When the one-star reviews first began to appear on his restaurant’s Google page, owner Damon Ataei swung into action, trying to contact each reviewer.

His goal wasn’t to convince them to take down the reviews of Leo’s Pizza, a business that’s been operating in the London, Ont. neighbourhood of Byron for six years. Ataei wanted to speak with what he assumed were paying customers with complaints about Leo’s food or service.

But when the number of one-star reviews hit nine in a single day, Ataei began to believe these weren’t written by unhappy customers, but instead part of a coordinated series of posts he calls a “review bomb” campaign against his business. While Ataei was trying to fix the problem, Byron came to the owner’s aid, bombing back with their own positive reviews.

There were clues the posts weren’t legit. The accounts linked to them hadn’t reviewed any other business or service and there was no other record of activity. They used common first names with no clear identifiable surname, such as “Bob Mike” “Michelle V” and “Mike Time.”

“The fact that the reviews were all posted within one to two hours from each other makes me suspicious that it was one person creating multiple fake accounts,” said Ataei.

Although Leo’s Pizza has been operating for six years, his family has run other take-out pizza businesses in London for more than 30 years.

Ataei has an established clientele but said Google reviews are an essential way for new customers to connect with his business. Ataei calls Google reviews a “double-edged sword” with immense power to drive new business with good reviews and but also just as able to turn customers away with poor ones.

“It can affect your business quite dramatically,” he said. “They can easily ruin a five-year reputation in five to 10 minutes by making multiple fake reviews.”

Fake reviews not a new problem

It’s not the first time CBC News has reported about businesses dealing with a suspicious rash of rapidly posted negative reviews.

In 2024 two local gutter repair companies, faced the same issue. A CBC News investigation in 2021 uncovered a shady industry surrounding reviews of businesses.

With no response from the accounts posting the reviews about Leo’s Pizza, Ataei reached out to Google. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get human help either.

“It’s purely an automated service,” said Ataei of Google’s customer response. “So even if you have an urgent matter, it all goes through automated responses and you have a very difficult time reaching an actual person. I tried multiple times.”

Google responds

In response to questions from CBC News, a spokesperson from Google said the reviews flagged by Ataei now appear to have been taken down, although it’s not clear if they were removed in response to his complaints.

The spokesperson pointed to the company’s content policies which require reviews to be “based on real experiences.”

“Deliberately fake reviews, off-topic reviews, defamatory language, personal attacks, and unnecessary or incorrect content are all in violation of our policy,” the company said in a statement.

Google also said businesses can report reviews that violate the company’s content policies through the platform and that operators “review them around the clock.”

The company said their “advanced machine learning algorithms” helped Google block or remove more than 240 million reviews that violated their policies in 2024. The company says most were removed before they were posted.

Google also said they’ve placed restrictions on more than 900,000 accounts for repeatedly violating their policies.

On March 7, when the negative reviews were still viewable, Ataei posted on the Byron Neighbours Facebook page. He asked the posters to stop their “campaign” and asked them to contact him directly so he could address their concerns.

“It’s taken us many years to build our reputation and we would not like to see it ruined by a single campaign against us,” Ataei wrote in the post.

Ataei said his main motivation was to connect with the posters of the reviews to address any concerns they had with the food or service.

“At the end of the day you run a business and sometimes mistakes do happen, nothing goes perfectly,” he said. “Let’s say I gave them the wrong pizza, I’d be more than happy to compensate for that.”

Byron community responds

None of the posters of the one-star reviews responded. But the Byron community certainly did.

Ataei’s post generated more than 120 comments, all of them positive.

Also — and this is something Ataei did not ask for — people began to post five-star reviews of Leo’s Pizza on his Google page.

“I would say Byron is probably the greatest community in London,” he said. “It was kind of overwhelming to be honest.”

Grant Thomas moderates the Byron Neighbours Facebook page. He said Leo’s has become a community hub, one many people in the community felt compelled to defend.

“What Byronites like to do is we rally,” said Thomas, a realtor. “Sometimes the happiest customers are the quietest voices.”

Within 24 hours of his Facebook post, Ataei had more than 150 Google reviews, all of them five-star. Those reviews helped pushed Leo’s back to its original 4.8 rating.