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
-
How to make Google show reviews from Facebook and Google My Business?
I wonder if there is anything I can do to increase the chance that Google shows stars that indicate the average score of our reviews from Facebook or Google MyBusiness for the keywords where we rank nr. 1, for instance our brand name?
Reviews and Ratings | | AudunBK0 -
Structured Data Reviews in Knowledge Panel
I need help with getting my site appearing in the knowledge panel for reviews. Our reviews are appearing in the search snippets but not on the knowledge panel when our competitors with far fewer reviews are. We’ve labored over best practices in perfecting our markup but would love a second opinion to see if there’s something we’re overlooking. For example take this venue on our website: https://www.eventsource.ca/cathedral-centre It has 136 of our own reviews. https://www.google.ca/search?q=cathedral+centre We are the 1st result and it shows our star rating, reviews and price range. However, we don’t appear in the knowledge panel - this is happening for almost every business we have listed on our site. In this particular example, the knowledge panel has en Ville Catering with 45 reviews. I cannot find any errors in our structured data but I see it in our competition: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eventsource.ca%2Fcathedral-centre https://enville.com/saint-james-cathedral-centre-wedding-catering/ Example 2: Search: https://www.google.ca/search?q=burlington+convention+centre US: https://www.eventsource.ca/burlington-convention-centre
Reviews and Ratings | | Neumarkets.com
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eventsource.ca%2Fburlington-convention-centre Competitor in KP: https://www.weddingwire.ca/wedding-banquet-halls/burlington-convention-centre--e12513
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.weddingwire.ca%2Fwedding-banquet-halls%2Fburlington-convention-centre--e12513 Example 3: US: https://www.eventsource.ca/mississauga-convention-centre
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eventsource.ca%2Fmississauga-convention-centre Search: https://www.google.ca/search?q=mississauga+convention+centre
Competitor 1 in KP: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaConventionCentre/
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FMississaugaConventionCentre%2F (I know it’s Facebook. However, there’s about 6-8 competitors appearing in the KP with Schema issues and we aren’t. We’ve compared ourselves against each one of them and cannot determine what the issue might be.) Competitor 2 in KP: https://www.weddingwire.ca/wedding-banquet-halls/mississauga-convention-centre--e8086
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.weddingwire.ca%2Fwedding-banquet-halls%2Fmississauga-convention-centre--e8086 Competitor 3 in KP: http://www.eventvenues.ca/b/54/mississauga-convention-centre-on-mississauga-75-derry-road-west/
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eventvenues.ca%2Fb%2F54%2Fmississauga-convention-centre-on-mississauga-75-derry-road-west%2F CMxg9Z10 -
Client wants to delete Google My Business Due to Bad Review
My client has received a bad review on Google and although has other good ones, wants to delete the current Google My Business page and open a new one. I disagree with this strategy but need some evidence to back it up. They are ranking well and so I don't want to upset the cart. I need reasons not to in terms of potentially harming rankings. Am I right that this could impact?
Reviews and Ratings | | AL123al3 -
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 -
Schema.org problems with reviews
Hey Mozzers, Has anyone had problems getting review data to appear in the SERP? Specifically, hotel package reviews. The site I work for sells packages and products, but I'm having off cases where the data is appearing if there is only 1 review present. As soon as it gets multiple reviews the snippet data is no longer showing up. The schema.org markup is testing fine in the structured data testing tool, and when I compare it against competitor sites where the data is appearing, I can't see the difference. I am by no means a veteran SEO, but this doesn't make any sense to me. Has anyone encountered a similar problem? I could really use some help here. One of the pages I am having difficulty with: www.tripcentral.ca/vacations-packages_mexico.html }
Reviews and Ratings | | tripcentral0 -
Yelp to Show Evidence of "Review Fraud"
I just came across this post on SELand: http://searchengineland.com/yelp-adds-link-to-evidence-of-review-fraud-222740 Has anybody noticed this on their/a client's Yelp page? I'm curious to know what percentage of listings have received this type of flag. What are your thoughts on this new implementation?
Reviews and Ratings | | JimmyPage1 -
Does advertising on Yelp help a business get more Yelp reviews?
I've gotten this question from a few clients. There seems to be a correlation in some cases between paying to advertise on Yelp, and the volume of reviews received. Of course, correlation does not necessarily equal causation. And I can attest to the fact that other clients who have at times advertised on Yelp did not even see a correlation. Has anyone else seen this correlation? And if so, can you speak to the possible causation or lack thereof?
Reviews and Ratings | | irapasternack0 -
Best E-Mail Service For Customer Reviews
Hello Moz Community, I manage an online wallpaper store. The site is totalwallovering.com We already have a 5 star review form in place on all product pages with rich snippets. I want to set up my own system for e-mailing customers two weeks after they purchase wallpaper from us, in effect asking them leave us a review of the product. Most people are generally willing to do so if they get a reminder. So far in the past 6 months since we have added the review form we have gotten eight reviews. I got a call from Trustpilot last week and I really liked their system ALOT but I am unwilling to pay $600/month. I would rather have all of my reviews on my own website. I literally have thousands of past customers and would like to bulk upload them into the system so that I can generate hundreds of reviews quickly but if that is not possible I can just start with the customers I get today. I am open to any suggestions. Thanks
Reviews and Ratings | | Wesley-Barras0