ECommerce & Reviews when generated by 3rd Party uses Javascript

[MyFairyTaleBooks]

Hi all,

I am trying to optimize our product pages and I know one of the important factors is showing customer reviews. While we have plenty of reviews to show they are collected by a third party (Shopper Approved) and the way we have been told to display them on our pages is via a Javascript. My question is, is this sufficient for search engines to be able to crawl and interpret the Javascript or are we missing out on user generated content since it is displayed via Javascript. If so are there best practices or recommendations to help us?

Thank you!
Dinesh
http://www.MyFairyTaleBooks.com <- this is the site in question if it helps.

[Everett]

Dinesh,

Go look at the code for any site using BazaarVoice and you'll see that they have found a way to do this. If Shopper Approved doesn't think this is important enough to fix then perhaps you should look into another review vendor.

Regards,

Everett

[MyFairyTaleBooks]

Hi Everett,

Below is the response I got back from the owner of Shopper Approved, it really does not make much sense to me as I am not a developer but is what he is saying below hold true that it is indeed difficult to implement?

Thanks,
Dinesh

Hi Dinesh,

I talked to our main programmer here in the office, and adding a noscript tag with some testimonials in it is easy.  The issue is that it is very difficult to change the reviews once they're there, without involving the installation of additional files, additional programming, and testing on the clients end, which opens a huge can of worms.

There's just not an easy way to do it.

We've explored every way we can think of to try and add text reviews to our client's pages dynamically in the past, and javascript is the only cut & paste way to do it universally across all platforms, but the downside is that Google can't read it.

If your programmer has any ideas as to how we can pull it off and make it drop dead simple (cut & paste), then I'm definitely open to it.  Otherwise, the next best option is for you to display the reviews via the javascript widget primarily for Social Proof benefits, and then for us to get as many review pages and 5-star ratings indexed in Google as possible to send you as much traffic as we can.

Anyway, let me know if your programmer has any ideas.

Thanks,

Scott

[Francisco_Meza]

@Dinesh, I had been reading this thread and decided to get Shopper Approved for my clients. I talked to Brendan and he told me all about Shopper Approved. I was comparing ResellerRatings.com, TRUSTPILOT.com, ReviewCentre.co.uk, and Local.viewpoint.com.

Shipper Approved seems to have the most value. Tell Scott Brandley that you are landing him 2 subscribers. I see there is an affiliate link there. Your affiliate commission % is 25% lifetime of the customer.

PM me and I'll have my clients use your affiliate code. We are probably going to sign up next week.

[MyFairyTaleBooks]

Hi Everett,

I have the good fortune of actually having a relationship with one of the co-owners Scott Brandley since MyFairyTaleBooks was one of the first stores to implement Shopper Approved back in 2009/2010.

So I reached deep into my rolodex and contacted him this afternoon (he answered!) and I gave him the explanation you provided above and he said he had no idea that was the case and he had me write it up and email him so he could pass it over to development to get a fix in place right away! I will keep you posted on how things go, but it sounds promising that they will get it done.

I guess the whole relationship building thing Moz'ers push actually has some merit huh

Thanks again,
-D

[Everett]

OK so Shopper Approved is one of the review sources used by Google Shopping. That's great! They sound like a really good service. All I would change would be to put the noscript tag in the code with all of the content that appears via the script. Let us know how it goes. If they can fix that issue for you I think I'll keep them in my back pocket in case someone asks for a good review service.

[MyFairyTaleBooks]

Hi again,

So Shopper Approved I believe is 100% legit the way it works is the review is captured at the order confirmation page, meaning once the order is placed and paid for a window pop's up and asks them three basic questions. Then on the backend I have it configured so after 2 weeks (since our products are personalized) we send 3 more questions asking them to rate the delivery, the product and customer service. I do not think there is actually a way to enter a review outside of this process or even manually (I could be wrong!)

If you Google Shopper Approved MyFairyTaleBooks you will see all the pages that they generate and are listed by Google.

Also in the back end system they claim to have a feed / partnership with Google in by which they provide the "Feed" of reviews directly too them. I am not sure how they do this but they make me complete my profile with Store Name, Address, etc

EDIT - Also shows up here for example http://www.google.com/products/seller?hl=en&q=myfairytalebooks&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbm=shop&source=og&zmi=myfairytalebooks.com&sa=X&ei=vP7RUajTG4aH0QGX14HYDQ&ved=0CDYQqQwwAA

Thanks,
-D

[Everett]

Also see my follow-up response above.

[Everett]

I'd like to add that you want to make sure you're going with a company that doesn't hire people to leave fake reviews on your site to populate that content. The Shopper Approved website says that all reviews are from "actual paying customers" so I'm guessing you're ok there.

I looked at the Shopper Approved site and saw this:

"Every rating you collect is added to a static, search engine optimized page, that can show up in Google, Yahoo, and Bing to boost your reputation."

You should find out where that page lives because I couldn't find any review content from several different products in the SERPs, and I didn't see any indexable version of the content in the code on your product pages.

[MyFairyTaleBooks]

Hi Everett,

Thank you for the response just like I suspected I will reach out to SA and see if they will populate a

<noscript>field. </p> <p>Dinesh</p></noscript>

[Everett]

The way the page is set up now that content is NOT indexable. The good news is that it isn't indexed on any other domains either. Sometimes these review companies will allow your reviews to be indexed on their domains, but not yours. They claim ignorance, but I think that type of arrangement is downright low. They'd be stealing your content and your traffic.

What I would advise for you to do if you're going to stay with the company is ask them to populate a

<noscript>field with the content contained in the script. This is what BazaarVoice / Power Reviews does, and I've seen it work first-hand. It is a 100% honest and correct use of the noscript tag. The thing with BV/PR is you have to disallow the reviews subdomain from being indexed or you'll have duplicate content on your own subdomain.</p></noscript>