Reputation & Reviews

Some of the businesses outranking you in Google’s map pack may not exist at all. Ghost listings, lead-generation fronts and keyword-stuffed names grab urgent calls meant for real local companies and leave your neighbors with surprise charges and no recourse. Here’s how to spot them and the slow, documented process Wild Iris uses to get them removed.

A scam email dressed up as a Better Business Bureau complaint landed in our inbox, so we followed it step by step. It leads to a fake “verify you’re human” screen that asks Windows users to press Windows + R and then Ctrl + V. Here’s how the trick installs malware and what to do instead.

A phishing scam posing as Meta is hitting Facebook business page owners and non-profits, and some of our clients have already been caught. The messages promise verification or demand action within 24 hours, then send you to fake pages on Google Sites. Here are the red flags, how to check a request safely and what to do if you clicked.

Most happy customers never leave a review, simply because it doesn’t occur to them. So ask at the right moment, and make it easy with a direct link or a QR code. Just don’t offer a discount, freebie or anything else in return. Google prohibits it, now asks reviewers about incentives, and can suspend your listing.

“I found your details on Google,” a promise of page one rankings and a string of emojis in the subject line. Using a real SEO pitch a client forwarded us, we walk through the red flags of a scam marketing email and what legitimate outreach from a real agency looks like.

One fake negative Google review appears, then an email threatens many more unless you pay for a “review monitoring service.” That’s extortion. This 2025 alert explains how the scam works, why you shouldn’t reply to the review or the email, why you should never pay, and how fake reviews can get removed.

If a marketer guarantees sales or promises page one of Google overnight, be wary. This post covers the warning signs of a marketing con, why your domain and social media accounts should always stay in your name, and the questions to ask (plus a small first project to try) before you sign a bigger contract.

This December 2024 post covers the FTC’s then-new rules on online reviews, which ban buying fake reviews, hiding negative feedback and undisclosed incentives, with penalties up to $51,744 per violation. It explains what that means on Google, Facebook and your own website testimonials, and how to clean up old reviews and ask for honest ones.

Google reviews reach people who are searching for a business like yours, and unlike Facebook reviews, you can’t turn them off. This 2020 post explains why those reviews carry so much weight for local businesses, why happy customers rarely think to leave one, and asks readers to review their favorite local businesses on Google.

Small-town news used to travel over the backyard fence. Now it moves through Facebook groups, Instagram and GoFundMe campaigns. This short 2017 post compares the two and makes the case that businesses and non-profits need new ways to reach people where those conversations happen now.