How to remove online Google, Facebook and Yell Reviews for your dental practice
Over a decade ago, the Yellow Pages was the ultimate source for finding local businesses and service providers, and there was little scope to find out how a business performed when it came to delivering results.
Now in the age of the internet, the World Wide Web has connected businesses to consumers, consumers to businesses, people to people, and everything in between. It has also allowed businesses to share their triumphs through their websites, but obviously, businesses will always be reluctant to place any bad testimonials onto their own web space.
However, this has changed massively over the last few years, with Yell, Google and Facebook, acting as unbiased review services.
It’s great to find a positive review about your dental practice and it really demonstrates to new potential clients how great your clinical skills are, and how polished your customer service is. People trust experiences and are likely to be swayed by other people’s success stories.
It also gives businesses a platform for learning how to improve their service when negative reviews are left.
Although often considered an issue, negative reviews are not bad. In fact, they give you a chance to further improve your business and create a service that’s incomparable by taking the opportunity to rectify problems. Actively replying to both positive AND negative reviews demonstrates that you listen to your customers and you take all feedback on board. Big tick this perfect tool allows you to do this.
There are also sometimes instances where local competition will try to ruin your business reputation by leaving false reviews. This happens very rarely, but it does happen. You also have strangers that sometimes get confused by which dentist they’ve visited and leave negative reviews.
Occasionally, you may get a patient who wants to leave you a negative review mostly based on poor service or poor communication but can take their opinions too far through the use of foul language or extreme criticism that far outweighs the issue.
It’s in these instances that you should be looking at removing these reviews, but remember not to argue back or disclose any personal information as you may breach the Data Protection Act.
Here is how you remove false or foul negative reviews on the 3 major platforms.
To remove a Google review you must flag the chosen review, complete a form and wait for Google to review the flagging. Here is a step-by-step guide by Google on flagging a review.
To flag a review for removal:
- Navigate to Google Maps.
- Search for your business using its name or address.
- Select your business from the search results.
- In the panel on the left, scroll to the “Review summary” section.
- Under the average rating, click [number of] reviews.
- Scroll to the review you’d like to flag and click the flag icon.
- Complete the form in the window that appears and click Submit.
Google is pretty fast to act upon these flags, with the average response time usually around 2 weeks to a month.
Facebook follows a similar process to Google where you must report the chosen review and wait for the Facebook team to take action.
To report a negative Facebook review according to Facebook
To report a review:
- Go to the review and click on the top right
- Click Report post
- Follow the on-screen instructions
Keep in mind that you can only report star ratings that include reviews. That means if someone leaves a 1-star review with no actual text, you sadly cannot remove this.
Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, Facebook is actually useless in removing false negative reviews, and in some cases will refuse unless they use extremely foul language or threats.
There is a way around this, and it is to actually turn off the option to leave reviews on your Facebook page. The reviews themselves will be hidden and no one can leave any more reviews, but the reviews will not be deleted and will return once the option is turned on again.
Follow the steps below to turn off reviews for your Page:
1. Navigate to the settings tab of the Page.
2. Under general settings click edit on the reviews section
3. After clicking edit select the option to “Allow visitors to review this Page” or “Disable reviews”
4. Click save changes after making the selection.
Yell
To remove a Yell review isn’t easy, we found. Yell is a big supporter of reviews and will remove them if they don’t meet their rules and regulations, and if the review is a false review they will remove it pretty sharpish. However, proving it’s a false review is the difficult part.
To remove a review
– Go to the actual review you would like to remove
– On the top right corner, click Report Review
– Fill in the form and wait to hear back from Yell.
You do have the option to turn the reviews completely off, too. Once the review is reported and you don’t feel any justice was served, you can then email them directly at service@yell.com or call them on 0800 555 444. This is the only service with a direct contact number and email.
We hope these instructions help you to remove those false or incorrect reviews. If you have no luck in getting the powers that be to remove your reviews, flood the reviews with genuine positive reviews.
A good thriving business cannot go without at least one or two genuine reviews as they are a sign that you are growing, and there’s always scope to further improve.
If you would like help to create a strategy to increase your reviews, speak to one of our advisors on 0330 133 0635 or drown out negative reviews with the Reviews Booster.
