Comments on: Google: Review Contests Violate Guidelines

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:17:41 +0000

Funny that Google keeps touting its against TOS to have contest but yet they keep running them.

Guess you and only do that if you are giving away a Google Product, since Google just did that exact thing here:

https://www.google.com/local/contest/austinnexus7

By: The Pendulum Swings On Google’s Review Spam Filtering As Google Relaxes Filter | Understanding Google Places & Local Search

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:40:29 +0000

[...] Google: Review Contests Violate Guidelines [...]

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 21:46:22 +0000

You mention Google and Yelp, but what about Facebook? Are you allowed to provide incentives for Facebook Likes? I believe so. I have seen several iPhone games (apps) that give you extra levels (product) for Liking the app in Facebook. I have also seen website that provide additional functionality if you Like the site.

By: Chad Williams

Chad Williams — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 20:04:05 +0000

First of all Mike, I really appreciate the speed and detail with which you report on these policy changes. We run monthly contests for several of our clients and I guess we will be going back to the drawing board again with Google’s new update.

My experience shows me that if done correctly (rewarding both positive and negative feedback), providing incentives for reviews helps reduce bias, not the other way around. This is because most online reviews are the result of extreme customer experiences, either positive or negative. These are the only type of customers that feel like taking the extra time to post their experience. By offering a general incentive, you give normal everyday customers a reason to leave their feedback as well which helps balance the outliers.

I understand why Google and other don’t want to take the time to police individual contests to determine if they are fair or not. Using a broad policy against the practice is easier to manage for sure, it just limits well intentioned companies like us. Oh well.

By: Dave Squires

Dave Squires — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 22:38:01 +0000

HI Mike, In Seattle last year I was in local U when I asked Joel Headley during his presentation about indirect incentives. We have a system that provides an incentive to customers by offering to make a monetary donation to 1 of 5 local charities the company owner selected, if the customer would donate some of their time to leave a review–good or bad.

We did this so that the customer had no direct gain from it and it fit within the Google “do no evil” mission statement. We wrote the program that managed and tracked this for our customers because we liked the idea that it could potentially generate thousands of dollars to worthwhile charities around the country. At local U Joel specifically said that Google would never have a problem with a program that donates to charity to ‘incentivize’ a customer to take the time to leave a review. I am curious if this is still true.

Personally, I would love to see Google endorse this concept since we learned it does very well as an incentive for customers to take the time to leave a review without any direct reward to them… and it would generate a lot of money to many great local charities if others ran with our idea as well.

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:23:23 +0000

@Jorge
In limited tests referrer code in and of itself did not seem to cause reviews to not publish….

By: Chad Kimball

Chad Kimball — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:06:24 +0000

I’m curious about Jorge’s question as well. More generally, where can I read more about Google’s new review spam algo?

By: steveplunkett

steveplunkett — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:16:47 +0000

Sure would be great to know when companies with over 50 locations will be able to utilize these reviews.

Do you have any idea?

By: Jorge Cordova

Jorge Cordova — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:23:44 +0000

Hey everyone.

I haven’t seen this come up from anyone across the web about review sites. What I mean is that if Google sees that reviews are coming from the same linking domain, is that going to end up being considered spam. To further explain, if a client gives a card with a QR code to a landing page that then refers people to different review sites, will Google penalize this with reviews to their site?

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:19:59 +0000

@Scott
This is, along with the prohibition on review stations & the new review spam algo, an effort at cleaning up the cruft. What is bothersome and costly to SMBs is Google’s lurching from open to restrictive to open to restrictive. As they try to find balance in their approach it is very disorienting to businesses.

@Earl
Thats why YOU pay me the big bucks…

You are right about the need for clarity given their power. I would also add that consistency would be even better. Often they provide guidelines (like the review stations) that are stupid and only need to be explicitly prevented later. Some forethought and increased clarity would prevent the waffling and many of the problems.

More transparency wouldn’t hurt either.