A Google review is a customer’s opinion of a business that is posted publicly on the business’s Google page. Google reviews consist of a star rating, written text, and sometimes images or videos. The review is attached to the reviewer’s Google account with their name and profile picture so searchers (and businesses) can verify the authenticity of the review.

Most of us take out our phones and do a quick Google search to find the best local businesses for food, entertainment, and travel. But not every review we see can be trusted, which is why business owners are curious about how to delete Google reviews.
.
Removing reviews isn’t an attempt to mislead customers—studies show that 80% of customers won‘t patronize a business until they’ve read the reviews. And, since Google is the preferred review site for 70% of consumers, that means just one poor review could determine whether or not you choose to do business with a dealership.
It‘s your management team’s job to keep track of Google reviews and remove the negative comments that are harmful to your business.
In this post, we‘ll break down what a Google review looks like, how to delete them, and what to do if you can’t remove them.

Dealerships should never respond stereotype messages like ‘We are extremely sorry for your unhappy experience at the dealership and please get back to me at this phone number or email”.  This causes the unhappy customer more irritation, as they can clearly see this is a band-aid response from the dealership.

Ask a Customer to Edit or Delete a Negative Google Review of the Dealership.
Responding to bad Google reviews takes a bit of extra time and energy, but this method for removing negative reviews of dealerships is majorly beneficial in the long run.
When successful, you will have deleted a negative review and potentially converted a customer from a liability into a lifelong promoter of your brand. Here’s a step-by-step guide to making the best of a bad situation:
When you notice a bad review of your business on Google Reviews, first take a moment to thoughtfully consider your customer’s point of view.
Ask yourself these questions: What exactly are they complaining about, and is it something that you can make right, now that you’re aware of the problem?
After you’ve assessed the situation, and assured yourself that the review is not fake or inappropriate, the second step is to write a response to the customer’s review directly on Google.
People have different opinions as to exactly what to say here, but the general gist is:
Recognize and name the customer’s problem. Example: “It sounds like you had a difficult time with the vehicle purchase or repair.” .

During your next management meeting, please take 30 minutes to review these 10 plus types of Negative Google Reviews possible.

We usually think it is the job of the Internet Manager or 3rd party company to respond to Google Reviews. This is a totally incorrect way!  This is the main responsibility of all the management staff in the dealership.

Please scroll down to read about each type and discuss among the management to become familiar with these possibilities. Whenever you read a negative Google Review, you can quickly see if that negative Google Review qualifies for one of these negative review categories and get it deleted.

On the Google My Business Forum, where I volunteer as a Top Contributor, we frequently see themes and threads from business owners who want Google to remove their negative reviews.

There are a lot of cases where we cannot do anything because the reviews don’t break Google’s review guidelines, but there are also many scenarios where it is likely Google will remove the negative reviews.

Here are a number of real review cases I have worked on recently. I wanted to share the outcomes so anyone experiencing a similar situation will have an idea of what can be done to help their website.

The first and foremost thing to do is check for the customer’s profile in dealerships’ Sale CRM, DMS customer databases.  One typical problem with this is, often Google profiles may not provide complete customer names to search for in our database. Often, the husband may have visited the dealership, and the wife may have a Google account open in their computer. Hence, please look for all recent customer interactions with either the first name or last name in following databases

  If the Customer’s negative review is related to Sales or Vehicle purchase:

1. Vehicle Sold Deals in Sales CRM and DMS
2. Vehicle Trade-in evaluation customer lists in Sales CRM
3. Customer Sales appointments list in Sales CRM
4. Customer submitted Internet leads list in the Internet CRM database
5. The customer submitted the Credit Applications list in DealerTrack or other systems
6. All customers whose credit application is rejected.  If the Customer’s negative review is related to the Service or Parts Department:
7.  Customer Repair orders’ closed list on DMS
8.  Service Appointment Scheduling System’s databases like X-Time, DealerLogix, etc. It is possible customer has not visited after a negative experience during appointment scheduling.
9. OEM negative feedback reviews list.
10. Service leads list submitted from the Dealership’s website.
11. Parts orders list submitted from the Dealership’s website.

This is a very rare possibility! Do we notice rival dealerships having billboards and ADs in the vicinity of competing local dealerships, often chasing the same customers? It is possible the crooked marketing manager can hire a third-party company to keep on writing a series of negative Google reviews on the competing local and rival dealerships.  If your dealership does not have one such rival dealership, you may ignore it, but be aware of this possibility.

There is a possibility for one to involve in an illegal and racist review left against a dealership or brand.
The person leaving the review claimed the dealership denied the credit application or does not like the dealership’s owner based on color, race, or was affiliated with racist organizations.
Solution:   The review contradicted itself and seemed outlandish, so the review was removed upon writing Google about a series of such reviews.  Such reviews should be discussed among the management by circulating the review and bringing it to the attention of the dealer principals.

This case involved someone leaving negative reviews for several topically related businesses, namely does not like a particular group of people purchasing  EVs, Gas Guzzlers, hared for Import OEMs Brands, dislikes luxury brands,  hatred of domestic brands, etc.

Since it’s highly unlikely the same person went to all those scenarios, the reviews were removed. Usually, the vested company or group can employ a popular writer to write these reviews to defame the above scenario in the fast-changing industry, and a series of reviews from the same person, if proven to Google, can be removed.

There are many instances where a single individual will leave a review of his/her “experience” after creating multiple profiles and asking friends to post negative reviews about a dealership they have an agenda against.  We have dozens of instances they go out of the way to leave a series of reviews on dozens of social review sites to punish the dealership or the manager.

In this example, a frustrated customer denied credit applications multiple times in a secluded area, and not having enough chances elsewhere, or a really frustrated service customer, can often involve in this type of act.

There are many instances where a single individual will leave a review of his/her “experience” after creating multiple profiles and asking friends to post negative reviews about a business they have an agenda against.

In this example, a dealership received many one-star reviews on the same review site like Google, DealerRater, Cars.com, etc. from the same person who was also sending them threatening emails, and filled out the bad OEM survey. In these cases, the reviews are usually left all at once and in a short period of time.

Solution:  If the pattern of reviews can be proven by writing to the Review company, they usually cooperate to remove the series of bad surveys, because a policy, there should be only one negative review allowed from one customer.

Here are several such scenarios of leaving bad reviews accidentally.

1. A customer meant to give a 5-star Google Review but accidentally clicked on 1-Star and in the detailed review, you can clearly notice their experience was pretty positive. This happens all the time. Based on DealTimer’s millions of Reviews for Car Dealerships, we notice that 1 in 50  customers give a 1-star review accidentally clicking on a 5-star review.
2. Not all reviews are left with malicious intent. Sometimes people just make mistakes and leave a review for the wrong dealership.

In this example, a customer left a bad review for a dealership and noticed reviews referencing food. The dealership doesn’t have a restaurant inside, so the reviews were accidentally left on the wrong business and eventually removed.

Solution: It is very important to find the customer profile in the CRM or DMS database and reach out to the customer and request the customer to reverse the review rating.
If the customer profile can not be found the in database, please respond to the review, and the customer gets notified and the customer could reverse the review rating.

As a last resort, please write to the review company, and they can clearly see the customer’s intent of 1-star is different from the actual review text and they can remove or change the rating.

For dealers in an automotive group aside, it is rare for one user to be a customer of multiple locations of the same dealership group. When a single user leaves a negative review for multiple locations of a group, that’s usually a sign of review manipulation.

Leaving negative reviews for a current or former employer is against Google’s guidelines. This policy was just recently changed from current employees to both current and former employees.

1.  Go through the Complete list of Negative Google Reviews from former employees over the last 10-15 years, and report to Google, and they may remove all of the old reviews from 10+ years ago, even though the Google Policy in this regard changed only in the last December.

2. A big jump in Google Review rating can happen instantly if you can a bunch of employee hatred Google Reviews.

If you get a lot of negative reviews as a result of a controversial media incident, you have a case to get the reviews removed.

In the case below, a dealership was getting hit with a high number of negative reviews due to a free speech controversy reported in the news. The vast majority of people leaving the reviews had never had an experience with the dealership but left negative reviews anyway because they felt passionate about the cause. In the end, Google removed over 100 reviews.

Stay Cool before Responding: It is very important to remain calm. Typical negative Google Review responses often are ‘reactive’ type. It is very important not to attack the customer. Please remember, the more controversial the review becomes, the more negativity due to more attention this review gets than it deserves.

Clarify the problem: It is important to search through the customer database and see if this reviewer did not happen at the dealership customer, make sure you clarify that. Write a response indicating that no record of doing business with that customer.

Ask Them to Take Down Negative Google Reviews: It doesn’t hurt to ask the reviewer to take down their fraudulent review. Sometimes people will regret writing a fake review and when you bring it to their attention they will take it down.

Google Reviews’ role in building a customer-centric service center:

Google reviews can be a valuable tool for car dealers to boost their customer service center by providing real-time feedback from customers. Some best practices for using Google reviews to improve customer service include:

1.  Respond promptly and professionally to reviews, whether they are positive or negative.
2. Respond to negative reviewers on how the negative feedback helped to identify areas of improvement and make changes to address customer concerns in the coming days.
3. Reference 100s of positive Google Reviews as a leveraging of positive reviews to outweigh 1 or 2 negative reviews and see if the customer believes in 100s of satisfied positive reviews.
4. Monitoring reviews regularly to identify any patterns or trends in customer feedback that may indicate a larger issue.
5. Use the customer feedback to improve your on-site customer service and online customer service by providing better information, communication and follow-up.
6. Use Google Reviews as an opportunity for a long-term relationship with the customer.

By utilizing these best practices, car dealers can build a better customer service center with Google reviews and improve the overall customer experience.

Google Reviews are timebound to respond. If not responded timely, the dealership may lose an opportunity to work with the customer and change the Google Review rating from 1-star to 5-star after resolving the customer issue.
Depending on the complexity of the issue, the final decision from Google may take up to 20 business days.

How to Flag a Google Review for Removal For reviews that violate Google’s terms of service:
1. Open Google Maps and Search for your business location.
2. Click to view all of your business reviews. Select “All Reviews”
3. Click the three dots in the top right corner of the review you wish to remove and select “Flag as inappropriate”
4. Fill out the ‘Report a Policy Violation’ form and submit

To ask Google to remove or delete an inappropriate review from your Business Profile, and report the review qualified to be removed.

Google can remove reviews that violate Google’s policies. Request review removal Understand which reviews to report for removal Report only reviews that violate Google policies. Learn more about Google’s content policies.

Don’t report a review just because you disagree with it or don’t like it.

Dealerships often notice that Google displays 3rd party Reviews from Dealer Rater, Cars.com, etc. on the Dealerships Search Response areas.  Often those 3rdty social reviews may qualify for removal.
Google  CAN NOT remove 3rd party reviews.

To flag an inappropriate third-party review, contact the third-party provider directly. To go to the third-party website, click the reviewer’s name.

Soon after the provider removes or changes the review on their website, the update will show on your Business Profile.

Tip: Be patient. It can take several days to assess a review.

How to ask for review removal To report an inappropriate review for removal, you can use Google Maps or Google Search.

Note: Removed reviews stop showing on both. Flag a review or user in Google Maps

Reviews with Contention:  Dealerships have to reach out to those 3rd party review sites and complain about negative reviews offending the dealerships.  Upon such contented negative reviews being removed from the 3rd party review sites, Google gets removed that negative review upon receiving the review feed from the 3rd party review sites.

Don’t report to Google on 3rd party negative review removal,  just because you disagree with it or don’t like it.

Here are some key points related to Google’s review removal policy:

1. Reviews that Violate Google’s Policies: Google can remove reviews that violate their content policies. These policies are in place to maintain a fair and honest review system. If a review contains inappropriate or offensive content, spam, fake information, or any other violation of their guidelines, the business can report it for potential removal.
2. Disagreements or Negative Opinions: Google emphasizes that businesses should not report reviews just because they disagree with them or don’t like them. The removal process is not intended to be used as a means to suppress negative feedback. Instead, it is focused on addressing reviews that genuinely violate Google’s guidelines.
3. Fact Disputes: Google doesn’t get involved in disputes between businesses and customers about the facts presented in a review. Therefore, if a business believes that a review contains inaccurate information about a customer experience, it cannot rely on review removal to resolve the dispute.
4. Third-Party Reviews: Businesses cannot report third-party hotel reviews directly to Google. If an inappropriate review appears on a third-party website, the business should contact the third-party provider directly to address the issue.
5. Review Assessment Timeline: The review removal process may take several days as Google evaluates the reported review to determine if it violates their policies.

In addition to requesting review removal, businesses can also consider engaging with customers who leave negative reviews to resolve any issues and potentially turn negative experiences into positive ones. Responding to bad reviews thoughtfully and offering solutions can be a proactive approach to managing online reputation

There’s no reliable way to tell who’s right about a particular customer experience.  Customer experience is perception-driven and Google does not interfere in evaluating the customer perception and then decides to call that the customer is at fault and the dealership is correct and hence force the customer either to change the review rating or re-word the negative review as the positive review.

This contention rule between dealership staff and customers applies when requesting the removal of 3rd party reviews from Dealer Rater, Cars.com, etc .