Yelpsuit Dismissed For Good…or Bad?
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It’s officially over. The class action lawsuits against Yelp claiming extortionist practices were dismissed with prejudice this week by US District Court Judge Edward Chen. These lawsuits had been dismissed before, but still allowed for the plaintiffs to refile the lawsuit. The refiling of these lawsuits is what brought the case back in front of the court in a hearing earlier this week. And, that’s what makes the ‘with prejudice’ part of the court’s ruling important – it means the lawsuit cannot be refiled and that the case against Yelp is officially over.
Facebook Removes Reviews on Fan Pages
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Facebook recently announced that they would be removing the patient reviews from your Facebook fan pages this month. The removal of these reviews will be done by removing the entire ‘Reviews’ tab on your fan page and will result in you being unable to access any of these reviews in the future.
The New Google is the Old Yelp?
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By now we all know that fake negative reviews have become a major issue for doctors on many online review sites. While Google’s recent decision to remove Yelp, RateMDs, & Demandforce reviews from the star-ratings on their places pages is understandable, it is raising problems since their initial approach to filtering out fictitious reviews left directly on Google still needs some work.
While we don’t know a single doctor who appreciates being extorted by an online review site, there have been strides taken over the past year by some of these sites to address the phenomena of fictitious reviews being left by non-patients & competing doctors. But, with Google starting to build their own database of online reviews, we appear to have reverted back to the days of Yelp – circa 2008.
Since Google’s review algorithm is relatively young, we’re seeing it being taken advantage of by some practices. For example, a practice in the San Diego area created 2 separate places pages with 5-star, “Best Ever” reviews displayed prominently on each profile:
Dental Practice on Google Places #1
Dental Practice on Google Places #2
Dig a little deeper though, and you’ll find that the faceless profiles belonging to “eRIN” & “Sammi” have each given 30+ 1-star reviews to competing local practices in the San Diego area:
At this point, it no longer matters if it truly is a top-notch practice with a highly skilled doctor – actions like this make them look dishonest and leads potential patients to start wondering about what else the practice isn’t being straightforward about. (And, we can’t imagine it’s going to make for a pleasant local society meeting next month?!?!)
We’re confident the brilliant people at Google will find a way to deal with this problem, but for now it appears anybody can get their fake reviews displayed on places pages with relative ease. In the meantime, please don’t fall victim to the temptation of doing this for your own practice. With the growing transparency of the social web, getting caught is becoming inevitable – and the backlash simply isn’t worth it.
Want more verified reviews from your actual patients displayed online? Claim you free DoctorBase profile and learn how the Panda automates & verifies your online reviews at:
http://doctor.DoctorBase.com/claim
Rise of the Fake Reviews
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This past month, the New York Times published an article on the rapidly increasing problem with fake reviews. We’re glad that somebody with a slightly larger reach than our own blog is creating some awareness on a topic at the core of what we set out to accomplish when we founded DoctorBase.
Since the early days of online reviews, we’ve noticed an inherent credibility issue. Initially, we saw the reviews sites themselves using fake negative reviews to drum up business. It worked for a while, but was then exposed as just a new form of online extortion. When review sites began using these fake negative reviews to entice doctors into paying to have them deprecated (and even removed), the fallout was realized in multiple class-action lawsuits.
Once these lawsuits began to lose steam, some businesses began to to take the fight back online by attempting to balance out fake negative reviews with fake positive reviews. Unfortunately, two wrongs don’t make a right. Now, this practice is also being exposed as more attention is being given to online solicitations on sites like Craiglist & Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, where the price of a positive online review ranges from $5 – $20. (And no, we’re not linking out to examples because we don’t want to give anybody any bad ideas.)
What’s the answer to this problem? Software. (Granted, we are quite biased!) When there’s software in the doctors office that can compare a list of your actual patients with the people leaving online reviews, reviews from verified patients can be separated out from the mess of online reviews submitted by people who’ve never even visited your city, much less your practice.
Want more online reviews from your actual patients? Claim your free DoctorBase profile and learn how the Panda can automate & verify online reviews for you at:
http://doctor.DoctorBase.com/claim
Yelp Hits 20M Reviews…
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Yelp, the online review site that’s been a topic of contention for doctors over the past couple years, announced that it reached 20 million reviews this past Friday. Their number of reviews have doubled in just the past 16 months and shows no signs of slowing down. We’ve also been hearing rumors of an IPO coming up for the online reviews site sometime in the calendar year.
The Benefits of a Negative Review…
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A recent study by students at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business discovered that small doses of mildly negative information can strengthen a patient’s positive impression of your practice. The study showed this “blemishing effect” can make positive reviews more persuasive to a patient. While this flies in the face of conventional thinking that negative comments need to be removed at all costs, it validates exactly what we’ve seen here at DoctorBase.
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Patient Gag Orders: Another Bad Idea…
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With the emergence of online review sites like Yelp, there have been a wide variety of responses to how to ‘protect’ against the occasional patient who may have something negative to say online about your practice. We’ve already covered how you should never sue your patients. Now we’d like to encourage you to avoid another bad idea…
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What not to do with a Negative Review Part II
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Last year we told you about a dentist, Dr. Yvonne Wong, who filed lawsuit against both Yelp & her own patient over the negative review the patient posted online. This week, we almost titled this post “We should start charging $80k for access to the DoctorBase blog.” Don’t worry, we’d never charge anyone for access to the truth. But, here’s why we’d even make such a statement…
As far back as 2009, we explained how a lawsuit against Yelp would be fruitless since they were only the provider (and not the publisher) which gives them immunity under the Communications Decency Act. Accordingly, the judge dismissed Dr. Wong’s lawsuit against Yelp.
We again explained how anti-SLAPP protections give patients rights against being sued for leaving online reviews. Accordingly, the judge dismissed Dr. Wong’s lawsuit against her own patients.
In the same post, we also touched on the Streisand-effect, where attempting to stifle free speech online can backfire horribly in the form of a whole lot of bad press. Try typing “dentist yvonne wong” into Google and you’ll find Google Instant suggesting “dentist yvonne wong yelp” – which returns a page of search results about the doctor’s lawsuit against her own patients.
Well, it just got even worse for Dr. Wong. Last week the judge ruled that, because the lawsuits had no legal standing, Dr. Wong would have to cover the legal fees of the defendants named in her lawsuits. She was fortunate not to have to cover the entire $100,000+, as the judge passed along a discounted bill for a mere $80,714. That’s right, in addition to having the lawsuits dismissed & her own legal fees, she now has to pay an additional $80,714.
Let’s recap: Don’t sue your patients!!!
Instead of getting litigious over an occasional negative review, get proactive with your positive reviews. With the time Dr. Wong spent on fruitless lawsuits, she could have amassed enough positive reviews from her happy patients to never have to worry about another negative review again.
Would you like get all of your own happy patients building up your own online reputation? Would you like to do it for $80,714 less than what a lawsuit costs these days? Claim your free profile on DoctorBase & learn how the Panda can boost your online reputation at:
http://doctor.DoctorBase.com/claim
Yelp Grows while Lawsuit Dies…
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There was a lot of fury from doctors over Yelp last year. Being down the street from Yelp here in San Francisco, we heard about every story imaginable (and some that we could never imagine!) about what was happening to our own doctors on review sites. As many of you recall, doctors & small business owners finally had enough and filed suit against Yelp for unfair business practices. These claims were born from allegations of “extortionist practices” where negative/positive reviews were being displayed based on what a doctor was paying Yelp in advertising fees.
Yelp recently won their motion to dismiss this suit based on what the judge found to be insufficient evidence of the extortion claims. The judge, Marylin Hall Patel, stated that the plaintiffs did not “appear to argue that Yelp ever explicitly threatened to harm their business, through manipulating user reviews, if they refused to purchase advertising.” Because the plaintiffs alleged only an implied threat, the lawsuit was dismissed. But, there is still some hope for the plantiffs as they still have another week to refile the lawsuit.
The most interesting thing about this ordeal is that even with the backlash & negative publicity stemming from Yelp’s legal troubles – the site has nearly doubled their monthly visitors since the lawsuit was filed! Over 50M people now use Yelp every month to find everything from dinner to a doctor… proving that even with the lack of transparency and potential for abuse, patients are still finding online reviews more important in their decision process than what they read about you on your own website.
Want to give your online presence a boost of transparency with real reviews from verified patients? The Panda is here to help. (We raised our Cub to be transparent from an early age!) Learn more about what our Panda Cub can do for your online presence that a website can’t – get a free personalized demo for your practice at:
http://doctor.DoctorBase.com/cub
The People Have Voted – Online Reviews Really are a Good Thing…
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We’ve mentioned before that online review sites like Yelp seem to be the really big deal that nobody wants to talk about. As expected, traffic to our last Yelp-centered blog post was around 300% higher that usual – about the average increase whenever we discuss online reviews.
What we didn’t expect, was that doctors are beginning to get comfortable talking about it. Attendance for our webinar on Yelp & what to do with online reviews was also above average this past week. Have we finally turned the corner and are doctors finally coming to grips with the inevitable existence of online reviews?
We certainly hope so – because they’re not going anywhere. This is why we’re constantly telling our own doctors to get proactive and make sure all of your happy patients are telling their friends & family about the great work you do. Because face it – you’re in business because your satisfied patients far outnumber the occasional disgruntled one. And, here are the numbers that prove it…
Our doctors proactively survey their patients via post-appointment follow up emails. Of the thousands of reviews these patients have left for their doctors, here’s how it breaks down (complete with Brian-Wilson-inspired-mohawk):
It turns out these online reviews aren’t such a bad thing after all. By being proactive about getting reviews from your existing patients, you’ll be able to give a comprehensive & transparent view of your practice that tends to be overwhelmingly positive.
Still afraid of online reviews? Let us quell your fears by showing how to make them and the Internet work for your practice. Join us for one of this week’s webinars on Yelp, Facebook, Google, or Pandas. Save your spot for free by RSVPing at:
http://doctor.doctorbase.com/webinars/
And don’t forget – Go Vote…and Go Giants CONGRATULATIONS WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS!!!
Astroturfing: What Not To Do For Your Practice…
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Earlier this month, Helmut Hoffer, the CEO of the German company that makes the WeTab (a European competitor to the iPad) was caught posting 5-star reviews of his product on Amazon under a false name. This practice is more commonly known as ‘astroturfing‘ because it creates a supposedly organic view of a product or service that just seems a bit too good to be believable. In turn, this sort of misleading marketing tactic almost always results in repercussions – as is the case of Herr Hoffer who has since been forced to resign.
What can we learn from this? Simple – don’t astroturf!!! It’s something we tell our doctors on a regular basis – people don’t expect perfection, they do expect honesty. Proactively get positive referrals from your happy patients so that if/when a negative review does pop up it becomes an asset to your credibility and serves to validate all of the wonderful things your patients say about you.
When it comes to online reviews, we’ve noticed something else of interest here at DoctorBase over the past year. When we poll doctors about what they’d most like to learn about from one of our webinars, the least popular topic is the dreaded online review site. But, whenever we post an article about a review site, traffic to the DoctorBase blog doubles.
It’s obvious that review sites are still a hot-button topic, but are sites like Yelp simply the 800 lb gorilla in the room that nobody wants to talk about? Or, is there still just a lack of general understanding about how review sites work; and, more importantly, how to make online reviews work for your practice?
We’re thinking it’s likely still a case of the latter, which is why we’re launching a new webinar this week on what to do about online reviews. Join us for this, or one of our additional webinars this week on Facebook or Google, by RSVPing at:
http://doctor.doctorbase.com/webinars/
What Not To Do With A Negative Review…
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We get a lot of questions about what to do about the dreaded negative review if-and-when it rears its ugly head. Obviously, the first thing you should do is contact the patient privately to resolve the issue. More often than not, these issues can be easily resolved when the doctor takes the time to listen to the patient’s concerns. In the event that you can’t resolve the problem at hand, the next thing to do is even simpler – do nothing.
The truth is, a negative isn’t the worst thing ever – unless you make it the worst thing ever.
You could reply publicly to the review, dragging yourself down into a online mud-slinging contest & potentially violating HIPAA laws by disclosing the patient’s Protected Health Information in an attempt to defend yourself.
You can always threaten to sue the review site, incurring a massive legal bill for nothing since review sites are only ‘content providers’ and not legally responsible for what users post.
You could also threaten to sue the reviewer, again incurring a massive legal bill for nothing since the lawsuit will be thrown out under the anti-SLAPP law. (The law barring any “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.“)
Unfortunately, all of these approaches will also serve to do you more harm than good. It’s something we online geeks refer to as the “Streisand Effect.” Yes, Babs provided the benchmark on what not to do back in 2003. When Streisand took legal action to force the removal of online images of her beachfront property from a website documenting the California Coastline. What resulted was even more publicity around the images, along with negative publicity around Streisand’s attempt to censor the photographer. (Which failed, as the lawsuit was thrown out under anti-SLAPP laws.)
Don’t fall into the same trap.
Simply let it go. Instead, focus on getting more positive reviews online to drastically outweigh the occasional negative one. Like we always tell doctors – people don’t expect perfection, they do expect honesty. When potential patients find out you’re trying to muzzle your exiting patients, they’ll go elsewhere looking for an honest doctor. One who’s confident enough in their own abilities not to be concerned with covering up a negative review.
We should also note that there is no webinar this week, as we’ll be giving out our expertise in person this Thursday at CDA San Francisco. If you’re in the City for the event later this week, stop by booth #740 and we’ll gladly answer all of your questions!
If you won’t be at CDA, don’t worry – we have some new & improved webinar-goodness in the works for you coming up this fall. Keep an eye on this blog for more info soon…
