Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. Is giving away something for a Google Review bad?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Is giving away something for a Google Review bad?

    On-Page Optimization
    5
    6
    2481
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • netviper
      netviper last edited by

      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?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • netviper
        netviper last edited by

        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?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • dignan99
          dignan99 @RyanKent last edited by

          Trying to get Google to undo a negative could never be a fun proposition I assume.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • RyanKent
            RyanKent last edited by

            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.

            dignan99 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • dignan99
              dignan99 last edited by

              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
              • Email
              • 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.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • beeneeb
                beeneeb last edited by

                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!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • JCN-SBWD

                  Google ranking content for phrases that don't exist on-page

                  negative seo keywords inaccurate serp ranking ignored optimization

                  I am experiencing an issue with negative keywords, but the “negative” keyword in question isn’t truly negative and is required within the content – the problem is that Google is ranking pages for inaccurate phrases that don’t exist on the page. To explain, this product page (as one of many examples) - https://www.scamblermusic.com/albums/royalty-free-rock-music/ - is optimised for “Royalty free rock music” and it gets a Moz grade of 100. “Royalty free” is the most accurate description of the music (I optimised for “royalty free” instead of “royalty-free” (including a hyphen) because of improved search volume), and there is just one reference to the term “copyrighted” towards the foot of the page – this term is relevant because I need to make the point that the music is licensed, not sold, and the licensee pays for the right to use the music but does not own it (as it remains copyrighted). It turns out however that I appear to need to treat “copyrighted” almost as a negative term because Google isn’t accurately ranking the content. Despite excellent optimisation for “Royalty free rock music” and only one single reference of “copyrighted” within the copy, I am seeing this page (and other album genres) wrongly rank for the following search terms: “free rock music”
                  “Copyright free rock music"
                  “Uncopyrighted rock music”
                  “Non copyrighted rock music” I understand that pages might rank for “free rock music” because it is part of the “Royalty free rock music” optimisation, what I can’t get my head around is why the page (and similar product pages) are ranking for “Copyright free”, “Uncopyrighted music” and “Non copyrighted music”. “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted” don’t exist anywhere within the copy or source code – why would Google consider it helpful to rank a page for a search term that doesn’t exist as a complete phrase within the content? By the same logic the page should also wrongly rank for “Skylark rock music” or “Pretzel rock music” as the words “Skylark” and “Pretzel” also feature just once within the content and therefore should generate completely inaccurate results too. To me this demonstrates just how poor Google is when it comes to understanding relevant content and optimization - it's taking part of an optimized term and combining it with just one other single-use word and then inappropriately ranking the page for that completely made up phrase. It’s one thing to misinterpret one reference of the term “copyrighted” and something else entirely to rank a page for completely made up terms such as “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted”. It almost makes me think that I’ve got a better chance of accurately ranking content if I buy a goat, shove a cigar up its backside, and sacrifice it in the name of the great god Google! Any advice (about wrongly attributed negative keywords, not goat sacrifice ) would be most welcome.

                  On-Page Optimization | | JCN-SBWD
                  0
                • CopBlaster.com

                  Will Google Count Links Loaded from JavaScript Files After the Page Loads

                  Hi, I have a simple question. If I want to put an image with a link to another site like a banner ad on my page, but do not want it counted by Google. Can I simply load the link and banner using jQuery onload from a separate .js file? The ideal result would be for Google to index a script tag instead of a link.

                  On-Page Optimization | | CopBlaster.com
                  1
                • Markkc

                  Google Reviews Plugin - Does This Impact Negatively On SEO By Diluting Optimisation

                  I know optimisation is now considered 'old hat' but like many old hats not only is it comfortable but it is (in my experience) still functional and working in ranking websites. Yes there are plenty of other drivers, but I still consider optimisation to be important, hence the question Google Reviews Plugin - Does This Impact Negatively On SEO By Diluting Optimisation? From my (limited in many ways) understanding this puts hundreds if not thousands of extra words on a page - so this must surely be reducing the amount of optimisation?  And then could it actually lead to a decline in rankings? Has anyone had any experience in this, I would love to use the Google Reviews plugin but just wanted to be sure first... Many thanks KT

                  On-Page Optimization | | Markkc
                  1
                • EGOL

                  Does Google avoid indexing pages that include registered trademark signs?

                  I am suspecting that Google often hesitates to index pages that have registered trademarks on them that are marked with a ®.   For example EGOL® used in the title tag or in the tag at the top of the page. Registered trademarks are everywhere and most retail product pages contain at least one of them.  However, most people use the registered trademark names as text in their writing without adding the registered trademark sign of ®. Have you experienced a problem getting such pages indexed or have you read any articles about how Google treats registered trademarks?

                  On-Page Optimization | | EGOL
                  0
                • hakhan201

                  Does RSS Feed help to rank better in Google?

                  Hello, I heard RSS Feed helps in ranking. However, I am not sure if I should enable RSS Feed or not. Whenever I publish an article on my site , I see that many other websites have leeched my Feed and get's the same article I written published with a nofollow backlink to my website article. The worst part is that my article doesn't appear in Google search, but the website which copied my article gets ranked in Google. Although the article gets index on google (checked by using site:website.com). Although some articles show up after 24 hours by ranking higher from the sites which copied my article. Any idea what should I do? Thank you

                  On-Page Optimization | | hakhan201
                  0
                • pikka

                  Pagination for product page reviews

                  Hi, I am looking to add pagination on product pages (they have lots of reviews on the page). I am considering using rel="next/prev, to connect the series of review pages to the main product page. I unfortunately don't have a view-all page for these reviews or the option to get one - the reviews refresh on the same product page (by clicking whatever number page of reviews). This means each page has the exact same description content and everything else, but with different reviews. In this case is rel=next a good option? The format currently would be: On example.com/product link rel="next" href="http://example.com/product?review-p2" On example.com/product?review-p2 link rel="prev" href="http://example.com/product, link rel="next" href="http://example.com/product?review-p3 etc. Would this be a good format for product page reviews? I see rel=nextprev commonly used on ecommerce category/list pages but not really on the paginated reviews on product pages, so I thought I would see if anyone has advice on how best to solve this. I'm also wondering if it would be best to not combine this with a canonical tag on all the different review pages pointing to the product page, seeing as the reviews are actually different (despite the rest of the content being identical). I am hoping to pick up longer tail traffic from this, I figure by connecting the pages and not using canonicals that this way I could get more traffic from the phrases used in the reviews. By leaving out the canonicals, is it possible a user searching for phrases that might be deeper in the series, to land on, say, ?review-p4? Any thoughts if this would drive more traffic? Thanks!.

                  On-Page Optimization | | pikka
                  0
                • VinceWicks

                  How to properly remove pages and a category from Google's index

                  I want to remove this category http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ and all the pages in that category (e.g. http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/7386.html ) from Google's index. I used the following string in the "Reomval URS" section in Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/* is that correct or I better use http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ ? Thanks in advance.

                  On-Page Optimization | | VinceWicks
                  0
                • iwebdevnl

                  Does Google look at page design

                  Hi everybody, At the moment i'm creating several webshops and websites with the same layout, so visitors can recognize the websites are from the same company. But i was wondering: Does google look at the layout of a webpage that it's not a copy of another website? This because loads of website have the same wordpress/joomla templates etc, or doesn't this effect rankingpositions? Thank you,

                  On-Page Optimization | | iwebdevnl
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.