Looking up reviews is a pretty common way to determine if you do or don't want to do business with a company. But not all reviews can be trusted.
In fact, he says these are part of more than 100 fake negative reviews that were posted about his company on Google. Brownstone explained the process of contacting Google was exhaustive."I probably sent 60-plus e-mails with no responses, and I got nowhere with them. We sent a letter to Google in California, certified letter. We faxed our legal department and we got zero response from them whatsoever," said Brownstone.Our NBC data editor analyzed all of the reviews of Brownstone's business and found an"explosion" of reviews posted all around the same time, with similar wording.
Now that Brownstone has Google's attention, he's working with them to get the last of the fake reviews removed."NBC 5 came through as our hero," he told us.Earlier this year, Google announced it's been using a new algorithm to identify and take down fake reviews since 2023.