Is giving away something for a Google Review bad?

[netviper]

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?

[MHagens]

This post is deleted!

[beeneeb]

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!

[dignan99]

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
• Email
• 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.

[RyanKent]

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.

[dignan99]

Trying to get Google to undo a negative could never be a fun proposition I assume.

[netviper]

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?