![]() Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other businesses often create “honeypot” businesses on their site to try to trap people leaving fake reviews. That, too, is skewing your review profile in an unnatural way, and can lead to action taken against your profile on the site. One home improvement company offered $50 gift cards for the removal of a negative review, written about here. The same goes for the opposite incentivizing the removal of negative reviews. That incentive skews opinion and perception, which makes your reviews inaccurate. Even if that review is from a legitimate customer, the fact that you incentivized it means they’re more likely to leave a positive review, since they don’t want the repercussion of not getting their reward. If you follow up on purchases with a “here’s a 10% off your next order coupon, claim it by leaving a review on Yelp” you could be in violation of the terms of service of the site.Īny exchange of goods, services, upsells, discounts, or money for a review constitutes buying a review. For example, if you pay a customer who bought your product to leave a review, does that count as buying a review? It certainly counts if you just go to Fiverr and buy a review package.ĭepending on the terms of service of the sites involved, buying a review could mean anything from paying someone on Fiverr to offering an additional item/coupon/discount to people who review. However, there are a lot of little details to cover. The question is, can you pay for those reviews, or do you have to accumulate them more naturally?Įncouraging Good Reviews What Constitutes Buying Reviews?īuying reviews in the most basic form just means paying money for a review. The best way to deal with negative reviews is to obtain enough positive reviews to overpower those negative reviews. That has been put to a stop due to a recent law, but it still happened for a while. Some companies went so far as to harass and bully users online until they removed those reviews, even threatening legal action for damages against the company. ![]() There used to be a lot of different ways to try to get negative reviews removed, and unscrupulous businesses would go far out of their way to do it. It’s difficult to remove a review unless you can positively prove it was faked, like someone reviewing a bad flight you booked when you don’t cover that airline, or negatively reviewing a food you don’t sell. Meanwhile, companies like Yelp and TripAdvisor know that businesses accumulate negative reviews more than positive reviews, so they protect those reviews. This means negative reviews are a lot easier than positive reviews. This is even more true if you don’t have satisfying customer service. Most people only think to leave reviews when those reviews are negative, to hurt the company that hurt them, to warn other potential customers away, and to express their negative feelings. Think about it when you buy a product online or from a retail store, how often do you think “hey, I should leave those guys a review”? I would venture to guess not very often. ![]() The problem is, it’s often very difficult to obtain positive reviews, particularly on third party sites. Of course, if you’re a high quality business with none of those issues, a heap of positive reviews can help you out a lot. Users are helped in that they are forewarned and can avoid your business. If your business stinks, your product breaks, your shipping is slow, or your service is terrible, reviews will call you out on it. Though, I suppose I should clarify reviews are helpful to your users. Any time you’re running a business, reviews are helpful.
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