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.
Paying for Reviews Penalty?
-
Hello, recently came across a company that has been paying people directly for reviews. I of course do not recommend this and realized the ethical implications and even the lawsuits that can come from this, but does Google have a manual penalty for fake reviews or do they just algorithmically discount ones that raise red flags? I have never really had to worry about this in the past. I know you can flag fake reviews to them on an individual basis, but does anyone have history of knowing specific situations where a company was manually punished for doing this? Just curious and I kind of wanted to give them strong documentation to knock it off. Thanks in advance.
-
Joy's advice actually provides point #5, Jeremy. Personally, I wouldn't recommend outing your own client for review spam, but in addition to consumers realizing reviews are fake, your client's competitors and their SEOs may realize it and report the reviews to the GMB forum or to a Top Contributor like Joy, etc.
So, that would be a 5th point to raise with your client.
-
If you have evidence, feel free to add it here and I can send it over to Google. They remove reviews for businesses that do this provided there is proof of it.
-
Hi Jeremy,
Good questions, and unfortunately, the bad news is that review spam on Google is rampant, and unfortunately, does not appear to be well-policed. Technically, yes, Google could both remove spam reviews and penalize the listing that is engaging in them (either manually or algorithmically), but as Mike Blumenthal has recently been documenting, Google does not seem overly interested in devoting resources to catching or penalizing review spammers (definitely read: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2017/04/17/the-largest-review-spam-network-ever-or-who-is-shazedur-rahman-and-why-should-you-care/)
There seem to be thousands of fake reviews in the network Mike has been tracking which violate not only Google's guidelines but also, likely, FTC regulations. Unfortunately, this state of affairs with Google appearing to ignore massive review spam calls into question the trustworthiness of their review product and it's something I would hope to see them crack down on in future.
Google's situation provides good background as to the famous stringency of Yelp's review policies. Yelp is highly invested in ensuring that reviews on their platform are legitimate. This is why they remove 28% of the reviews they receive and why they have publicly shamed erring accounts from time to time.
So, for now, if you're trying to convince a business not to spam Google's review product, you are likely to have to use something other than the immediate threat of penalties as your argument. This might include:
-
The possibility of a future Google crackdown at any time, with consequences that could be as mild as a soft penalty with loss of the fake reviews, to as severe as being banned with all of the traffic and revenue your GMB listing used to drive for your brand vanishing overnight.
-
The possibility of consumers discovering spam on their own and causing permanent damage to the brand's reputation via Word-of-Mouth, social sharing, etc., as well as the obvious loss of the customer and his network of friends if they are disgusted enough.
-
The possibility of FTC actions, lawsuits, etc. This should startle any business on the review spamming road: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2296366/fake-online-reviews-cost-19-companies-usd350-000
-
The weakness of a marketing strategy that relies of faking success instead of actually achieving it. You can't use fake reviews as a benchmark of growth, gains, quality control or anything like that. You're just fooling yourself, instead of putting in the work to achieve a genuine reputation for excellence.
You may think of other discussion points, but these four should be enough to convince any legitimate business with even a small amount of concern for staying in business that these risky shortcuts are a hazard rather than an asset.
Hope this helps!
-
-
In 2016 Google sent out a batch of new manual penalty notices that mostly hit bloggers. Bloggers were penalized for accepting free products in exchange for a review with a link to merchant’s website or accepting paid reviews with such links.
It’s a well known fact for years now that Google doesn’t like to see paid reviews or reviews paid through free product or free service pass PageRank.
Online stores who were buying lots of links that pass PageRank would get hit by a manual penalty or even worse, by the Penguin algorithm.
Google now decided to focus on those who enable merchants to get such links – the bloggers. So Google sent out manual penalties to bloggers who didn’t listen to this guideline.
Impact can be both positive and negative, depending on how good you were in obeying Google’s guidelines in past. Till now, if you only obtained a few links with this method where you give a free product or pay for review to a blogger, Google would be unable to figure out that you’re doing something wrong on a massive scale and you wouldn’t get penalized in any way.
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
-
Is It Beneficial to 'Like' My Clients Google Reviews?
I have a client who is insisting that all of us in the office 'like' his positive reviews on Google. My boss & I are fine with doing this, but due to the industry the client works in, my staff is questioning doing this or not because they do not want to be associated with his company outside of work. Is there any SEO benefit to us liking his reviews or is this more for him to feel better that people are reading them? Does my staff have anything to worry about if they do 'like' his reviews?
Reviews and Ratings | | Justine.Hedge3 -
Google Removed All Anonymous Reviews from GMB Listings with No Warning
I just saw that Google is no longer accepting anonymous reviews for businesses, and in fact have REMOVED all current anonymous reviews. This just happened in late May, but I'm pretty surprised there hasn't been any talk about this, it's a pretty big deal. Before I knew this I called their "specialists" to ask why we lost so many reviews. I specifically asked if Google had changed their review requirements that would result in old reviews being removed. She said no. She's either not well informed or just lied. https://orthopreneur.com/anonymous-google-reviews-disappeared/ My company just lost 20+ positive reviews. Anyone else hurting from the change and finding solutions?
Reviews and Ratings | | HammerandHand1 -
3rd Party Reviews - Schema Implementation
Hi, Currently my client displaying Ratings & Reviews from a third-party (TripAdvisor) service and only displaying 5 reviews but not showing "Read More Reviews" button to TripAdvisor page. Now I would like to use Rich Snippet schema markup code on these rating & reviews but below are my few concerns, could you please guide me: 1. Can I use Rich Snippet Schema markup code on widget of TripAdvisor Rating & Review. 2. If I apply schema markup code, Do I need to maintain TripAdvisor link for "Read More reviews". Below are the URLs which contains TripAdvisor rating & reviews after big image: https://goo.gl/DLpDXE https://goo.gl/EHVG7o https://goo.gl/ok6cYp Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Satla
Reviews and Ratings | | TrulyTravel0 -
Does anyone use an embeddable Google review widget?
Currently, I use an embeddable Yelp review widget on my site. The widget I use has been helpful, but is no longer actively maintained and I'd prefer to show Google reviews instead. Does anyone have a recommendation for a widget to embed Google reviews?
Reviews and Ratings | | Dions0 -
Do people receive notifications when you respond to their Google reviews?
If someone leaves a review of your business on your Google My Business listing, and you respond to that review, will they receive an email notification of your response to their review? We are working with a client who has unanswered reviews from several years ago, and though it's best practice to respond to all reviews, we didn't want to respond to reviews from 2013 if the person (who has likely forgot about their experience with the business in question) is going to get an email notifying them of our late response to their review. Thank you!
Reviews and Ratings | | BlueCorona1 -
How does decimal rounding of reviews to stars work in ios appstore? Starting from which average review score to get full 5 star rating?
How does decimal rounding of reviews to stars work in ios appstore?
Reviews and Ratings | | lcourse
Starting from which average review score to get full 5 star rating? Duolingo has a 5 star rating, but I doubt that they really have an all time review average larger than 4,75. In the google playstore their average of the android version is 4,6. Does anybody know how apple calculates the star ratings or has an URL reference where this is explained?0 -
Having Yelp Reviews Removed
Since we all work with Yelp on a local basis, I believe many are aware that if a review is placed by a non customer about a company, Yelp will typically remove them if you show that it isn't valid, etc. We all know they made a show of outing those who posted fake reviews as well. Here is a question I have though: Have any of you been aware of Yelp taking down valid negative reviews for companies? I have just run into this and find it somewhat perplexing. If you know of this, I would love to hear how it happens? Thanks,
Reviews and Ratings | | RobertFisher2 -
Too many reviews too quickly?
Is there any sort of guideline on this? Right now, we have very few google reviews. However, I've cross referenced a list of our happiest clients with people who have g+ accounts. There are at least 12 clients, I feel strongly would write us g+ reviews if I asked them to. I want to just get the word out today, but I'm worried if 8-12 reviews in a week would red flag us. I've heard that getting too many reviews to quickly can be a problem, but I'm thinking that more like 100 than 10, but I have no idea. Most of my competitors don't have any reviews, and the most any of them have is 10. I don't know if that matters at all either in terms of triggering a red flag. I'd appreciate whatever insight you all could give. Thanks, Ruben
Reviews and Ratings | | KempRugeLawGroup0