Google reviews have become one of the most popular measures that people use to access the reputation and capability of a business. As a result, many business owners are doing whatever it takes to make their businesses rank highly on Google.

So, should you rely on Google reviews alone to decide whether to patronize a business?  We’ll be sharing with you some reasons why you shouldn’t, and things to look out for.

5-star ratings shouldn’t be the only key determinant for a transaction.

These days, people try to rank their business online through all kinds of means in order to be listed in top searches on Google, including in Nigeria. In many cases, some don’t have the capability or expertise, while many forget to put the same energy into improving their services.

They are  more concerned about getting seen faster and hopefully getting the job ahead of their competitors, and they go through all kinds of means to achieve that. In some cases, they create multiple Gmail accounts and comment on their own google business profiles. Others may get people they know to leave positive comments on their Google My Business page, when in actuality, such individuals are not recipients of their service.

Such is their desire to be ranked high in the Google search engine, that they often visit their competitors’ Google pages to give them 1 or 2-star ratings, in order to lower the average rating of their competitors so that their own can be higher. That’s why if you go through some Google business page reviews, you will notice 2-star ratings, and such ratings may not have any comments, because the reality is that there’s actually no justification for the poor ratings given.

The question then is, how do you know when a Google business page ratings are genuine? Here are a few tips:

Personalised Comments
Look for business pages with genuine comments. When a client comments about a business, it’s usually personalised especially with video production services. At SPS Media we spend time with clients planning a production. It’s a very client-centric process. We spend time talking through concept, planning, strategy execution and so on. In most cases, pre-production can take from 3 days to one month depending on the scale of the project. So when clients leave a review on our business page, it’s usually so personalised that they can mention team members’ names.

Five-star ratings with no actual comments
Watch out for five-star ratings with no comment or comments with not much relevance pertaining to the specifics of a business. In most cases, those are doctored reviews. Also, some reviews are actually written by the business owners, and passed on to their associates to copy and paste onto their Google page.

Businesses with high ratings
Take your time to evaluate a business’ Google reviews. It’s rare to have 5-star ratings throughout a review page. People are diverse, so are clients. Even when you deliver an excellent service, you’ll find a client who will rate you 4-stars instead of 5-stars for whatever reason that might not be directly related to the final output of your job. Yes you did an awesome job but maybe during the pre-production phase, you communicated poorly which led to them changing their decision on something, etc…it could be anything at all. There could be so many reasons for a less than 5-star review. So when you find a business page with over a hundreds reviews and they are all 5-star ratings, be worried.

Low reviews doesn’t mean incompetence
You see, a lot of businesses, including the video production sector, are mostly built on passion or the need to solve a problem. So many of these businesses are usually so deeply engrossed in their processes and improving their services, that their marketing and PR may get neglected. Alot of them hardly ever share their Google business pages with their customers for review. So the fact that they have a low amount of reviews doesn’t really mean they can’t do the job.

Website review
Take the time to visit the website of the company you intend to work with. See the kind of work they have done and the quality of delivery. That will better guide you. For instance, on the SPS Media Nigeria website, you can see some of the jobs we’ve done and some of the clients we’ve worked with, which can give you an idea about our expertise, capabilities, and experience.

So don’t get carried away when you see a business with lots of 5-star ratings. It doesn’t mean they’re best for the job, as the ratings might be mostly orchestrated. You might find out that the people with average or less than 5-star ratings are best for the job. But most importantly, do your due diligence.