reviews. With the removal of reviews, many businesses see the overall number of reviews have dropped. In most cases, if you have not been gaming the system this will not mean much to you except that some of your competitor’s review counts may come down and the number of fake reviews will hopefully drop.
For more information regarding this subject be sure to read Bright Local’s report: Anonymous Google Reviews Are Officially a Thing of the Past.
