Every single company department — whether HR, recruiting, delivery, sales or leadership — feels the impact of negative reviews on Glassdoor.com. Low morale causes a drop in employee retention. Recruiters struggle to meet staffing needs which hinders growth and affects account services. The sales division can’t hit monthly revenue goals, and leadership is stressed over the health of their company.
These are all common symptoms, and they won’t go away unless you remove negative Glassdoor reviews.
Are you curious about the financial impact of bad reviews on a company? It depends on the size of the business. But, they cost one of our customer about $32 million in monthly revenue. Contact us to find out how we restored their online reputation and improved their bottom line.
Why you should remove Glassdoor reviews
There are 3.9 billion people online today, and many of them use the internet to research companies and apply for jobs. Consequently, your brand’s search results can have a massive impact on your company’s reputation.
But, Vegas rules don’t apply to Glassdoor.com. That means bad star ratings appear directly in your brand’s search engine results for all to see — usually on the first page of Google.
And since people can leave reviews anonymously, it’s easy for disgruntled employees to exaggerate claims or write fake reviews.
If you haven’t given much thought to Glassdoor review removal, these statistics might change your mind:
33% of workers declined a job offer due to negative company reputation
Glassdoor has influence over 60 million users per month
84% of job seekers say company reputation influenced their job choice
Bad Glassdoor reviews increase cost per hire
Negative employee reviews increase your cost per hire for several reasons. They also force you to spend more of your marketing budget on recruiting.
Think about all the resources you invest while vetting, interviewing, and drafting offers that the most qualified job candidates ultimately reject. The math here is simple. A bad online reputation means higher recruiting costs and fewer accepted offers — all from less qualified candidates.
Conversely, if you remove negative Glassdoor reviews and establish a positive company reputation, you’ll expand your applicant pool and attract better job candidates.
Bad Glassdoor reviews affect business operations & growth
Negative employee reviews affect much more than your internal business operations. Imagine if you were evaluating a strategic partnership when you discovered numerous bad reviews about the business. Would you want to absorb that type of reputational risk? Chances are, you’d walk away from that partnership in a second, and so would many other companies evaluating your business under similar circumstances.
In fact, there are countless reputation management statistics that tell the same story. A new commissioned study by Forrester Consulting revealed that 54% of executives think reducing negative search results would improve revenue. Read the full study here.
Glassdoor complaints about the CEO impact corporate reputation
In one study, executives attributed 45% of their brand reputation to the CEO’s reputation. That means brands with predominantly positive company reviews could still be damaged by complaints about the CEO and executive leadership on sites like Glassdoor, further emphasizing the need for a strong corporate reputation management strategy.
Does Glassdoor remove reviews?
In short: Yes, you can remove reviews from Glassdoor.com. But, only in specific situations. Here’s how Glassdoor describes their position on removing reviews:
“If you see something on Glassdoor that you believe violates our guidelines, you should flag it for our review.”
It’s important to note that flagging a review is different than removing it. If you choose to flag a fake review or defamatory comment, Glassdoor will reevaluate it. But, they also state that just because you disagree with feedback doesn’t mean that it meets the criteria for removal.
Let’s take a closer look at their terms of service agreement.
“Our interpretation of our policies and the decision whether or not to edit or remove content is within our sole discretion.”
Glassdoor does have a rigorous review approval process before they publish feedback. For instance, they may ask a reviewee to edit their feedback if it violates Glassdoor’s terms. However, things can slip through the cracks. So, it’s important to be vigilant and flag questionable content if you have any doubts. Glassdoor won’t directly edit a flagged review, but, they may return it to the reviewer for editing or confirmation.
In order to keep the site as honest as possible, Glassdoor decides whether or not to remove flagged content.
How to remove negative reviews from Glassdoor
There are only two ways you can remove bad reviews from Glassdoor:
- Flag reviews that violate user guidelines
- Take legal action
I’ll discuss both of those methods in detail below. However, keep in mind that it’s almost impossible to get truthful bad reviews removed from Glassdoor. Therefore, companies often take other steps to fix their online reputation. For instance, you could earn additional positive reviews, guide employees to Indeed, or push your Glassdoor profile off the first page of Google using corporate reputation management tactics.
1. How to flag a negative Glassdoor review
Anyone can flag a Glassdoor review, even if they aren’t an employee. Simply click the flag at the bottom right side of the review in question. Then, choose a reason from the following dropdown menu:
You should flag false reviews if you believe they violate Glassdoor terms and community guidelines. For example, if the review:
- Contains profanity
- Reveals confidential, non-public internal company information
- Includes an advertisement or web link
- Contains substantial quoted material from other sources
- Uses excessive capitalization
- Violates the rule: “one review, per employer, per year, per review type”
- Identifies individuals by name outside of C-suite positions
Glassdoor elaborates on their policy as follows:
“…we don’t approve reviews that include certain profanities, threats of violence, or discriminatory language targeted at an individual or group. We may allow reviews that mention race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation and the like if we believe the comment is used to describe a workplace situation. General discussions of workplace misconduct are allowed, including most discussions of illegal activities, discrimination, and sexual harassment.”
Glassdoor
2. Take legal action
If Glassdoor refuses to delete a review, you might be able to take legal action to have it removed. However, be aware that the law protects sites that collect user submitted content (like Glassdoor and Ripoff Report) from liability.
Furthermore, Glassdoor won’t reveal a reviewer’s identity. So, you may not be able to sue the individual who you believe is responsible for the defamatory content, either. Legal action will also cost you money, generate more negative press, and rarely end in your favor.
Since it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to remove negative reviews from Glassdoor, you essentially have two choices for handling them:
- Bury Glassdoor reviews in Google
- Earn positive reviews and improve your company’s profile
How to delete your own review from Glassdoor.com
In some cases, you may want to delete a contribution that you wrote. Maybe the company cleared up a misunderstanding so your complaint was no longer valid. Or, perhaps you wrote your initial review while you were angry and you want to tone it down a little. Whatever the reason, it’s easy to delete your own contribution. Here’s how:
How to delete your contribution from Glassdoor.com
- Log in to Glassdoor.com
- Hover over your profile image and select “Contributions” from the dropdown
- Click “Reviews” from the left sidebar menu
- Select “Delete” next to the review you want to remove
- Click “Delete” on the popup menu to confirm removal
How to get Glassdoor reviews removed from Google
If you aren’t able to remove the reviews from Glassdoor, you’ll need to bury them deep in Google so they won’t continue to harm your business.
There’s a common misconception that reputation management services have the power to magically remove search results from Google or use “negative SEO” to bury a single result. In fact, the only way to effectively remove Glassdoor reviews from Google is to bury them by lifting up dozens of positive articles.
To do so, you’ll need to diversify and expand your brand’s search results in a holistic way. Here’s a short list of some of the things we do for our clients:
- Establish an review management program
- Regularly publish thought leadership articles and content
- Strategically leverage ally networks and amplify public relations activity
- Develop and optimize websites, blog content and press releases
- Establish a review management program
- Build off-site SEO signals through strategic outreach
Our enterprise-scale ORM solution is a highly effective way to remove Glassdoor reviews from Google page one and reshape your company’s search results. Ask us how we can help you.
What else can you do?
Glassdoor is a highly trusted employee review site that already has a massive audience. So, even if you plan to remove Glassdoor reviews from Google in the short term, it’s still a good idea to improve your company’s profile for users who visit the site directly.
Your first step should be to examine any negative feedback through unbiased optics. Use surveys to regularly measure employee engagement and sentiment and give your people a voice. Openly address criticism and discuss meaningful changes you plan to make to improve your business.
Ask your employees to write reviews
The most effective way to drown out negative reviews and increase your star ratings is to earn new reviews from current employees.
It goes without saying that you can’t specifically ask your employees to leave positive reviews on Glassdoor. But, if you feel that your team is predominantly happy, request that they leave feedback or update an older review.
Every quarter, send out a reminder email to your employees and ask them to update their Glassdoor profiles. Remind them that feedback is anonymous, and explain why it’s helpful for your company.
Pro Tip:
Ask different departments to provide Glassdoor ratings at different times to avoid a sudden surge of 5-star reviews. Glassdoor might remove reviews if it suspects you’ve been ballot stuffing.
Warning:
Don’t offer incentives for online reviews, like free mugs or t-shirts, as this can be seen as bribery. Honest feedback helps both prospective employees, clients, and the company.
Let’s recap
Can you remove Glassdoor reviews? Yes. Can you remove Glassdoor reviews just because they’re negative? No.
Since there’s very little you can do about legitimate complaints, it’s important to take steps to improve your Glassdoor profile. Managing your profile will boost your employment brand and keep bad reviews out of your search results.
Claim your company’s profile. Stay on top of feedback and be on the lookout for false Glassdoor reviews from angry former employees. Be proud of your company culture and encourage employees to share what they love about your brand!
Finally, take broader steps to fortify your brand’s online reputation. Even if you aren’t yet ready to invest in a reputation management partnership, talk to some experts about what you can do to improve your brand’s search results. When you build a digital stronghold for your brand, it’s much easier to remove Glassdoor reviews, or anything else that creeps into your search results.
Contact us to talk about your strategy.
Glassdoor review removal FAQ
No, you can’t pay Glassdoor.com to remove reviews. However, companies can pay Glassdoor for extra site features, such as job ads, branding and advertising.
Unfortunately, you can’t remove your company profile from Glassdoor.
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