What is review gating?

Review gating refers to when a company intentionally sends only happy customers to review sites, and filters out unsatisfied customers to prevent negative reviews. To accomplish this, the company sends a message to all customers asking if their experience was positive or negative.

Those who say they had a positive experience are redirected to a form where they can easily post an online review, whereas those who say they had a negative experience are sent to the business’ website to leave a comment privately. The end result is a deceivingly positive rating for the business that may not be representative of actual customer opinion.

Consequences of participating in these discouraged practices are not limited to:

• Google has developed algorithms to monitor these practices and if found review gating or violating their terms and conditions will remove all reviews from the business Google profile.

• Yelp additionally will be shutting down the business profile and removing from displaying in search results until the business signs an acknowledgement form stating they will no longer violate the Yelp terms and conditions. If found to continue, businesses can then be removed from Yelp permanently.

MMG Fusion prides itself on being an industry leader. This involves being consistent with the policies and procedures in the business environment. Supporting the efforts of our clients to manage their reputation is of utmost importance and it is our responsibility to ensure all businesses are adhering to best business practices

MMG Fusion has developed a Reputation Patient Survey tool that is inline with the industry terms and conditions while enhancing the patient feedback collection process.

Practices that collect and manage reviews via the MMG Fusion Patient survey can be confident that all the reviews they receive are authentic and ungated. They can rest assured that their customers and prospective customers trust those reviews to be a genuine representation of their dental practice.