Panda Question on Aggregated Testimonials - Need Input

[dsinger]

Hello Moz Friends,

I am investigating some online reputation management tools to help boost testimonials across the web for my various business locations.  One thing I am finding is that many tools offer syndicated and aggregated content that can be displayed within our website for that location from various review sites across the web.

My question is, will this type of aggregated content have a negative impact on our site, considering Google Panda is aggressively going after sites with thin content, aggregated content, etc.?  I like the idea of showcasing positive testimonial from across the web on that business location's website testimonials page, but do not want to do it if it will ultimately lead to a penalty and site devaluing.

Does anyone have any insight into whether or not aggregated testimonials on one page of our site will have a negative impact overall, a negative impact on just that one page's ranking ability, or should have no affect?

[Travis_Bailey]

There are a lot of sites that aggregate UGC. But they tend to do something with this aggregated UGC that adds value. If you're super concerned, there's always the possibility of an iframe.

It's kind of funny that I've referenced this whiteboard Friday twice in the last few days, but I think it's a great starting point for part of what you're trying to do. Part of your situation is referenced as an anecdote.

I would definitely avoid any product/service that spreads duplicate UGC across the internets. (Review on Yelp! gets placed on numerous other review sites... that sort of thing is bad.)

[dsinger]

Thanks Travis.

I really appreciate the honest feedback.  I was thinking along those lines, but wanted to be sure.

I am investigating allreviewsites.com as a possible solution, and one of their selling features is the ability to syndicate content where available, so if someone posts a review on our site, it can be automatically fed to sites that accept UGC from other sites, such as yellowpages, merchantcircle, etc.  You are saying that this is bad?  is it seen as duplicate content or just a bad user experience for those few potential customers who may run into the same review on multiple sites?  even if its seen as duplicate content, wouldn't we be okay since we are the original source of the content?

[EGOL]

I think that you could display these reviews on a page that is noindexed or within a frame that is not crawled.  But, I agree with Travis that it is a little risky to display this content that is highly duplicated across the web - especially placing it on a lot of your own pages.

[Travis_Bailey]

Well, there are a lot of sites that aggregate reviews. But they're generally adding some sort of other value. I wouldn't actively try to spread the same review. Content gets scraped every day, why pay for something that's going to happen anyway? That's my general take on things like this.

Looking into the situation a little deeper, I think this particular effort is about rep. mgmt. The first thing that has to happen is actually fixing the issue, or issues, with the business. No matter what's done, traditional approaches to reputation management are just a bandage if a real problem exists.

What you can do instead is something similar to the Reputation Management Workout section. It's a pretty good overview of how you can generate real reviews. Once those start coming in, you can iframe them or use them as an image.

I've seen a case, here on the Moz forum, where a site appeared to drop considerably after including reviews on their site. I'm not 100% sure that was the root cause, but it was also the only change. So if you're feeling feisty, you can try it out and let me know.

That particular site was using Schema markup for an aggregate rating without the other reviews. So you can see there are a lot of possible ways to do this inappropriately.

Actual, unique, reviews that are properly marked up should be kosher in HTML form. Just be careful to avoid general review spam/schema spam.