People Are Proud To Catch A Fake
There are a lot of bad ‘self-proclaimed’ Local Search Marketing Experts running around as Google Maps are one of the top ways that a local business can get traffic. However, since reviews [can] help a site’s rankings many unskilled providers use fake reviews as one of their major methods to enhance rankings.
This can cause serious damage to your business.
Case In Point:
Carbonite Games Amazon Reviews – NYT Does An Article
Most companies dream about the New York Times doing an article about them. Do you think Carbonite was happy with this publicity? Doubtful.
However, sometimes it can cost more than just a loss of reputation.
Lifestyle Lift – These guys not only got a NYT article, however they also got the NY Attorney General charge them with $300,000 in fines for faking reviews of a procedure called LifeStyle Lift. Ouch.
There are many more examples. However, these few should be enough to convince you to pursue only legitimate reviews. We will cover how to get legitimate reviews in a following article in our Local Search Marketing Series.
Agreed – especially if these reviews stem from the same IP.
Fake reviews, like lies will come back to haunt you, so never use them.
Even encouraging reviews from customers with incentives and competitions is against many local search directories t’s & c’s, so beware!