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I Googled our company name and found that someone had given us a review on the maps site. He gave us a 1 star review and his review was simply "Out of Business". We are definitely NOT out of business!!!

I looked at his other reviews and he has given 69 1 star reviews, most of which are for companies in our shared industry (competitors).

I flagged the one post as inappropriate and selected "other". Is there anything else I can do to prevent this guy from slandering our company (and others!)!

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This question generally involves use of Google's services and does not directly concern the management or operation of a website - please see Google's review removal documentation for information on how to resolve this issue. – danlefree♦ Dec 27 '11 at 20:03

closed as off topic by danlefree♦ Dec 27 '11 at 20:04

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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

You can use the aggressive approach of suing over things like this. Sometimes it works but you can make your business look even worse, like a big bully. Picking on "the little guy" is almost always a PR nightmare.

A better approach is to use positive reputation management to bury bad reviews with good ones. How to get the good reviews, I'll leave up to you but there are companies that quietly work in this area. This won't work if your business is getting substantial, real, negative reviews but it is effective in dealing with one or two bad reviews from disgruntled customers or ex-employees.

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up vote 0 down vote

A company I worked for had one of those once. The slander was so egregious that with proper documentation of loss of business, proof of ownership of various internet assets, paper trail of the postings, and a good lawyer, we ended up owning $250,000 of the guy's assets plus court costs and a settlement where if he ever mentioned us again online, no matter what it was, we'd own even more of him. It's an expensive option. You start with a good lawyer that's represented businesses in these cases.

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2  
The risk of this aggressive approach is the "Streisand effect" -en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect – jfrankcarr Dec 27 '11 at 18:51
There is that possibility, but the defendant had gone so far over the line that even his supporters abandoned him. So pick your fight wisely. – Fiasco Labs Dec 27 '11 at 21:10

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