Paid review service stars in search ads - why is that allowed?
-
I'm looking at paid review services like Trustpilot, FeeFo and others.
I'm told I can filter out bad reviews, which I can't do with my Google Certified Stores reviews.
I'm struggling to understand why Google include these in the reviews it uses for the star ratings in search ads. I know it's a different thing, but surely these reviews are in breach of the rules that Google apply to their own "My Business" reviews? They talk about "Conflict of interest: Reviews are most valuable when they are honest and unbiased" here:
https://support.google.com/business/answer/2622994?hl=en
Does anyone have a take on whether Google will drop these as the momentum builds in collection of their own reviews?
Thanks, Paul
-
Hi Paul!
Would you be able to link our community to an example of Google results for which you're seeing these stars? I think it would help. Thanks!
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
-
I'm wondering if reviews services like yotpo and reviews.io are worth it.
The reviews services advertise that your reviews and stars will be placed in your Google search results and this helps with rankings. Does anyone have experience using Yotpo or Reviews.io with a brick and mortar business? Or, any business for that matter? Thanks,
Reviews and Ratings | | Jarod45660 -
How many reviews should i have previewed for marking up a page?
I have a separate /reviews URL, but want to markup the main page with aggregate reviews and also add preview reviews on there. Roughly, how many reviews do I need on the page in order to markup with aggregate review?
Reviews and Ratings | | imjonny1230 -
3rd Party Approved Reviews - Widget or API Feed - Any thoughts ?
Hi Mozzers, We use a google approved 3rd party review company to collect reviews for our branches and now also for our products( this is about to be implemented). We currently use one of their widgets on our site (its javascript) to show the reviews. I don't think google can read this and I don't think we currently, therefore, get any direct seo benefit from it. My questions are as follows : I obviously want to get any SEO benefit from any review text which customers leave but as the data itself is housed on the review site with a widget on my site pointing to it,should I use an API feed as opposed to a widget. If google can read the review text on my page - then surely i should some benefit from it even though, it could technically be classed as duplicate content what are peoples thoughts ? . thanks Pete
Reviews and Ratings | | PeterCol120 -
Best process for asking customers to leave reviews?
This might be too off-topic for Moz, but I think many of us might face the same issue, so I thought I would ask. Love them or hate them, we get 90% of our business from being #1 on Trip Advisor. My biggest competition is trying very hard to take over that #1 spot, so we are working to keep it. Has anyone found a seamless way to ask customers for TripAdvisor reviews? We email, text, ask over the phone. But here the problem, Trip Advisor is not the easiest site to leave a review on. If you are on your phone, they want you download the app. Some people don't like to download apps. Or, if they have the app already and click "yes" to open the site in the app, it goes to the app store instead. There doesn't seem to be as much of an issue on the PC, but most people do everything from their phones now. And if something is a little bit hard, people are less likely to go out of their way to leave a review. So, here's my question. Has anyone found a better way? Maybe a form on my website? Or a process that seems to work better? This does have some SEO implications in that my Trip Advisor page does show up in search results quite a bit as well as much home page. Sometimes they are #2 and #3 together.
Reviews and Ratings | | CalicoKitty20002 -
How to address reviews that show up in Google but come from a business's own website?
One of my clients has a competitor who has a fairly poor reputation based on reviews on Google and Yelp. But, this competitor allows people to review them on their own website, and their "4.8" rating based on 250+ "reviews" show up in search engine results. I assume they are using schema markup to encourage that. My question is whether there is anything we can do to report this to Google, or otherwise make sure the general public is not fooled by these reviews?
Reviews and Ratings | | irapasternack2 -
New building ownership and NAP - strategies for removing old listings with bad reviews
I have a question based on this scenario: An apartment building changes ownership. Previous owners were terrible and online listings have had terrible reviews. Since the apartment building now has a new brand name, new office address and phone number, the new owners want to create new online listings instead of claiming the old listings with the bad reviews. Also they want to report the old listings as "closed". They would like to remove the old listings with bad reviews from the old management and old brand name and start fresh, since they plan many improvements. Has anyone tried this strategy? How much luck has anyone had rebranding an apartment building and reporting old business listings as closed?
Reviews and Ratings | | DragonSearch0 -
Google Reviews
We operate a printing company, and at the moment we have two locations in Houston, Texas. Our newest location just opened and so it has no reviews and no real content on Google +. A very satisfied customer seems to have posted two back to back reviews on the second location and it now seems that location no longer pulls up. It used to be that when you googled our business name that both locations pulled up it seems to pull just first more well established location. The second location can still be found but for whatever reason it no longer shows up with our other results. Should we tell the client to remove one of the reviews? I hope we don't get penalized for this Appreciate your feedback. C
Reviews and Ratings | | RETEX0 -
SCHEMA Review Markup Check & Questions
Hi, I have a few questions about our SCHEMA for user-submitted business reviews. Here's what I have so far: User Review Reviewer Name Business Name
Reviews and Ratings | | kirmeliux
05/14/2014 5 1. Am I missing anything? 2. Is the itemReviewed tag necessary? 3. If a category/results page has multiple businesses listed and shows their ratings, is marking the businesses up as you would on their individual page okay? What about the ratings? I have a feeling marking the ratings would confuse Google, but the businesses themselves (NAP) should be alright, correct? 4. General Q: Is it alright to have multiple reviewBody tags within one review? For instance, if the review is split into 2 parts and additional code/content is between them that isn't part of the review, can we just add multiple reviewBody tags within the same main div tag? Thanks!0