Contractors say bogus unfavorable Google evaluations a huge hit to their small business
Nicholas Waldram of EaveSafe Gutter Protection and Jackson Mayers of Gutter Guys Plus each say that starting a couple of weeks ago, adverse testimonials began to appear on their enterprise pages at the rate of about one particular a day.
Each contractors say they immediately compared the names of the posters to their client list and determined that the testimonials weren't written by actual shoppers. In some situations, they posted replies stating such.
Mayers mentioned he was notified right after obtaining a a single-star critique on Google's 5-star scale back in February. But it wasn't just the low rating that was a difficulty, it was also the written assessment. Mayers was suspicious proper away simply because at the time one of the damaging reviews appeared, daytime temperatures were nevertheless properly beneath freezing. He commonly doesn't set up gutters in winter because the caulking applied to waterproof seams often won't seal correctly.
But it wasn't just Gutter Guys. Mayers began to evaluate notes with his buddy and competitor Nicholas Waldram of EaveSafe Gutter Protection.
Waldram had also been dealing with suspicious a single-star testimonials posted by accounts with names that didn't match his client database. He reached out to the posters for clarification, but didn't get any response back.
He mentioned he had a 5-star Google rating prior to the recent string of 1-star evaluations but the negatives pushed that down considerably.
“These new reviews have dropped us down to a 4.4 star rating,” he stated. “It takes an emotional toll. Absolutely everyone here requires a lot of pride in what we do.”
While there are some similarities in the comments, both contractors said the account profiles employed in the a single-star reviews weren't identical.
Some of the accounts had been new, other folks had a number of critiques of diverse corporations from months or years before. One particular account employed a photo lifted from the Facebook web page of what seems to be a higher school student.