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
-
HTTPS, free certificates and Google seo
As we all know, Google decided to give some weight in rankings to encrypted sites. SSL certificate providers are quite a lot out there, but there is also a free alternative (Let’s Encrypt). I've been going over some of these services and compared Godaddy's and the above certificates, and there isn't much of a difference. The question is: using a free certificate would have the same effect as a paid one? I would rather pay for one than be punished for using a free one, but free would be good too.
On-Page Optimization | | anitawapa
What's your take on this? Thank you0 -
Inches or " Feet or ' Does Google translate the symbols?
I have a client who sells things that the size is important. In their industry some people say "15 Inch Blue Widget" and others say "15" Blue Widget" using the symbol " for inches. On the page I know we could say both to cover all the bases but I want to get the title right. In their industry there is not one more preferred than the other. Does anybody know if Google translates ' to feet and " to inches. Should I work both into the title for a product or only one?
On-Page Optimization | | JoshuaLindley0 -
I have a lot of internal duplicate content as intros to a series of articles, is this bad?
On a site that I'm working on there is a series of posts with the same beginning to their titles. All of the titles start with Christ's Church ("Mormons"): And then about the first four paragraphs of all these posts is exactly the same, it is just explaining this series of posts. I'll link to a couple of examples so you know what I'm talking about. I know there are several other problems with these posts/site 🙂 but I am specifically curious about the partial duplicate title and the first few paragraphs being duplicate. http://www.mormonchurch.com/3259/christs-church-mormons-helping-out-a-friend http://www.mormonchurch.com/2969/christs-church-mormon-happiness-is-found-only-through-christ There are about 30 posts similar to these. Thank you, I look forward to your responses.
On-Page Optimization | | ThridHour1 -
Google pulling in wrong title tag!
Has anyone else seen their title tag different in the SERPS to what you have called it in the <title>?? </p> <p>I work for MITIE and when you type in "facilities management" it shows our title tag as "<a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.mitie.com/services/strategic-outsourcing/integrated-facilities-management">Integrated <em>facilities management</em> - Mitie</a>" and it should be "<span>MITIE | Facilities management - Facilities management companies - Facility management UK" </span></p> <p><span>The only thing I can think of is that it's picking it from the H1 on the page but why it'd do that! The page is here www.mitie.com/services/strategic-outsourcing/integrated-facilities-management</span></p> <p><span>Any ideas?</span></p></title>
On-Page Optimization | | KarlBantleman0 -
Hit by Panda - Google Disavow Help
Hi I hope you can help me A Website I manage has been hit hard by the Panda Update. I am really struggling to understand what is seen as a Spammy link. The Website use to be on page 1 for "fancy dress" now it isnt visable for that term at all and most other terms the site has dropped for. I have looked into what might have gone wrong and have removed several links , used the disavow tool 2-3 times and submitted re-consideration requests, but each time google informs me that they are still detecting unnatural links. Could somebody please take a look at our link profile www.partydomain.co.uk for "fancy dress" as an example and show examples of links you would consider that google might not like. It would also be good if anybody had any contacts in the UK that could help thanks Adam
On-Page Optimization | | AMG1000 -
Are To Many Rel Canonical Links A Bad Thing?
Are To Many Rel Canonical Links A Bad Thing? I had "twin" domains so I redirected my .com to www..com and now I have a lot of Rel Canonical Links.
On-Page Optimization | | Mike.Bean0 -
Footer copyright year statement. good or bad
Hi, I see a lot of sites with a year copyright statment in the footer like Copyright 2011 - DomainName.com or Copyright 2002 - 2012 - Domainname.com since new year a lot of sites (founded before 2011) still have 2011 instead of 2012 in the footer. Do you think the date gives any signals to google? Should someone update the date or remove it completely? I would tend to remove it completely since the page date for google is submitted in the HTTP header. But maybe the info could be of any use for the user. Any best practices?
On-Page Optimization | | Autoschieber0 -
What URL Should I use in Google Place Page?
Alright, I have a client that has 1 website and 14 locations. We want to create place pages for each of their locations but my question is which URL should I put in the place page and why? I can put in the root domain into each place page, or should I put in the URL that lands on the actual location on the root. example: domain.com/location1 Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | tcseopro0