About Us

Negative comments and poor ratings about your business on Google can have disastrous consequences for your business. It is irrational that Google allows anonymous people with ulterior motives to post broadside swipes and misleading reviews with absolute ease but makes it impossible for the victims of such claims to seek justice and set the record straight.

If you are among those numerous people feeling frustrated at Google’s attempts to stonewall requests for taking down damaging reviews, Rate Google is the solution.

Rate Google as the name suggests, allows you to rate Google on various parameters. It is an honest attempt to build a broad public opinion about the sheer arrogance and dominance of Google and its disinclination to listen to grievances about its policies and processes.

With Rate Google, we intend to make a small beginning to make Google realize that it has to stop or at least regulate its policy of allowing unchecked posting of negative comments and reviews.

Why Rate Google

Google has acted like a killing machine to businesses. They have no parameters for writing reviews, and their careless process encourages users to negatively affect business owners without a fair appeal process. For example, a malicious client of my law firm wrote a negative review on our site www.rnnlawmd.com. Following the posting of the review, the same client also filed a bar complaint. The bar complaint was immediately dismissed as the allegations were not founded in fact or ethics. After the Maryland tribunal for attorneys issued a letter of dismissal, that same letter was presented to Google as a means of removing the review. Google ignored the letter from the Maryland Attorney Grievance Commission and advised my office that we had to file a lawsuit to remove the negative comments. That lawsuit took more than one year to come to a conclusion.
Please note that I am a lawyer. What happens to individual business owners who are not attorneys? How can they resolve their issues? Google is a business entity, and yet there is no forum to review the services they provide. Let’s see how they will stack up under their own dictatorial rule.

Criticism

Most review sites make little or no attempt to restrict postings or to verify the information in the reviews. Critics point out that positive reviews are sometimes written by the businesses or individuals being reviewed, whereas negative reviews may be written by competitors, disgruntled employees, or anyone with a grudge against the business being reviewed. So-called reputation management firms may also submit false positive reviews on behalf of businesses. In 2011, RateMDs.com and Yelp detected dozens of positive reviews of doctors submitted from the same IP addresses by a firm called Medical Justice. Furthermore, studies of research methodology have shown that in forums where people are able to post opinions publicly, group polarization often occurs, and the result is very positive comments, very negative comments, and little in between, meaning that those who would have been in the middle are either silent or pulled to one extreme or the other. Another criticism against sites that rely on income from businesses is that they are reluctant to post negative reviews because that undermines their business model. This leads to a conflict of interest.

Definition of REVIEW SITE, from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

A review site is a website on which reviews can be posted about people, businesses, products, or services. These sites may use Web 2.0 techniques to gather reviews from site users or may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic of concern for the site. Review sites included first ConsumerDemocracy.com, which introduced the helpfulness ratings, then later Epinions.com and Amazon.com.

Review sites are generally supported by advertising. Some business review sites may also allow businesses to pay for enhanced listings, which do not affect the reviews and ratings. Product review sites may be supported by providing affiliate links to the websites that sell the reviewed items.

With the growing popularity of affiliate programs on the Internet, a new sort of review site has emerged – the affiliate product review site. This type of site is usually professionally designed and written to maximize conversions and is used by e-commerce marketers. It’s often based on a blog platform like WordPress, has a privacy and contact page to help with search engine optimization, and has commenting and interactivity turned off. It will also have an e-mail-gathering device in the form of an opt-in, or drop-down list to help the aspiring e-commerce businessperson build an e-mail list to market to.

Because of the specialized marketing thrust of this type of website, the reviews are not objective.

Response to Criticism

Operators of most review sites acknowledge that reviews may not be objective and that ratings may not be statistically valid. An FAQ on the Ratingz Inc website states that although the ratings are not statistically valid, “they are a listing of opinions and should be judged as such.

However, we often receive emails stating that the ratings are uncannily accurate, especially for businesses with over 100 ratings.”

Careless inadequate process to review negative comments

Google states in relevant part that in order to remove a negative comment the following steps must be taken:

Step #1: When you come across a negative review, click on the “Options” besides the review. It will take you to the Google page which states ‘Report a policy violation’:

Step #2: Here, you have to enter your email address in the space provided for the purpose.

Step #3: Next, you have to choose from the four violation types provided by Google:

This post contains hateful, violent, or inappropriate content
This post contains advertising or spam
Off-topic
This post contains conflicts of interest

Step #4: After choosing the violation you feel is most appropriate for your case, you have to click on the submit button.

As you can see, the options provided are limited and often does not give users the chance to record their grievance appropriately. It is also frequently experienced that Google does not respond to complaints quickly in most cases, and no action is taken against the violation in a majority of cases.

It is clear that Google is indifferent to requests for redressal from businesses who are victims of fake negative reviews posted anonymously by competitors. If you want more proof that Google is not serious about your review removal requests, click on their ‘Comment Posting Policy’. There are some inane instructions which does not convey any sense of seriousness on the part of Google.

That’s why businesses should stand up and say no to Google’s absolute indifference to the problems faced by business owners. Google must have a relook at their violation policy which is clearly inadequate and lacks teeth to deal with the problem effectively.