Does paying a reviewer for an impartial review violate Google's guidelines?

[RG_SEO]

When a company pays for an impartial review from a website, should these links be no-followed? I am confident that paid positive reviews are seen as a manipulation of search, but is paying for an impartial review okay?

[Houses]

Hi,

Paid positive reviews are definitely not what they want to see but it's a bit less clear about paid impartial reviews as you aren't trying to influence what to write. I'd still steer clear though and find ways to encourage genuine reviews with the money saved. Given that you may end up paying for a bad or neutral review I don't see the point.

[HashtagHustler]

Good morning,

To my knowledge, the end result of the review doesn't really make a difference. The general rule of thumb I always try to follow is if any money/product/services were exchanged/traded then I have to have some sort of disclaimer stating that there was some sort of exchange made in return for the review.

I try to be as transparent as possible in my marketing/SEO tactics. At the end of the day, its going to come back and bite you in the long run.

Consumer Reports became famous because they refused to receive anything for free, and they were able to build trust with the consumer because of that.

EGOL, a active member on these boards, states over and over, that your content will speak for itself. If you are writing content that is worthy of the positive review, it will come on its own. You may need to help push people in the right direction, but I would agree with Houses, that same energy could be put into refining content, natural link building, creative marketing etc.

If shortcuts were easy or better, they would just be the way.

-e

[RG_SEO]

Yes I do, I mean a review where the writer can make up their own minds about the product. It sounds from both your answers that it is best to be careful in these circumstances and make sure that everything it up front.

Thank both for your help!

[HashtagHustler]

As long as your are clear and transparent about everything, and state Blogger B received our Blue Widget to try for the weekend, you are in the clear.

I personally think a lot can be gained from the negative reviews as well. Sometimes you can leverage those negatives and use those as a platform for communication. If I visit a website, and I see a company who was humble enough to post a negative review, and then took the time to respond to the negative review, and started implementing their changes, I will be impressed.

If you can fix a problem for a customer, you will have a customer for life! At least in my opinion.

-e

[RyanPurkey]

As part of the measure of impartiality, it'd be up to the reviewer to decide whether or not they link to your site with follow or nofollow. Also, in a video from Matt Cutts discussing paid links, he mentions as one measurement whether the payment would be surprising or not. As his example, he says it's not a surprise if you're a movie reviewer and they let you into the movie for free. Likewise, if the company providing a review is a firm of analysts and there's a minimum payment required in order to pay analysts for the hours involved in the review that wouldn't be surprising and is advertised up front.  The last thing to consider, is the value in this review the link or being reviewed and having your company exposed to the people who read those reviews. Matt's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zupIbMyMfBI