Comments on: Google Places Cracking Down on Fake Reviews

By: Adam Steele

Adam Steele — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:04:24 +0000

We as Local SEOs hear the ALL the time. As Nyagoslav and Mike B. recently pointed out in a recent interview, it is one of the main grievances on the Google Places Support Forums.

It is my understanding that there isn’t much that can be done about it. Honestly, Google isn’t even that bad, Yelp is WAY worse.

There are so many variables that could trigger the filter that it would be impossible for me to say if any of the things you suggested did it. My guess would be it was something else though.

It is only going to get worse, so you will just have to try harder to solicit more reviews.

By: Original

Original — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:07:42 +0000

Thanks for the post. Any thoughts on the the other side of the coin? (Real reviews getting dumped.) I just found out that I lost 3 really good bonafide reviews on Google Places. As a small business, this hurts. I went back over and over the remaining listings to try to figure out what happened. We did not give our customers any incentives to do reviews, and we did not tell them what to say.

Then I noticed that the missing reviews can from customers who hosted their sites on our server. Perhaps they saw that their businesses were hosted on an IP address related to our business name? I can see how that might raise an eyebrow, but when part of your business is shared hosting, what can you do? I would think it would be better to go by domain registry info than IP address.

I know they have to put safeguards in place, but it’s really frustrating to work honestly and still get dinged.

By: Adam Steele

Adam Steele — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:07:07 +0000

Pretty nasty stuff huh? Frankly I wouldn’t know where to start…it is everywhere. Buyer beware : ( Thanks for stopping by Dawn!

By: Dawn

Dawn — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:19:35 +0000

We need to get 60 minutes or 20/20 to do an expose on this! Imagine all the people who are relying on these fake reviews and then getting bad service. Maybe a class action lawsuit is in order?

By: Changes to Google Reviews | OptiLocal

Changes to Google Reviews | OptiLocal — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:48:20 +0000

[...] another factor in defense of the possible change – Google’s review anti-spam algorithm seems to like regular contributors (similar to Yelp’s one). If you make a non-Google user to create a Google account for the [...]

By: Adam Steele

Adam Steele — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:27:59 +0000

Honestly, I haven’t done any testing w/ regards to language filters. I will tell you that with all the reviews I posted, I made 1 mention of the cityname, state and keyword.

The anatomy of the review content is a whole other arena that I have not yet pushed the limits of. From an optimization stand point I am convinced doing the above pushes better rankings based on my colleagues findings, but I don’t thing anyone has done a formal case study.

Great questions, and thanks for the comment Phil!

By: Phil Rozek

Phil Rozek — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:21:43 +0000

Awesome test, Adam. Thanks for sharing.

I’ve got a rather geeky question: to what extent did the text/sentiments/keywords of each of the reviews you “dripped” vary? For instance, let’s say you slowly posted 5 reviews to one Places page: was one of the reviews like 5 words long with maybe one relevant search term, another one 3 paragraphs long with a ton of keywords, and the other 3 somewhere in between?

I only ask because it sounds like you’ve homed in on Google’s location-based filters pretty well, and I’m just wondering what you’ve been able to determine about its “language” filters so far.

By: Adam Steele

Adam Steele — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:47:07 +0000

Yes – we’ve been showing more success with aged or seasoned accounts.

At this time, Gmails are created in the same country as the dummy business we review. They are created en masse, so I don’t have a lot of control over what state/city. Gmails are typically 1 month old.

Thanks for your comments – going to continue testing and pushing the limits. At this time however, we are getting 95% to stick. Yelp is another story…

By: Matthew Hunt

Matthew Hunt — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:19:48 +0000

Try using gmails or google profiles that are active. With same tests. I bet you find that as long as the account/profile seems a little active in other areas, the review will stick regardless of where you are or say your are.

Also where are your gmails from – how old? and did you do voice verification on any of them? All these little factors add up.

I personally found that if a accont is in-active “even from real people” who left a “real” review then the review risks being deleted.

and to make things worse…. google places has been known to mis place reviews (often)… sometimes they come back and sometimes they dont.

fun posts and great test. i like tests. keep them coming Adam!

By: Adam Steele

Adam Steele — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 06:37:07 +0000

Those reviews left on my 2nd tests dummy accounts were left by brand new Gmails. I am glad you asked this because I have just recently been doing some testing with Canadian to UK and vice versa and all accounts used had some history. Of those reviews left, all stuck.

This immediately (and I am sure you thinking the same thing) reminds me of the Yelp filter. In the last 3 months, reviews left by accounts with little maturity get filtered out 9/10 times.

That said, perhaps we are seeing Google following in similar steps, and what we’ve seen Yelp employ we can expect to see from Google as well.