Fighting Trolls Online & Why Trolls Can’t Be Founders

Trolls are a nightmare for companies, not because they’re rude, lack class, it’s not even the mental imagery they use through words. Trolls are a nightmare for businesses, because if they have a shred of intelligence it’s impossible to remove the damage that they inflicted on your business. We will be discussing the trolls that impact google reviews and yelp reviews and teaching you how to become a troll slayer. 

What is the point of trolling?

Trolling started for the lulz, but like everything else it has transformed and evolved, almost in to a vicious type of artwork. One of our clients had a competitor that hired trolls, people as spies, and even its alleged they paid people to destroy the property of the other company, so they couldn’t work. 

I worked with undoing this companies damage frequently, because whenever we became a threat in google search due to flawless reviews, they allegedly hired people to go to the business, use their service and then destroy them online with a negative review. How can you fight back against something like this? Well, one of my trolls took ten paragraphs to tell me he wished he had died from lung cancer from smoking, so he wouldn’t have to deal with me. The important part of that sentence is he took ten paragraphs to say something simple to express. 

Here is a good example, of what to us screams troll review and based on the company having 4.3 stars and none of the other reviews that we read reflecting the characterization that this one does, it isn’t authentic. It may have been left by someone who actually went there, but for some reason left a troll response. We do not know if it was for profit, their emotions, or that’s just how they write online. The problem with this review is that the company did not respond. Some believe it is best to not give trolls any attention, or people with this writing style any attention. Unfortunately, that looks like guilt by omission to a reader, so you need to reply. While there are ways to get fake reviews removed on Google, but as said above some of them don’t get removed.

A person leaves a  Google review in the style of a troll.
What an Easter Buffet SCAM! $35 per person for a drummed down Easter Buffet compared to the Sunday Brunch menu at almost half the cost. $7 for an orange juice saturated screwdriver. Why not post the Easter Brunch menu on the website!!! The music played so LOUD was more for a Friday night crowd than a family Easter together. So disappointed after spending $130! Called management on Easter Sunday and was promised a call back by the General Manager on Monday…nope, no call! However, our waitress was great thankfully!

As you can see above trolls get carried away and weave these elaborate stories or short and insane allegations. It doesn’t matter how many sentences a troll writes, they usually say something that is categorically untrue and can be easily proven to any giant corporation as untrue. We get troll posts removed all the time, but there are always one or two pro trolls who screw up in such a minute manner, that the giant corporations like Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor and the like can’t or won’t do anything. These trolls are pros hired by corporations to commit the equivalent of corporate sabotage under fake accounts. 

So how do you keep your good name intact after a troll attack? Explain to customers the importance of a positive review online, send them reminder emails and texts to leave a review. If done wrong this will get you a lower rating as it bothered them, so make sure you send it right after they’re done talking to you and maybe follow up with an additional email 2 weeks later and then drop it. This fixes huge issues that corporate trolls cause. 

What do you do when search results mis-represent your product?

If Reddit is to be believed, an Amazon product of plain gummy worms had a lot of questions of how many milligrams the bag was, normal questions when buying a bag of gummy worms off of Amazon, though I have yet to run in to needing to do that. Unfortunately, Google Search thought the Gummy worms must be in the edible family, like THC or CBD, since milligrams are very important for those as well.

A bag of regular sour gummy bears pops up at the top when you search for edibles or cbd on google
by u/SheKnows-_- in amazonreviews

So while, dissapointing incidents like the above can happen, the search engine will continue to think the product is a marijuana related product, because people use those words in their reply.

Do Trolls own legitimate companies?

Yes, yes they do. One example of finding true troll companies is to watch Gordon Ramseys older episodes of ‘kitchen nightmares’ and looking at the reviews prior to Gordon coming. The troll owners always say Gordon is the problem for their terrible reviews, yet historical reviews paint a different picture. We will look at a now defunct company, that wrote words that didn’t age so well on May 13th, 2013

” YOU DONT KNOW US!! WE WILL THRIVE! WE WILL OVERCOME! WE ARE STARTING OUR FAMILY, AND WE WILL TEACH OUR CHILD EXACTLY WHAT >>GOD<< WANTS IN THEIR PATH. WE WILL TEACH THEM HOW TO FIGHT AGAINST OPRESSORS[sic] LIKE YOU PEOPLE! WE WILL START A GENERATION OF TRUTHFULLNESS[sic] AND WE WILL FIGHT TO BRING PLACES LIKE, YELP AND REDDIT, AND HORRIBLE PEOPLE LIKE GORDON TO THE LIGHT “

They went out of business years ago, yet they are still posting how people are punks, because people continue to give them reviews based off of a TV episode of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. That is not how you should respond to negative reviews.

We hope this has enlightened you on how to deal with the negativity in Google reviews, Amazon reviews and reviews across the internet.Dealing with trolls is part of our job, so if you need a skilled warrior on your side, contact planetzuda.com.

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