Potential Ethical Conflict: Google My Business Paid Reviews
-
I've been sitting on this for a while due to The Busies. So if this is nothing new, feel free to lash me several times with a somewhat moist noodle. And in that event, I promise not to make it weird.
I use the Rewards application, from Google. Long story short, you fill in some demographic information and you receive Google Play credit when you complete surveys. It's a nice way to get a book, app, or music for little effort.
But after giving a friend of mine a ride to a local hotel, I've received multiple survey requests that relate to that hotel brand. And it asks me to drop a local review, for extra Google Play credit. How is that ethical?
Their own docs clearly state there is no way to pay for better local ranking, but they also admit reviews can improve local ranking. So isn't soliciting reviews, for any sort of compensation, at least a bit unethical? What are your thoughts?
Attached are screenshots of the solicitation and GMB documentation.
-
I probably got hit by the survey a half dozen times over the course of a year. The problem was it's really difficult to take screenshots on my phone, without closing out to the 'desktop'. Finally managed to capture one about six months ago, then sat on it.
I know the brands involved, so it's probably pretty easy to verify if the pay per review thing was sanctioned. I'm just not certain which tree to bark up.
To me, it's clear the ethics have been at least modestly bent. Compensation involved with any review is a paid review. But the dark side tells me if this is readily available, it might be handy one day.
-
Hmm, not sure what to make of that, and what I don't like about the graphic you captured is that image showing the 5 stars on it. I wish I had some more time to dig into this, but I'm swamped right now. If this is being regulated by Google, the there's nothing to do about it, but like I said, I'm not familiar with Rewards, so I don't know all the ins and outs.
-
Little bit of column A, little bit of column B. It appears to me that it's an option a marketer may choose, and Google is cool with it - hence the 'Hey, this is gonna be public, but you'll get more credit. The portion of the survey I captured has a graphic.
Usually it's just text with tick boxes, and/or radio buttons.
-
Hey Travis,
I've been thinking about this thread and wanted to come back to it with a question for you. You wrote:"But after giving a friend of mine a ride to a local hotel, I've received multiple survey requests that relate to that hotel brand. And it asks me to drop a local review, for extra Google Play credit. How is that ethical?"
I'm not signed up for Google Rewards and have a question. Is the solicitation for the review in exchange for an incentive something being automated by Google, or is it your impression that the review ask is stemming from unique language created by the hotel, itself?
-
How do Miriam,
My concern here is that it appears, face value, to be a sanctioned measure. And it wouldn't be the first time Google ran afoul of their own standards. Though I'm a little torn.
On the one hand, it's a review for compensation. On the other, given a larger metro, you can build up a decent bit of reviews on the quick. So it's either a gift horse, or a moral quandary.
That's why I thought it was an interesting question.
I don't think this was a rogue actor thing. I think it was, at least at the time, sanctioned by someone in the Rewards domain.
-
Hey Travis,
Excellent topic. You have two options here, as what the hotel is doing is absolutely a violation of Google's guidelines if they are offering any kind of incentive in exchange for a Google-based review:
- If you feel concern for the hotel, you could be kind here and reach out to them directly to let them know they are seriously endangering their entire corpus of reviews as well as their brand reputation by incentivizing reviews. Personally, I would take this route. I would point the hotel to this recent thread in the GMB forum in which a brand was reported for offering free zoo tickets in exchange for reviews and ended up losing 96 of their 101 reviews: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/forums/v3_1/forumtopicpage/board-id/Spam_and_Policy/page/1/thread-id/22628
It is so not worth the risk! At any time, any customer or competitor could report the hotel and they'd have a total reputation mess on their hands. So, I'd probably do the nice thing and let them know that. Sometimes, brands genuinely do not know the guidelines and haven't made the connection that they are deceiving their own clientele by making an incentivized review appear as though it is unbiased. So, I'd be inclined to give them a heads-up, if I thought ignorance was the root of their marketing activities. I'd be more inclined to believe this if the business was a small hotel. If it's a large hotel chain, I'd be less inclined to believe they'd just made a mistake ... they have a marketing department that shouldn't be allowing this activity to put the brand at risk.
- However, if you feel the hotel is wittingly doing this, knowing they are deceiving the public and violating Google's guidelines, then you can take this over to the GMB forum and document/report this obvious case of review spam. It will then be up to the TCs there to escalate or not.
Good luck. Unfortunately, review spam is an incredibly widespread issue, often being generated by global networks. It's really unfortunate.
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
-
Review stars dropped off in Google from Rich Snippets (started in October '17 - Jan '18 timeframe)
Our review stars from Rich Snippets are not showing up in Google for Novus products. I believe these are structured correctly or at least there are no errors. We have tried to troubleshoot on our own and asked multiple SEO'er's and partners, but have not had success. Turning to MOZ! They were there in September/October timeframe but dropped off in October to January timeframe. example URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=hif+1+alpha+antibody&oq=hif+1+alpha+antibod (It seems to be off all products); This started in October to January time frame so was before the latest algo update.
Reviews and Ratings | | revelkayla0 -
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 -
Local Search for Home Businesses
I'm a home based business. I know Google has cracked down on PO boxes and UPS locations. What is one to do if they work from home but don't conduct business with clients from their home office? How can I get an address that's Google-approved?
Reviews and Ratings | | FathomMarketing1 -
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 -
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 -
Publishing testimonials on your site that are from your Google + (or other review sites page)
Ive got a site with some good Google + Reviews and some other good reviews on other sites that id like to be able to publish on a testimonials page on our website, but im worried about being penalised for duplicate content. Any idea of the best way to get these reviews on to our website, i was thinking about placing the text in as an image, but id prefer to do something semantic if at all possible. (I know that some review sites have javascript widgets you can use to pull in your reviews but for most of the sites we are reviewed on they dont)
Reviews and Ratings | | Sam-P0 -
How can I avoid duplicate content when building a review widget?
My website has a profile page for each of the home improvement contractors who signs up. They accumulate reviews on those pages. I want to build a review widget to display our reviews on our contractors' websites. How can I avoid duplicate content issues for the reviews? Example of a profile page with a few reviews: http://www.thehomefixers.com/members/425/waterheaters-plus-llc.php
Reviews and Ratings | | menachemp0 -
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