If you delete a Google Business page, do the reviews also get deleted with it?

Question

Reviews posted against a business on Google appear on Google Maps, within the Google Search results, and on Google+.

The scenario is that we have a single negative review against a Google Business page (probably posted by a competitor / disgruntled former member of staff) under the guise of someone entirely unknown to the business or team (i.e. via a throwaway account).

The question is if you hit "Delete this page" on the Google Business entry, would it also delete the associated review?

The plan would be to then create a new Business Page that is free of the negative review.

I want to check this before doing so, just in case the review will linger on in some form, and to prevent the need for going through the business page claim process again.

I also want to try to avoid having to ask legitimate customers to write reviews against the business to help drown out the single negative review. Having no reviews would be the best outcome.

Solution

First, you state the negatives are from competitors. Have you looked at who is posting the reviews and how have you determined it to be competitors? The reason for this is simple; if you are having a customer issue and you do not deal with it, all the advice on fixing this is not worth the time of writing it.

If you believe it is competitors, for me it would come down to how many negative reviews versus positive reviews. If there are 5 plus negative and no positive, changing your places account could be positive except that...you competitors did it before why would they not do it when you change it?

Get the good reviews from your customers and help them post them. Once you do, you will move some of the negative down. On any of the negative, leave them be - do not respond unless it is really causing the business a problem. The more you respond, the more you will invite others and rebuttal.

Second, When you delete a business page, you don't actually delete it, rather you delete your ownership of the business page. It will stay in Maps for quite some time until Google cannot find any corresponding data to say the business exists.

You can mark it permanently closed, remove all and any references to it online and it will fade away, how long, not entirely sure.

If it was a duplicate or an old address, you can ask business support to mark as Moved to your new business page.

https://support.google.com/business/contactflow

Comments

[JamesRyan]

Trying to remove a bad review just looks shadier still. If I were you, I would just respond to the review in a non-combative professional manner and then forget about it. People understand that trolls exist.

[Simon Hayter]

EEEK... Having no reviews would be the best outcome. sounds like bad business practices to me, reviews are valuable, both negative and positive. You should also be aware that reviews are a HUGE SEO ranking factor both on Google Plus and 3rd parties, and especially if its a local business. Additionally, you should also be aware that deleting your Google business page will likely harm your local and national rankings due to Google's local algorithms which is heavily interwebed with Google Plus. Simply recreating the page may not restore weight gained from the previous page.

[closetnoc]

Please know that outlier negative reviews are rather simple to detect via an algorithm. Google can and will ignore these outlier reviews. Believe it or not, it is a simple mathematical calculation. You can also honestly address the review. Do this professionally. Addressing the review allows Google to review the review and remove it entirely. This does happen.