Great article here talking about the subject of fake reviews, good and bad:
Reviews will undoubtedly continue to grow in importance. We know that Google gives quantity of positive reviews importance in determining how high your Place Page (map listing) shows on the Search Results page.
There’s not much you can do about fake reviews. The best answer continues to be to get tons of positive reviews from your customers.
A client of ours was concerned about negative publicity on the Internet for his business. His company does about 6000 jobs a year. If just 5% of those customers go online and do positive reviews, that’s 300 positive reviews a year.
What do you think the average person would think, if they saw that, along with a few negatives?
Exactly.