Is giving away something for a Google Review bad?
-
I have a friend whose client is giving away something for free if you leave a Google Review for his site. I recall that being not well liked by Google and could potentially end up in a Penalty. The site is ranking really poorly in Google but well in Yahoo/Bing so I am wondering if that is what happened.
What are you opinions?
-
So I advised him to remove it asap and wait until google has recrawled the site without that on there.
What is the next step? call Google and ask to review the site to see if there was a penalty?
-
Trying to get Google to undo a negative could never be a fun proposition I assume.
-
Based on the Google policy beeneeb quoted, it is a clear violation to give away items (i..e pay) for a POSITIVE review.
If you were to approach your customers and offer a giveaway item for simply completing a review, without any suggestion that the review is positive, then I don't see any Google violation.
This approach also has the benefit that most of your site's clients will infer that the gift is for a positive review, and offer one.
The drawbacks are you could give away items for a bad review. The other risk is a trigger-happy Google employee could take action against your site. If that happens, you would have to clearly explain that you did not violate the policy and request any punishment to be lifted.
-
Without getting into the good vs. bad conversation, my mind wanders into the necessity of giving anything away for clients to give you a review.
If a company has a strong client base, it could be as simple as asking for a review via:
- Face to Face Meetings
- Social Media
- Mailers
With a properly worded request, and an easy to follow link, many clients will give you the review without any incentive. Simple loyalty goes a long way.
While I am sure more people might fill reviews out for a prize/gift, but is that the way a business receives accurate, non-biased reviews?
Reviews are great for a number of reasons, including SEO and placement in Google Places pages, but they also serve a different purpose.
When a person gives an honest review, positive or negative, that information can be passed on to the business owner to continue what is successful or look at the needed changes to get back on track. This actually happened with my business recently, as there ended up with a few complaints about my staff. I had to look long and hard for solutions to tighten up the ship, and luckily those truthful reviews didn't get lost in a bunch of ego stroking fake reviews.
Honesty is always the best policy, and false or inaccurate reviews will be found out at some point.
-
Hi Dave,
Most websites that have a review structure frown upon giving something in return for a review. Yelp is very clear on these guidelines:
http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/09/to-solicit-or-not-to-solicit.html
On the Google site, this is known as a conflict of interest:
"Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. Even if well-intentioned, a conflict of interest can undermine the trust in a review. For instance, do not offer or accept money or product to write positive reviews about a business, or to write negative reviews about a competitor. Please also do not post reviews on behalf of others or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with the place you are reviewing."
Source: http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=187622
I hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Faking headings, good or bad?
Recently i got into a discussion with someone regarding the use of headings on an e-commerce website. i had used headings whenever a heading was used in the design, they all marked the subject of the given section. For example: The sidebar contains items for filtering products. Each filter had a containing the name of the filter, like colors or brands. The discussion i had was about whether the use of headings was appropiate because the words contained within the heading had nothing to do with the main subject of the page (Soccer in this case). The advice from the SEO agency was to replace the headings with a different html element like a div or span and style this so it looks like tge heading in the design. What do you guys think?
On-Page Optimization | | WesleySmits0 -
What does Google consider a "Duplicate Title Tag?"
Do the title tags have to be exactly the same, or can they have some of the same keywords but different context? Hypothetical example: Home Page = Raising a Kitten, Tips & Tricks for a Healthy Cat Sub-Page = How to Cat-Proof your Home when Raising a Kitten Since both title tags has "raising a kitten," "cat" and "tips" would this be considered a "Duplicate Title Tag" even though the pages have completely different content in them? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | Scratch_MM0 -
Removing old URLs from Google
We rebuilt a site about a year ago on a new platform however Google is still indexing URL's from the old site that we have no control over. We had hoped that time would have 'cleaned' these out but they are still being flagged in HTML improvements in GWT. Is there anything we can do to effect these 'external' dropping out of the indexing given that they are still being picked up after a year.
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0 -
Authorship - How bad is it to use a fictional character instead of the actual author ??
Hi I know authorship is all about the author hence should be a real person (the author) but in the case of children's books etc etc is it really not ok to develop authorship around the character rather the actual author ? For example kids searching google will recognise the character but not the author Even if G doesnt like it how bad is it to ignore them and proceed with the character ? All Best Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How much content does Google Crawl on your site?
Hi, We've had a debate around the office where some people believe that Google only crawls the first 150-200 words on a page and some people believe that they priority content that is above the fold and other people believe that all content has the same priority. Can you help us? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | mdorville
Matt0 -
Google Authorship Problems
Hi, I seem to be having a few problems with getting google authors set up on Wordpress. I've set up my G+ account, put the link to my blog http://appointedd.com/blog/ and then registered it on the yoast plugin. However, I'm not sure it's set up correctly and I can't seem to be able to get it to work. I'm hoping a fine someone here has experience in this as I'm a little flustered. thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Google rel hell
So apologies in advance for this question, but: Can someone explain whether as a site we should be using the "rel author" tag or the "rel publisher" tag? 1. We don't really need to distinguish between the people who write our content. 2. We definitely do need to establish ownership of our content, as unfortunately it has been widely copied. We are spending quite a bit of time filing DMCA notices. 3. Do we need to apply either tag to every page? Or does "del publisher" just need to be applied to the homepage to cover the rest of the site? 4. What looks better in the search results? - a person's face or a company logo? If prefer a face, but understand we need to promote our brand. Thanks P
On-Page Optimization | | dexm100 -
Optimisation for Google Images
What techniques do you use for the optimisation of images on Google. Alt tag , image title Surrounding text Anyone tested actual linking to the image url and not the page url. I have achieved hundreds of top listed images but when it gets competitive what is the most useful technique you have used. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0