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.
Is giving away something for a Google Review bad?
-
I have a friend whose client is giving away something for free if you leave a Google Review for his site. I recall that being not well liked by Google and could potentially end up in a Penalty. The site is ranking really poorly in Google but well in Yahoo/Bing so I am wondering if that is what happened.
What are you opinions?
-
So I advised him to remove it asap and wait until google has recrawled the site without that on there.
What is the next step? call Google and ask to review the site to see if there was a penalty?
-
Trying to get Google to undo a negative could never be a fun proposition I assume.
-
Based on the Google policy beeneeb quoted, it is a clear violation to give away items (i..e pay) for a POSITIVE review.
If you were to approach your customers and offer a giveaway item for simply completing a review, without any suggestion that the review is positive, then I don't see any Google violation.
This approach also has the benefit that most of your site's clients will infer that the gift is for a positive review, and offer one.
The drawbacks are you could give away items for a bad review. The other risk is a trigger-happy Google employee could take action against your site. If that happens, you would have to clearly explain that you did not violate the policy and request any punishment to be lifted.
-
Without getting into the good vs. bad conversation, my mind wanders into the necessity of giving anything away for clients to give you a review.
If a company has a strong client base, it could be as simple as asking for a review via:
- Face to Face Meetings
- Social Media
- Mailers
With a properly worded request, and an easy to follow link, many clients will give you the review without any incentive. Simple loyalty goes a long way.
While I am sure more people might fill reviews out for a prize/gift, but is that the way a business receives accurate, non-biased reviews?
Reviews are great for a number of reasons, including SEO and placement in Google Places pages, but they also serve a different purpose.
When a person gives an honest review, positive or negative, that information can be passed on to the business owner to continue what is successful or look at the needed changes to get back on track. This actually happened with my business recently, as there ended up with a few complaints about my staff. I had to look long and hard for solutions to tighten up the ship, and luckily those truthful reviews didn't get lost in a bunch of ego stroking fake reviews.
Honesty is always the best policy, and false or inaccurate reviews will be found out at some point.
-
Hi Dave,
Most websites that have a review structure frown upon giving something in return for a review. Yelp is very clear on these guidelines:
http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/09/to-solicit-or-not-to-solicit.html
On the Google site, this is known as a conflict of interest:
"Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. Even if well-intentioned, a conflict of interest can undermine the trust in a review. For instance, do not offer or accept money or product to write positive reviews about a business, or to write negative reviews about a competitor. Please also do not post reviews on behalf of others or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with the place you are reviewing."
Source: http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=187622
I hope that helps!
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
-
Solved Recommended title length for Google search results
I read the recommended title length is 50-60 characters depending on alphabets, etc,.
On-Page Optimization | | Mike555
Anyways, my question is, is there any harm of having longer title?
If all my important keywords are within the 50-60 characters that will show up on search results, I can still make the title longer, it's just that those keywords outside won't have any effect on search results?0 -
Tags - Good or bad for SEO
We are getting Moz errors for duplicate content because tag pages share the same blog posts. Is there any way to fix this? Are these errors bad for SEO, or can I simply disregard these and ignore them? We are also getting Moz errors for missing descriptions on tag pages. I am unsure how to fix these errors, as we do not actually have pages for these on our WordPress site where we are able to put in a description. I have heard that having tags can be good for SEO? (We don't mind having several links that show up when searching for us on google...) As far as the SEO goes, I am not sure what to do. Does anyone know the best strategy?
On-Page Optimization | | Christinaa0 -
Does RSS Feed help to rank better in Google?
Hello, I heard RSS Feed helps in ranking. However, I am not sure if I should enable RSS Feed or not. Whenever I publish an article on my site , I see that many other websites have leeched my Feed and get's the same article I written published with a nofollow backlink to my website article. The worst part is that my article doesn't appear in Google search, but the website which copied my article gets ranked in Google. Although the article gets index on google (checked by using site:website.com). Although some articles show up after 24 hours by ranking higher from the sites which copied my article. Any idea what should I do? Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | hakhan2010 -
How do i know about my website content quality is good or bad?
According to Google updates, content is the main part of the website ranking, so how do i know about my website content quality...if you have any type of tool for check website content quality please refer to me.
On-Page Optimization | | renukishor0 -
Adding Tags in the blog is good or bad?
Hi Friends, In my blog I used to write unique content in between 300 to 450 words and add the related tags up to 15. When I research about adding tags in the blog I come across this video from “Matt Cutts” says Is it worth spending time on creating tags and categories? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A96yDPqa2rs Key Points from Matt Cutts Video are given below: No Need Tags - In general, Google figure out what your post is about, so don't worry too much about it. So my question is do I need to remove all tags from my blog or can I reduce the tag count to 5 alone? Currently I am using 15 tags to each post, is there any dis-advantage by adding tags like this? Let me know your suggestions? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | zco_seo0 -
How does Google Detect which keywords my website should show up for in the SE?
When I checked my Google Webmaster Tools I found that my website is showing up for keywords that I didn't optimize for ... for example I optimize my website for "funny pictures with captions", and the website is showing up for "funny images with captions". I know that this is good, but the keyword is dancing all around, sometimes I search for "funny pictures with captions" and I show up in the 7th page, and some time I don't show up. and the same goes for the other keyword. of course I am optimizing for more than two keywords but the results is not consistent. my question is how does Google decide which keywords you website should show up for? Is it the on-page keywords?, or is it the off-page anchor text keywords? Thank you in advance ...
On-Page Optimization | | FarrisFahad
FarrisFahad0 -
Does Google index dynamically generated content/headers, etc.?
To avoid dupe content, we are moving away from a model where we have 30,000 pages, each with a separate URL that looks like /prices/<product-name>/<city><state>, often with dupe content because the product overlaps from city to city, and it's hard to keep 30,000 pages unique, where sometimes the only distinction is the price & the city/state.</state></city></product-name> We are moving to a model with around 300 unique pages, where some of the info that used to be in the url will move to the page itself (headers, etc.) to cut down on dupe content on those unique 300 pages. My question is this. If we have 300 unique-content pages with unique URL's, and we then put some dynamic info (year, city, state) into the page itself, will Google index this dynamic content? The question behind this one is, how do we continue to rank for searches for that product in the city-state being searched without having that info in the URL? Any best practices we should know about?
On-Page Optimization | | editabletext0 -
Changing page titles and google penalties?
I just recently learned that changing your page title earns you a google penalty. Unfortunately i learned this after playing around with my page titles a bit to get the most optimal page titles. Does anybody know how long this google penalty lasts? is it forever? or just temporary?
On-Page Optimization | | A Former User0