Does paying a reviewer for an impartial review violate Google's guidelines?
-
When a company pays for an impartial review from a website, should these links be no-followed? I am confident that paid positive reviews are seen as a manipulation of search, but is paying for an impartial review okay?
-
As part of the measure of impartiality, it'd be up to the reviewer to decide whether or not they link to your site with follow or nofollow. Also, in a video from Matt Cutts discussing paid links, he mentions as one measurement whether the payment would be surprising or not. As his example, he says it's not a surprise if you're a movie reviewer and they let you into the movie for free. Likewise, if the company providing a review is a firm of analysts and there's a minimum payment required in order to pay analysts for the hours involved in the review that wouldn't be surprising and is advertised up front. The last thing to consider, is the value in this review the link or being reviewed and having your company exposed to the people who read those reviews. Matt's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zupIbMyMfBI
-
As long as your are clear and transparent about everything, and state Blogger B received our Blue Widget to try for the weekend, you are in the clear.
I personally think a lot can be gained from the negative reviews as well. Sometimes you can leverage those negatives and use those as a platform for communication. If I visit a website, and I see a company who was humble enough to post a negative review, and then took the time to respond to the negative review, and started implementing their changes, I will be impressed.
If you can fix a problem for a customer, you will have a customer for life! At least in my opinion.
-e
-
Yes I do, I mean a review where the writer can make up their own minds about the product. It sounds from both your answers that it is best to be careful in these circumstances and make sure that everything it up front.
Thank both for your help!
-
Good morning,
To my knowledge, the end result of the review doesn't really make a difference. The general rule of thumb I always try to follow is if any money/product/services were exchanged/traded then I have to have some sort of disclaimer stating that there was some sort of exchange made in return for the review.
I try to be as transparent as possible in my marketing/SEO tactics. At the end of the day, its going to come back and bite you in the long run.
Consumer Reports became famous because they refused to receive anything for free, and they were able to build trust with the consumer because of that.
EGOL, a active member on these boards, states over and over, that your content will speak for itself. If you are writing content that is worthy of the positive review, it will come on its own. You may need to help push people in the right direction, but I would agree with Houses, that same energy could be put into refining content, natural link building, creative marketing etc.
If shortcuts were easy or better, they would just be the way.
-e
-
Hi,
Paid positive reviews are definitely not what they want to see but it's a bit less clear about paid impartial reviews as you aren't trying to influence what to write. I'd still steer clear though and find ways to encourage genuine reviews with the money saved. Given that you may end up paying for a bad or neutral review I don't see the point.
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
-
My DA hasn't changed in over a year
My DA has been stuck at 32 for over a year, despite me producing lots of new, relevant content for my site and getting many high-quality backlinks from decent websites. Both my keywords and link profile have grown... but DA has not. I know these things take time, but I've watched competitors climb from low DA to now higher than me in a year, and I have no clue why I haven't grown too. I'm not entirely sure what to do next. Moz says I don't have any crawler issues, so I assume it's seeing my site ok. Any advice, clues, ideas very welcome. Thanks
Link Building | | WanderingBird0 -
Domain Authority and Page authority for external links. What's the difference in value?
Hi Guys. I understand the difference between page authority and domain authority in terms of how likely that page is to rank. But what about a links from a high DA site, but from a low PA page? We’ve identified a client with extremely high DA (73/100), but their blog page has a PA of 1/100. Would a link from this page be pretty much valueless due to the low PA? Or would it still be quite strong as the DA is so high? Perhaps you could point me to some good reading or Moz post on this topic? Thanks guys. Isaac.
Link Building | | isaac6631 -
Can't remove and can't disavow...
Wondering if anyone could help me. A client is suffering a Google penalty at the moment which is harming their performance. That said it is properly the best penalty they could have got..the site has a penalty which is stopping them ranking as high on keywords which they have been spamming links for. I say the best penalty they could have got because, other than these keywords, the site is still performing as well as before in the engines. Have been trying to clear up the backlinks for the past couple of months and just when I think im winning I discover some 32,000 blog comments on one domain 6 weeks or so ago!! - [http://www. iimpact.co.uk/blog/about?ss=%25&replytoc&rep&d=http://8;d=http://166",.moveForm("comment-1628", "1628", addComment.m&replytocom=265](http://www.iimpact.co.uk/blog/about?ss=%25&replytoc&rep&d=http://8;d=http://166",.moveForm("comment-1628", "1628", addComment.m&replytocom=265) example url, I broke it on purpose as to not make it a backlink With that many links i will not even try and contact the site, I put in the disavow in google that there is no way I can get these removed and explained it etc, however, they, again, rejected the reconsideration request saying they are still not happy with the links. At a bit of a loss here. It's starting to look that the best approach will be to write off the half a dozen terms and go a little more long tail. The site will not rank for (this is an example as would not want to give the client away) door knockers. They used to be first page but now are page four. However they remain page one for terms such as brass door knockers, cheap door knockers, chrome door knockers etc. In WMT ranking report they have hits from 1200 words ranking in the top 5 in the past 30 days and 3000 in the top ten. Im a considering trying to up the rankings of these words at the expense of the ones which we cannot seem to get the penalty off. Any thoughts please.
Link Building | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Can you get "link juice" from an outside company's/organization's intranet?
Will you get the same "link juice benefits" from a University, Government Org, or public company's intranet that are linked to your webpages – vs the benefits that you would get from links from their public webpages? Assume that the external webpages have very high Domain Authority, MozRank/Trust etc.
Link Building | | MLR0 -
Link building for a product review site
I'm doing SEO for a product review website, and I'm curious what link building opportunities are best for this category. Assume only the following: The website is basically a blog Most of the articles are reviews on cosmetic products, though there are also articles regarding news, product roundups, tips&tricks and similar content The website is in a local, non-english language Disregarding low-value opportunities such as directories, what kind of websites should I aim for outreach purposes? So far, I'm thinking the following: Product manufacturers (very low success chance, as the review site is fairly new and in a localized language) E-commerce sites selling the products (average to low success chance, since a lot of them use CMSes that might not allow integration of a review) Other cosmetic blogs, particularly for guest blogging (average to low success chance, since the website is fairly new) Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks!
Link Building | | mihaiaperghis0 -
Disavow Links tool just launched by Google
http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-disavow-links-tool-136826 Just thought I would share this.
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Manually Submitting To Google Index
Whenever I structure a page for seo optimization & add new content, should I be manually submitting these urls to google via webmaster tools? Thanks!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Is it whitehat to offer products for a review & link?
It seems to me that if you can offer content for a link back, you should be able to offer a product for a review and a link. Any thoughts?
Link Building | | inhouseseo0