Semi-related scheisty Glassdoor anecdote: I worked at a company Foo which appeared as 2 separate companies on Glassdoor: Foo, and separately Foo Technology.
Foo Technology unambiguously did not exist as a separate company in any form.
Thing is, Foo was the unlikely company where the line workers were more satisfied than the Technology employees - the company overall was very decent but the technology org was toxic.
Accordingly, Foo Technology had lousy ratings and negative reviews, while Foo has largely positive reviews and a strong rating. The difference was on the order of Foo~=4.0 while Foo Technology~=2.0, both derived from a significant number of employees.
You can imagine the pitfall this could create as a prospective technology employee contemplating a stint at Foo.
As a disgruntled Foo “Technology” employee I contacted Glassdoor to notify them that a nonexistent company was distracting many genuine reviews away from a legitimate company.
Glassdoor notified me that they would not provide any corrective action unless the formal owner of the Glassdoor account for Foo agreed to it.
This told me that accuracy of reviews on Glassdoor comes in a few positions shy of their top priority.
Although in full disclosure, a year or two later the 2 separate “companies” did get merged on Glassdoor. I don’t know what the impetus finally was, but they certainly didn’t give a shit when I notified them of the snafu with their system.
Hmm, that doesn't correlate with what they say[0] on their support site: "No! Employers cannot pay Glassdoor to remove reviews."
That said, it seems like negative reviews can easily end up violating one of the many other terms of use[1] around review content. Specifically that a user will not: "Post Content that is defamatory, libelous, or fraudulent"... and "Act in a manner that is [...] otherwise objectionable (as determined by Glassdoor)". That's really broad, and negative reviews can easily be framed as "defamatory" or "objectionable" even if they are factual...
This is as old as the BBB - you never ever "pay to remove reviews" you just, as a paying member in good standing, have the ability to request review of reviews, and the working ability to make sure things are "accurate and resolved".
> Hmm, that doesn't correlate with what they say[0] on their support site: "No! Employers cannot pay Glassdoor to remove reviews."
They could easily be telling the truth there, but still be effectively selling a good rating. They'd just have to sell a service to help monitor the reviews in some way for violations of ToS. Suddenly ~all of the bad reviews are "spam", "libel", etc. It's amazing how broadly things can be recognized as abusive if your pocketbook depends on it.
I have _no_ idea if they're actually doing this or not, but it's along the lines of the scam many review sites use.
I have worked at several companies that received a lot of poor reviews and often what happens if you keep track of those reviews over several months is that they "mysteriously" disappear. Of course by that point the person who left the review has probably moved on to a new job and can't be bothered writing another review that is sufficiently vague as to avoid potential removal. One company I worked at even had its overall rating significantly messed with (over 0.5 change within a month), as those old reviews disappeared and "mysteriously" a bunch of vapid positive reviews appeared.
All that said, I still check Glassdoor before every job I interview for. You just need to be mindful - especially for larger companies who can afford the time to curate their reviews - that the score is perhaps a little inflated, and that the reviews that remain are as tactfully-worded as possible to avoid deletion.
I’ve noticed what I think is a trick to hide the negative reviews with default filters. When you first go to the reviews page it will say something like “Showing 30 of 35 reviews” and the filters are “English” and “Full Time”. Sometimes reviews don’t have those tags and most people don’t notice they are just being subtly filtered.
presumably you simoly wait for someone from the glassdoor sales team to contact you , the owner.
they will present is as a review optimization strategy.
this is how yelp did it back in the day.
i dont know if glassdor does or did it, just pointing out other review sites did do it and never posted it on their "pricing" or "services" page for employers...
Yelp now just send oven a couple of large men with baseball bats who say “Nice business you got here. Would be a shame if something happened to it…” to cut out the foreplay.
The rumor has long been that they contact you about it. Presumably they figure it based on page views and review volume to determine your hiring rate and churn etc and sentiment analysis of your worst reviews so they aren't just shotgunning these offers at every company that has reviews on their site.
Just passing along rumors I have no particularly informed insight here or verifiable reason to believe this is true, though I do believe it's in the plausible-to-likely range.
I'm surprised no-one has posted the email from Glassdoor suggesting this. You'd think one would get a lot of attention. Maybe they don't contact many companies about it.
Every single review site that you don’t pay to access is funded by shady conflicts of interest and perverted incentives. Yelp, BBB, Amazon, Wirecutter. The whole lot. Yeah some are worse than others. But every one of them is entangled in ways that Consumer Reports or the old Angie’s List aren’t. (Angie’s List later became just another marketing channel. Originally it was a subscription service, though I don’t remember if they were double dipping or not.)
It's a rumor many years old at this point that I have also heard from many different sources. That doesn't make it true of course but it's not like they made it up on the spot today for this HN thread.
