A long time ago I was sitting at a bar talking with my oombff (one of my best friends forever), Amy who was bartending when she introduced me to a masseuse who was sitting next to me.  He told me about his website and how he figured out that if he put “best massage” in his metadata he came up at the top of the search list.  It worked! Guess what? That was a long time ago and if you think you can come up with tricks to show up at the top of searches you are probably going to find you were wrong. Just as you cannot coerce clients into recommending you by word of mouth, sites such as Yelp and Google are finding ways for you not to use coerced reviews.

uh yeah…good for Hollywood, not for business

A client of mine just explained that she/he has been offering clients extra goods and services for reviews on sites.  The client wrote a follow up to clients suggesting they write one review and just copy and paste it on a list of sites that accepts reviews. Now all those reviews are gone.  Why?  This is what I found.

I googled “what happened to my reviews” which led me to a support site for Google business and then I found a lovely post from Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky from 2015.

She wrote:

It is likely that your review got filtered or removed for violating Google’s review policies. Based on cases I’ve looked at, here is what I’ve come up with for reasons why reviews go missing:

• • URLs in reviews

• • The same review appears elsewhere online (Yelp, a testimonials page on your website etc)

• • The person who wrote the review is a manager of your G+ Page

• • The person who wrote the review works for you

• • The person wrote the review from the same computer/IP Address that you sign into to manage your local listing

• • The person wrote the review from the same IP address as other users who left you reviews

• • The person tried to post a review for you several times on different dates (Ex: they wrote one August 5 and it got filtered so they tried again on October 10)

• • You’ve been collecting reviews in mass within a short time frame

• • The person reviewing you has also reviewed multiple other businesses with the same name (if you have several locations and they reviewed all of them)

• • The person reviewing you has a completely blank G+ profile and has never had any activity on that Google profile before or after they left you that review.

• • You hired an SEO company to post reviews for you

• • You have an onsite review station (Ipad, Computer etc) at your location

• • You are offering incentives for people who write you reviews.

• • Your # of reviews is abnormally higher than most businesses in your industry.

The internet and technology are changing at warp speed so some of this may not apply, but my guess is that the people who run these sites are more likely to make things more complicated than less complicated and they are continuing to have these same requirements of posted reviews.

My client that had this experience is very nice person and is terrific at what she/he does. But they did something that many of us do.  They misunderstood that the internet and technology are reflections of our humanity; they are another way we communicate.

So what is the best way to get your company to show up on the first page of a google search?  The same as it always has been. Provide excellent products and service.  Be nice to your customers.  Be nice to your employees so they are happy and they are nice to your clients.  Market your products and services in a straight forward, honest manner. Be competitive in price and delivery.  Then, when you feel your clients are happy, ask them if they would recommend you to their friends, family and community…through Google or Yelp or Facebook.