A shop owner in Cleveland showed me his Google reviews and 14 of them came from the same 3 accounts
I was looking at reviews for a moving company near me last week and noticed the same 3 names kept popping up under different business listings in the same zip code, so now I always click the reviewer profiles before I trust anything, has anyone else caught this?
Clicking the profile is the easy part, the sneaky stuff is when they space it out. I found one guy who left 40 reviews over two years, all 5 stars, and every single one was a different business but the wording was copy pasted with one or two words swapped. Same weird phrase like "quick and painless process" on a plumber, a nail salon, and a tire shop. Then you check who else reviewed those same places and it's the same little cluster of 5 or 6 accounts all reviewing each other's stuff. Google could flag this in a heartbeat if they wanted, they just don't. Best tip I can give is sort by newest instead of most relevant, the fake ones usually come in bursts on the same few days.