Have you been paying attention to your Google reviews? Do you have any particularly nasty reviews that simply are not warranted? Maybe send the author of negative reviews on your Google My Business (GMB) listing a link to this article as they may think twice about their review and may even revoke it/them. Two court-ordered payouts for negative reviews of $750,000 and $170,000 should be enough to make anyone think twice.
This comes off the back of a $750,00 payout to Adelaide Lawyer Gordon Cheng, who won a staggering $750,000 defamation judgment (plus costs) over a bad Google Review.
Cheng v Lok [2020] SASC 14, the Supreme Court of South Australia
A recent court case bought against an individual for posting negative reviews on a Dentist’s GMB listing has far-reaching ramifications and highlights the power and impact of Google reviews. A local dentist in Kew Melbourne has been awarded $170,000 after claiming that she was defamed by a one-star review. Full court details can be found here;
Dean v Puleio [2021] VCC 848 (12 July 2021)
The Age newspaper went into more detail about the specifics of the case. The link has now been dropped.
It appears the reviews conveyed negative imputations for the care provided and offered by the dentist.
So Can you sue someone for negative reviews?
The answer is “YES” absolutely. I’m not a lawyer, nor do I profess to be. Talk to a lawyer if you think you may have a case and point them to this article.
This article is not a review of these court cases per se. However, these cases emphasise how important Google reviews can be (or damaging) to your business. For the courts to have ordered payouts of such amounts, they clearly have recognised the damage a negative review can do to a business. On the flip side, positive reviews can also majorly impact your business.
At Goop Digital, we are not lawyers, nor do we profess to offer legal advice; however, if you find you are on the receiving end of negative Google reviews, there is something you can now do about this. It appears from both cases that later removing a post can be too little too late for the defendants, and it appears that in both cases, more than one identity was used to create these negative reviews.
Do you need a hand looking after your business’s reviews or someone to train you how to monitor and respond professionally? Do some reviews simply need to be removed? At Goop Digital we advocate that a simple and easy-to-maintain part of your digital business strategy should be to focus on your Google My Business listing and your reviews.
- monitor reviews
- encourage positive 5-star reviews
- respond professionally to all reviews (not just negative reviews)
- update your GMB
- trading hours (e.g. Christmas and Easter)
- Events / Posts
- images/videos
- COVID updates
If you would like to learn more about how your GMB and Google reviews can help boost and grow your business, call us now. Or call us, and we can talk you through sending a link to this article to someone who has written you a negative review.