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Review and reputation management: Spot casino fake reviews

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August 29, 2023

Managing the reputation of your online casino is critical for your site’s success. Online casino gaming is one of the fastest-growing industries in the current digital era. However, it also faces a lot of challenges, mainly concerning the platform’s reputation. People are cautious of online casinos, wondering whether they are trustworthy or unseemly. 

Your site’s reputation can make or break your venture. Even though you’ve established a safe, user-friendly and fun environment, you can’t control what other people do or say about your online casino. Bad casino online reviews have low ratings that can hurt your business reputation, causing your website, services, or products to lose sales or money. 

This is when you need online reputation management, which is all about managing perceptions about your site. QWERTYLABS can help you ensure you don’t lose business to customer complaints and maintain your good reputation. Continue reading and take the time to learn about casino fake reviews, how to spot them and the strategies you can use when dealing with them.

What is reputation management for casinos?

Reputation management is the process of controlling, managing and influencing a positive perception of casinos to the public online. It has a similar concept to public relations, except it deals exclusively with your online presence. Reputation management combines SEO, public relations, and digital marketing to boost your company's brand image, exposure, and reputation.

The online casino scene is a competitive industry. You might not realise that your competitors sabotage your online presence by hiring reviewers to post feedback and reviews about your offers and services. Some will snip your reputation just to gain customers. Your potential future customers can read those opinions, influencing their decision-making on whether to trust your online casino. Combat these fake reviews using online reputation management. 

Why is a good reputation important in business?

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Business with a good reputation attracts customers easily, which makes it one of the important factors in increasing the number of customers that will trust your brand in the industry. Think of your reputation as a tool to gain credibility, a competitive advantage and brand protection. These reasons can open doors to new opportunities and increase site visits and profit. 

Trust and credibility 

Testimonials about your platform’s good reputation can bring confidence to other customers, encouraging them to trust and rely on your site. A good reputation positions you as a trusted and credible leader within the casino industry. Credibility is a fundamental factor in success and the cornerstone of establishing strong relationships with your partners and customers. 

Customer acquisition and retention

Your site’s good reputation plays a significant role in customer acquisition and retention as it can attract and retain your customers. When faced with various options, customers will likely choose a brand that has a good reputation as it proves that it’s credible and trustworthy. It is a powerful motivator, influencing customers’ decisions and loyalty.

Competitive advantage

A good reputation influences brand perception. Having a good reputation means your platform is reliable. Showing your credibility and reliability over your competitors is an advantage that can produce good reviews and referrals. This then gives you a competitive advantage online and will drive customers to pick your casino over others.

Brand protection

If you have a good reputation, it can be a shield against issues and problems that can harm your reputation. But remember that it’s important to stay proactive in monitoring that your brand is not being misused.

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What are the possible consequences of fake reviews?

Providing a fun, safe and user-friendly platform is what every business wants to give to its customers. However, one fake review can give you a bad reputation, which can have detrimental effects on your business. Random people or your competitors might post such fake reviews as a strategy to manipulate and mislead customers. 

In essence, leaving fake reviews is not legal. It is a violation that, once caught, pays a steep price. In 2013, New York penalised 19 companies $350,000 for publishing fake reviews. According to data, 88% of customers online use ratings and reviews as their decision-making basis in using a product or service. They turn to reviews as one of their trusted sources in trusting a platform or a business. If your site has a bad review, they will doubt your integrity, which can be a factor in not trusting your site again. This will take a toll on your position in the industry. Customers not trusting your brand will affect the financial aspect of your business and might lose sales or profit.  

How to spot fake reviews

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Remember that your competitors can hire writers just to leave fake reviews about your platform. That’s why it is important to be aware of the signs of fake reviews. While most sites have filters to detect fake reviews, sometimes it’s up to you to perform verification.

Here’s how you can detect fake reviews:

Check the reviewer's profile

One of the best ways to detect a fake reviewer is by checking their profile. Suppose you can get information about the reviewer. In that case, you can identify inconsistencies, such as copied reviews from other reviewers, numerous reviews for the same product or a lack of social activity. Additionally, if the profile is not visible on other sites, it means that they only created an account to get paid. 

Analyse the language

Reviewers write fake reviews hastily, which is why you’ll find generic phrases, repetitive words and patterns. You can also spot suspicious reviews with unusual words and grammatical mistakes. 

Examine the timing

You can identify fake reviews by looking at the time stamp. If they posted multiple reviews in a short time, it may be because it’s rewarded by a time-limited rating. 

Check IP addresses

Another way to flag fake reviewers is by looking at their alternative data, which includes IP addresses. Analysis of IP addresses is one of the oldest and most common methods to detect scammers and fraudsters. Ask yourself, ‘Do they share similar or same sources?’ If it points to the same user under different personas, it can be (not a clear-cut) a fraud.

Compare with other reviews

Make sure to read as many reviews as possible to detect fake reviews. Reading reviews can help you detect which are genuine reviews and which are copied. Moreover, comparing reviews can help you learn the differences in their tone and content. If it looks like marketing, it could just be written by marketers, not customers.

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How to deal with fake reviews

Bad casino insights are unavoidable, and they will have an impact on the reliability and credibility of your business. When encountering such crises, it is your commitment to approach them and come up with solutions. But make sure you’re not acting in the heat of the moment. Responding emotionally can only add fuel to the fire. Take your time and make efforts that can help your platform recover. 

Here’s how you should deal with fake reviews:

Respond and act promptly

Removing the review isn’t always a great idea, as others might have already seen it. You can bring odds to your favour by responding to it. Don’t delay your response. Respond timely and transparently for other customers to see your dedication to providing solutions so the issue doesn’t escalate. Remember to be professional, and apologise for the inconvenience. Assure them that you provide quick solutions and updates for customer satisfaction. 

Flag and report

Once you respond to the review, it’s time to flag and report suspicious and fraudulent comments on your platform. Follow the steps below on how you can flag a review:

  1. Log in to your Google My Business account.
  2. Go to the ‘reviews’ section.
  3. Click the review you want to flag.
  4. Click the ‘flag’ icon beside the star rating, which takes you to the ‘Report a Policy Violation’ page.
  5. Enter your email address and violation type.

After your report, Google starts its investigation and may do a follow-up if they need additional information. You have the option to speed up the process by asking other people to flag the same comment. 

Monitor and document

Anyone can leave a bad or fake review about your business on Google. It’s easy to create an account and ruin the reputation of a brand. After responding and reporting the comment, you should also monitor and record potential fake reviewers to prevent future problems. 

Seek legal advice if necessary

If the considerations above, like posting removal, don’t produce any good results and the damage escalates, consulting legal advice is an implication. Seek legal advice from a professional specialising in defamation or cybercrime. They will evaluate the case with honesty, provide what you need for compliance and offer options available for transparency. 

Educate and empower customers

Lastly, it is important to educate your audience about the prevalence of fake ratings to help them with their decisions when it comes to trusting a review. Encourage them to report suspicious comments and channels and leave honest and unbiased reviews to combat fake reviews.

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How to respond to fake reviews

How you respond to fake reviews can affect the value of your brand. Make sure to address the issues and their opinions professionally, even though it’s a fake review. Show your customers that you are reliable, credible, and responsible. Here are tips you should follow to properly respond to fake reviews:

Maintain a calm and composed tone

Avoid responding when you are on the verge of your emotions, as this will only result in arguments. Take your time to compose yourself, and then act when you’re already calm to exude an empathetic tone. 

Craft a professional and constructive response

Remember that other customers can see the reviews. Even if the review is fake, make sure to reply to let your audience know your side on the issue, which can help them avoid being influenced by negative reviews. Show excellence by responding professionally so they know you have good customer service.

When crafting a constructive response, ensure to include the following:

  • Start with a personalised greeting
  • Show appreciation for feedback
  • Acknowledge the issue
  • Offer a solution or explanation
  • Invite offline conversation
  • End on a positive note.

Validate genuine concerns

Even if they’re fake reviews, consider what people say about your brand or platform. Take a look for yourself if the complaints and queries are legitimate. If yes, address the concern, explain professionally and resolve the issue immediately. 

Provide accurate information

If you want to build trust among your customers, avoid inaccuracies and false information. A customer might investigate and question the validity of what you share, so always provide facts. 

Highlight positive and authentic casino customer experiences

To counterbalance the fake reviews on your site, this is your opportunity to highlight and share positive reviews from your satisfied customers. You can do this by organising user-generated content about your brand on your site.

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Encouraging user-generated content for casino reputation management

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User-generated content (UGC) is user reviews from your customers. You can find published UGCs on social media platforms, video testimonials and reviews on third-party platforms. It is social proof of the experience of your customers on your site. Through UGCs, other customers will know the authenticity and transparency of your site. Moreover, you’ll know the areas of improvement you need to address. 

Strategies to encourage casino users’ feedback and review

Collaboration with your customers is one of the best ways to improve your services. You won’t know what are the areas for improvement if your customers won’t give feedback. But how can you encourage them to leave feedback?

One of the reasons why they leave feedback is that they don’t have time for it. It’s indeed time-consuming, but some methods can help you make this an easier task. You can collect customer feedback in various ways, such as through surveys, social media engagement, feedback forms, and more. Through these, you’ll know if your casino community has loyalty.

  • Surveys and questionnaires - This contains short and specific questions. Create surveys for mobile and telephone so anyone can answer them quickly.
  • Feedback forms - This is one of the most basic and effective methods to share feedback. Customers often rate 1 to 5 or ‘bad to excellent’ to share and evaluate their experience on a site. 
  • Social media engagement - This is perfect for young and middle-class customers.
  • In-person feedback - You can do this method through phone, email or face-to-face sessions. Through this, customers can properly articulate their issues and concerns.
  • Customer advisory panel -  This is perfect if you want to receive regular feedback from your customers. It is done by inviting key customers to a meeting.

Reputation management tools for casinos

There are plenty of tools and strategies you can use to analyse, manage and respond to customer feedback on your brand reputation. Implement reputation management tools to track your system, update features, and find solutions.

Here’s what you need to do:

Centralised review management

Capture all reviews across platforms in one centralised dashboard. You can use tools like Podium to consolidate reviews in a single dashboard. 

Real-time monitoring 

If you want to receive an instant notification when your customers leave a review, use ReviewTrackers to help your team stay up-to-date on feedback.

Data analysis and insights

You can also use ReviewTrackers to track trends, issues and topics, which includes tracking your competitors and data analytics. 

Review response automation

Automate response using AI-generated tools like Open AI or ChatGPT. You can customise a template to personalise your response to your customers. 

Competitor analysis

You can use Reputation to make a competitor analysis and come up with decisions to manage your brand’s reputation.

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Casino reputation, crisis communication and recovery

A crisis can damage your reputation and harm your rank in the industry. That’s why your public relations team needs to act quickly and reduce the impact. To do this, you must be consistent with your plan in resolving the problem. If you still don’t have one, here’s how you can apply crisis communication strategies to help you rebuild your reputation. 

Develop a crisis communication plan

Crisis communication is a way for you to respond to a challenge or crisis that may damage your reputation. When creating a plan, brainstorm the types of crises that may occur in your business. This document must exist in advance to ensure the team knows their roles and responsibilities during a crisis. 

Tailor your messaging

Tailoring messages is an important step in developing a crisis communication plan. Your message should be clear, accurate, concise, and should answer the following questions: 

  • What happened? 
  • What are you doing about it? 
  • What are the consequences? 
  • How can stakeholders help or get help?

You should also provide the steps you will take to resolve the crisis and prevent escalation.

Leverage influencers and brand ambassadors for casinos

Enhance your message and reach new audiences by leveraging influencers and brand ambassadors. Moreover, endorsements from influencers can boost your credibility during a crisis. Sharing their positive experiences through narratives or videos can make a difference.

Monitor and manage online casino conversations

Control and track online conversations to know where your reputation stands. Active research and conversation are good for your reputation.

Elevate your online casino's reputation with QWERTYLABS

If you are looking for an online service that can help with brand protection and reputation management, QWERTYLABS is here for you. Our top-notch services can protect your company’s reputation and integrity by having professionals and experts on your pedestal. Contact us today and maintain your brand’s image with our help!

FAQs

What are fake reviews?

Fake reviews are feedback or comments about a service or product that does not reflect genuine experience. 

Are fake reviews illegal?

Fake reviews are against the law. If you get caught, you will be fined.

How common are fake reviews?

Anyone can receive fake reviews. Moreover, anyone can create an account and write fake reviews. 

How to tell if reviews are fake?

One of the ways to tell if a review is fake is when it has generic phrases, repetitive words and patterns.

How to differentiate fake from real reviews?

Compare it with other reviews to help you learn the differences of various tone and content. Some could be written by marketers, while others are paid by an individual or company. 

How fake reviews can hurt a business?

If your site has a fake review that contains negativity, your customers will doubt your integrity, which can be a factor in not trusting your site again.

How to remove fake reviews?

 Follow the steps below on how you can flag a review so Google can review and remove it:

  1. Log in to your Google My Business account.
  2. Go to the ‘reviews’ section.
  3. Click the review you want to flag.
  4. Click the ‘flag’ icon beside the star rating, which takes you to the ‘Report a Policy Violation’ page.
  5. Enter your email address and violation type.
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