Lora Baker
Local Search Specialist

A blatant case of “review spam” has hit bankruptcy attorneys’ Google Places listings in Boulder and Denver, CO. On November 9, a total of 17 different attorneys in the cities of Boulder and Denver, CO were faced with this review on their Google Place Page:

<Various Attorney> has been nothing but a nightmare for us. It all started last January 2011 and we still haven’t filed (November 2011)! We have been assigned to at least 7 different attorney’s and paralegals and no one seems to know what they are doing. The turnover of staff is despicable! That should have been our first clue…they can’t keep anyone employed here! We haven’t talked to the same person twice. We were told to give up a car by one attorney and then the next guy said we shouldn’t have surrendered the car because we could have negotiated a new monthly payment! We’ve been given a lot of bad advice and the documents that were submitted to the US Trustee were wrong and they forgot to include things like an auto payment, daycare costs,and our mortgage! These people are not professional much less educated or knowledgeable. I am sick that we didn’t run from this place! We have paid nearly $3000 and still don’t have anything filed! If you are looking for a bankruptsy attorney that will provide you with sound advice, protect and represent you, or file a solid case for you, this is NOT the office for you. I have no idea who is providing these misleading high ratings but this has not been our experience.

I can’t help but ask myself who would bother to go to eight different Google Place Pages just to copy and paste a disparaging review that many times. Boulder, CO is not a large city by any means –did this reviewer think that a potential customer would not wonder why this exact same review was left for almost all of the local bankruptcy attorneys on the very same day? Frankly, on the forefront this appears to be a competitor taking a cheap shot at trying to boost their own listing. Did that competitor really think this would be an effective strategy?

So far, I have found only two bankruptcy attorneys in Boulder who were not affected by this “1-star“ review. Was this just a case of one person having a very bad experience with a bad bankruptcy lawyer and deciding to make all Boulder/Denver bankruptcy lawyers pay for it? Sure: maybe this unlucky individual had the EXACT SAME EXPERIENCE with every single bankruptcy attorney in Boulder? Hmm. Not likely. Thankfully, one of the attorneys noticed this review the day it happened, and emailed the other attorneys who were hit with the same word-for-word review. One of these attorneys happens to be a client of ours.

Only one other time have I seen such a blatant case of review spam. A camera shop with multiple nationwide locations had a copied review left on at least 20 Google Places listings nationwide. I believe that the person who left the negative review did have the experience that he or she described in the review. However, once that same person copied their negative review to 20 different locations (mostly in California, one in New York and one in Washington DC), it became “review spam”. That person did NOT have that experience at 20 different stores. All the reviews were left on the same day (as in this case) and were copied word for word. Google acted swiftly in that case, and although I had crafted an apologetic response to each and every one of the reviews, Google had that specific review pulled off those listings within one week. In that case, the target was the same camera store –in this case, the target is almost every bankruptcy attorney in Boulder as well as several in Denver.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the history of the reviewer (by clicking “K” next to the date on the top of the review).  This reviewer has left only eight reviews in his/her whole Google life, and only against the various bankruptcy attorneys in Boulder. In Denver, a reviewer also known as “K” left nine 1-star reviews on Denver bankruptcy attorneys.

 

Overlooking the whole question of morality that comes into play when someone chooses to leave a false  and slandering review on different attorneys’ Google Place Pages, does the person who left these reviews really believe that this will help the attorney who doesn’t have this cut and pasted review? As a local search optimization specialist, this kind of flagrant disregard for what reviews are meant to accomplish frustrates me to no end.

As far as actions that I have taken: at this point I have flagged each review as inappropriate (not just my client’s review, but every review on every Google Place Page). In the description, I put the following note to Google: This exact same review has been left on 9 Denver Bankruptcy attorneys and 8 Boulder bankruptcy attorneys today. Please remove this slanderous review from this listing. Thank you. In my opinion, these reviews by this reviewer (I am looking at you, K) need to be removed from Google Places. When someone takes it upon themselves to use Google as a way to put down companies or businesses that they have not used, Google needs to deal with it swiftly and get the reviews pulled down.

Update: Less than 24 hours after these reviews showed up on Google Places, they are starting to disappear from the various Place Pages. Although I am surprised by the fact that not all the reviews have been pulled off of Google yet, I am impressed that Google reacted so quickly to a case of obvious review spam. So often, we all hear complaints of Google’s lack of response regarding reviews, but is not the case here. Way to go Google!