With dozens of positive Google reviews, Timmerman Recep Yarar from Tilburg never had trouble getting to work. That changed when he suddenly received many bad reviews on his page followed by a message: he had to pay to have them removed and to prevent it from getting more. Expert Bram Kamphuis sees this form of blackmail more and more often in small companies.
Companies can be found in the Google search engine and on Google Maps via their Google profile. The Tilburg carpenter Recep had before he was blackmailed about sixty good reviews on his page. And they are very important to get customers. Many bad reviews appeared on the Google profile of Receps company until one day. “I first had five stars, but when twenty -five bad reviews suddenly appeared, the number of stars dropped to three,” says the carpenter.
He then received a message from an unknown number. “If I were to pay five hundred euros, they would remove the bad reviews,” he says.
“I have four children, so I have to have work.”
Guarantee that the reviews will actually be deleted if you pay, you don’t have. “The messages often come from songs from Pakistan or India,” says Google specialist Bram Kamphuis. “That means they work in organized gangs.”
When Recep saw the bad reviews and the message, he was shocked. “I was on vacation and could not reach everyone in the Netherlands. I had a lot of stress and couldn’t sleep,” he looks back. Customers for whom he still had to do work called him to get a story. “I am a sole proprietorship. If I don’t work, I don’t earn a sandwich. I have four children so I have to work.”
Recep decided not to pay and contacted Bram and his team. “They advised me not to pay and stay calm. She warned that Google is very slow, but that they were going to make it right,” he says.
Google indeed turned out to be slow, because only after 2.5 months were the first bad reviews from Recep were achieved page. “And only after 4.5 months were the latest reviews removed,” says the carpenter.
“This can cost me the head.”
Recep was lucky that he still had a lot of work on the planning after his vacation and that his customers believed his explanation about the reviews. “But I received a lot less new requests,” he says. “I thought when it happened: this could cost me the head.”
Bram also sees that the impact of the blackmail is enormous on small companies. “If a five star review suddenly drops to the four, it sometimes saves 80 to 90 percent of sales for a small entrepreneur,” he explains.
In addition, small companies sometimes have to wait months for the reviews to be removed. “Google is a multinational so as a small entrepreneur ends up at the bottom of the pile with requests,” the expert knows.
This form of blackmail is so new that Google’s algorithms don’t recognize it yet. “We hope that the algorithms will eventually be so smart that a red flag appears at Google when sixty reviews with one star appear from nowhere,” says Bram.