7 replies to this topic

[bobmeetin]

I have a client whose come to me to help clean up reviews. I took a ride on google, entered "keyphrase city" and got results illustrating the problem. Google local (maps) returned this guy's business along with his competitors. For him it has the Reviews (2) link and most of his competition 10-50 reviews. Visit the 2 reviews and they are less than satisfactory whereas his comps are 80% + good.

My job will be to set up a plan to get satisfied customers to submit reviews. A concern is that we don't obtain too many too fast and end up alarming big brother. Is this a valid concern?

If a valid concern, what would be a reasonable frequency build up reviews, monthly or weekly?

Related question, I haven't looked at yahoo yet, but plan to check it out. Do we have any similar concerns with the other search engines?

Last question, there are a ton of directory/business type listing sites where Ma/Pa shops commonly advertise, phone book type sites, not mentioning names here. Are these worth looking into? Personally, I never even go to these sites to look for services or businesses, let alone toget a review.

[chrishirst]

. Visit the 2 reviews and they are less than satisfactory whereas his comps are 80% + good

Probably because they write the "reviews" themselves.

I'm always suspicious where the reviews are all good.

My job will be to set up a plan to get satisfied customers to submit reviews. A concern is that we don't obtain too many too fast and end up alarming big brother. Is this a valid concern

No

I never even go to these sites to look for services or businesses, let alone toget a review.

and quite probably neither do potential customers.

[bobmeetin]

When I visit Amazon in search of a tech book I do cruise the reviews. I don't put heavy faith in those with only one or two reviews, I do look for numbers. Same with making purchases through Amazon. I'm apt to pass on a seller which offers the best prices (by pennies commonly) but only has a few reviews compared to those with hundreds.

Since starting this thread I did some googling (are customer reviews important?) and found some articles discussing why. Some suggest yes both for customers and SEO reasons.

Those Google reviews are there in plain site, perhaps the same as yahoo. As Chris said,

"and quite probably neither do potential customers."

I buy that absolutely I think referred to the other sites.

How this got started... My client had a salesman contact/meet with him and this guy's thing is fixing reviews to help build business. So, he's attempting to sell my client on improving his reviews as a bundled package, Google yes, but also yellowbook and local directory type site reviews. I'm scratching my head trying to see the benefit of cleaning up history and creating reviews through these services that are this side of invisible.

Maybe they have great sales people but???

Edited by bobmeetin, 07 November 2012 - 03:39 PM.

[Jill]

Reviews (real ones) are very important. But hiring a company to create fake ones is worse than having none at all.

[bobmeetin]

I don't know that this guy's plan is to create fake ones. Apparently during their first conversation he communicated (or it was misunderstood) that he could make the bad google reviews go away. Then I got invited to a meeting and asked some more pointed questions (not popularity builders) and we learned that this was not so.

Chances are, I will make up a plan to contact past customers who have previously submitted postal hardcopy feedback forms and pave the way (step-by-step process) to submit real ones through google, maybe yahoo. And the dude rides off into the sunset.

From past experience I know that this little exercise can be laboriously slow so my earlier question about alerting google (too many new ones too fast) was probably silly.

How many folks will be willing to create a google/gmail account just to submit a review??? Perhaps they'll need some encouragement in terms of loyalty discount?

Rant time: The Joomla extensions directory comes with a Review option if you have an account. Anyone who has been around knows that many fake reviews get submitted and you occasionally hear developers complain about that. Numbers feed the masses. What is just as bad though is that fact that you're only permitted to submit one review per extension and there is no way to refresh that review. There have been times I've submitted positive reviews, then a month goes by and as I dig deeper I realize how bad an extension or the service is. No easy way to share the knowledge...

[Jill]

Chances are, I will make up a plan to contact past customers who have previously submitted postal hardcopy feedback forms and pave the way (step-by-step process) to submit real ones through google, maybe yahoo. And the dude rides off into the sunset.

Which means you don't need him.

How many folks will be willing to create a google/gmail account just to submit a review???

You'll want to provide them with a wide range of places where they can review you. Look at places like Yelp and other review sites. Provide them with links to them all and that way if they already have logins for one or another they can use their preferred site.

Perhaps they'll need some encouragement in terms of loyalty discount?

That is frowned upon. You could provide them with a discount coupon within the email you sent, but don't have it be contingent upon them doing a review.

[Ludachris]

If it were me, I would do a search for "Busines Name Reviews" for your customer, see which reviews directories come up, then list all those directories as places to leave reviews. Add a message on the Contact Us submission form results page of the website. If they do any type of e-commerce, add links to the businesses' profile in each of those directories on the Thank You page in the checkout process. If they send out email newsletters, solicit reviews that way. You can give them some guidance too, as Jill mentioned, letting them know that leaving reviews on some sites can be easy (like for those who have a gmail account, they can easily login and leave a review on Google Places, or those who have a Facebook account can quickly login and leave a review on Citysearch, etc). In most cases, just simly asking for reviews will help signifticantly. Just be ready to spend time combatting the negative reviews with positive replies.

[bobmeetin]

I found some hidden little surprises along the way to setting up this "Reviews" page. My client has complained several times that customers have called asking "such such" which they found as a service he offered on his website. Knowing his site as I do, this is not a service even remotely mentioned on any page, nor in an meta data.

Lo and behold, he got one of these angry beings to paint the picture to how they got this info. One of the local directory services registered a domain like his, as .net and there it lay. what a service. Now he has 2 domains with distinct info, one legit and one a scrape.

So on I go to create a reviews page for him with instructions and links to create reviews with the biggies:

Google
Yahoo
Yelp
Judy's Book
Bing (draws from others)
Citysearch
Dex
Best of "his city"

Looking through the live reviews and methods and business profile info I find another domain like "mybusiness_mycity.com" which one of the services has created and in this case this last one has dubbed in their "877" phone number for tracking calls to the shop.

Now he has 3 websites saying different things about his business, mixed up hours, coupons out of sync, contact forms going to who knows what email addresses, etc.

To get this under control I will need to follow various claim business process, some of which include mandatory listing fees just to get the business name/address stuff right.

What an absolute mess!!!