{"id":10789,"date":"2011-08-08T09:12:42","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T13:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=10789"},"modified":"2011-08-08T16:51:28","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T20:51:28","slug":"hit-by-competitor-spam-reviews-the-plot-thickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/08\/hit-by-competitor-spam-reviews-the-plot-thickens\/","title":{"rendered":"Hit by Competitor Spam Reviews: The Plot Thickens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I seem to be mired in competitor spam reviews<\/a> these days. The second bad review in as many weeks showed up this weekend on Barbara Oliver & Co. Jewelry’s Place Page<\/a>.\u00a0At first glance it appeared legit. The complaint, that it is pretentious to require appointments<\/em>, is untrue and probably comes from a misreading of Barbara’s recently placed announcement<\/a> on her website. She noted that during renovations and expansion construction from the 12th to 24th of this month she would be closed except by appointment.<\/p>\n

The second review made an owner- response to both negative reviews imperative.\u00a0\u00a0I had not previously responded to the original bad review<\/a> thinking that the reviewer might go silent. That did not happen. I think Puresheer<\/a> and EarlPearl<\/a> are right in that sense… the spammer is unlikely to go away and defend our honor we must.<\/p>\n

The answer I chose to use was\u00a0Kevin Baca’s<\/a>\u00a0(of Customer Lobby) \u00a0excellent edit<\/a> of my original<\/a> response. I modified it slightly (per CathyR’s suggestion<\/a>) and removed the words “fake review” to avoid a Google snippet disaster.<\/p>\n

This is Barbara Oliver, owner of the company. You are right in that there are business owners out there faking reviews. I\u2019m from the old school of small business ethics that insists on earning a good reputation over time with excellent customer service. I give my word that the reviews here on my Place Page are 100% legitimate and left by my real customers. I personally remember each of the wonderful transactions they are mentioning. As you can imagine, we really appreciate the time they took to do this. I invite you to come to our shop to see for yourself our beautiful jewelry, fair pricing and the fabulous shopping experience we provide for each of our valued customers. Barbara<\/em><\/p>\n

The “perp<\/a>” though, while trying to be sneakier and leaving a seemingly real second review, seems to have tipped their hand. I was actually “buying” their review of Barbara and Andrews Jewelers<\/a> until I got to the marketing happy talk left on behalf of the third jeweler.<\/p>\n

Responding<\/a> to the appointment critique was much easier and offered the opportunity to both differentiate Barbara’s services and extol her expansion.\u00a0The problem is though that it appears that the writer is developing a taste for this sort of thing, however small time.<\/p>\n

Should we contact the other jewelers in question and initiate a dialogue? Should we just keep responding and ignore the likely source knowing that they are adding to our review count? Should we consider some third course of action? Perhaps a firm, carefully worded letter from our attorney?<\/p>\n

What now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I seem to be mired in competitor spam reviews these days. The second bad review in as many weeks showed up this weekend on Barbara Oliver & Co. Jewelry’s Place Page.\u00a0At first glance it appeared legit. The complaint, that it is pretentious to require appointments, is untrue and probably comes from a misreading of Barbara’s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local","category-reviews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t