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
-
Google Parsing jQuery Links as Real Links
While trying to diagnose a recent Google penalty I found out that links were being parsed by Google even though they were made using jQuery. I had the linkify plugin on my site and configured it to convert URLs to links on all of my pages. Today I found links to other sites of mine from sites that should not have been linking to them and found that the links came from pages whose links were generated via jQuery. This makes me wonder, how do I know if Google is counting javascript generated links? Is it possible that my native ad widgets are creating links that Google might count? Since I don't own any of the sites that advertise via the widgets I don't know how to tell if they are getting link juice or not. It used to be that Google didn't parse javascript, so you could add as many links to your site via javascript as you wanted without being seen by Google as linking to those sites. Does anyone know of a jQuery plugin that does turn URLs into clickable links that Google won't parse as real links?
On-Page Optimization | | STDCarriers0 -
How to delete a Google My Business Account?
I am handling a client's account that has been closed for two years now. We do not have any access anymore to any of the emails that we used to create, we also forgot what were those. So what I did, I claimed it using my company email. Got the code and was able to claim it. Now it is showing up on my GMB Account. I have read the posts on here and some Youtube videos. Here are the steps I have taken: 1. Opened google.com/business 2. Clicked on the Location 3. Click on the three lines at the top left 4. Here is where I am having a problem. The Settings on here is not for the listing but for my company email. Here is a screenshot of what I am seeing: 1. https://prnt.sc/in8vsr 2. https://prnt.sc/in8wax Please help experts. Cheers,
On-Page Optimization | | webbizideas1
Patrick0 -
Google news rejection
Google News is always rejecting my application. I feel as if my site strongly fits the requirements yet they reject it all the time. My url is hiddentriforce.com Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Atomicx0 -
Google webmaster markup validation error
Type: Schema product Property: Image Error: Missing required field "name (fn)". Google Webmaster is showing this error when I try to validate markup on webmaster. This is my domain - www(dot)wishpicker(dot)com Would be great if someone could please help with this. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | bansheeviv
Prakul0 -
Will Google re-index the page if content is changed/improved?
Hello,
On-Page Optimization | | wickedsunny1
i have a little question, it seems most of my posts which are 3 years old or even more, all have almost same type of 2-3 lines of text at post starting and then images roundups etc.
which recently stopped getting any traffic from google. Probably becuase of lack in text etc.
So if i now edit those old pages, will they be reindexed in google with this new content/data?
thanks in advance.
cheers0 -
Why has my site gone from 3rd to 21st in Google...HELP
Hi there, Web Address: www.websitedesign-miltonkeynes.com Okay I stared my own web development business about 8 - 9 months ago and decided that I was going to target a small number of local keywords that were relevant to my business and geographical area. So I decided to target the keywords below and and started to get good traffic, I never have bought links and have not copied any content although I know i should try and add more content to my website. mk web design, software Milton Keynes, web design Milton Keynes, web design mk, web designer Milton Keynes, web designers Milton Keynes & website design milton Keynes However recently my website has dropped massively in the SERP's and wanted to know what has caused this (i know Penguin) and what I can do to improve. I have listed below my rankings to show you the drop: 24th April 2012 15th May 2012 mk web design 3 11 software milton keynes 1 8 web design milton Keynes 12 50 web design mk 5 53 web designer milton keynes 10 0 web designers milton keynes 6 37 website design milton keynes 3 21 I decided to change my homepage Page Title a week ago to make sound less spammy but this has made no difference and wanted some help on what has happened so i do not do this again and what I can do to improve. Thanks in advance. Darren Bowden
On-Page Optimization | | Tarqs0 -
Does the homepage of GetSatisfaction have very good on-page SEO? please give some critique
Hi Mozzerz, If you have done successful on-page SEO optimization in the past, this may be easy for you to analyze quickly. (especially if you have some tools to help you compare things like keywords vs code weight etc) Does the homepage of www.GetSatisfaction.com constitute a well done on-page SEO? Could you please critique the homepage's SEO value and say why it is very good or why it is OK, or why it is bad.
On-Page Optimization | | limens0 -
Getting pages indexed by Google
Hi SEOMoz, I relaunched a site back in February of this year (www.uniquip.com) with about 1 million URL's. Right now I'm seeing that Google is not going past 110k indexed URL's (based on sitemaps). Do you have any tips on what I can do to make the site more likeable by Google and get more indexed URL's? All the the part pages can be browsed to by going to: http://www.uniquip.com/product-line-card/suppliers/sw-a/p-1 I've tried to make the content as unique as possible by adding random testimonials and random "related part numbers" see here: http://www.uniquip.com/id/246172/electronic-components/infineon/microcontrollers-mcu/sabc161pilfca Do I need to wait more time and be more patient with Google? It just seems like I'm only getting a few thousand URL's per day at the most. Would it help me if I implemented a breadcrumb on all part pages? Thanks, -Carlos
On-Page Optimization | | caneja0