Sara, I doubt that anyone is going to post it on a website. Most of the time you just need to look at the number of positive reviews. There is a local dealer with over 200 five star reviews in the past six months. They have over 60 on citysearch. They have to have that many to average it out to a positive. If you actually read the reviews, they all sound the same. On BBB they have a F rating.
Sara, I doubt that anyone is going to post it on a website. Most of the time you just need to look at the number of positive reviews. There is a local dealer with over 200 five star reviews in the past six months. They have over 60 on citysearch. They have to have that many to average it out to a positive. If you actually read the reviews, they all sound the same. On BBB they have a F rating.
- Aug 29, 2011
- 7
- 1
- First Name
- Joshua
Its very common and its not a new phenomenon people have been doing this since long. I have a question against your question that does this help anyone any way. I would also like to answer this that this does not help. See, your really get exposed the moment a genuine buyer interacts with you and the artificial hype you have created through all the sources goes down the drain in minutes. Its your best customer service and product that keeps you above all the odds. So, I would say if someone is trying to do shady things he/she is damaging its reputation in the long run.
In my opinion, if you do not take care of your customers, you will eventually be found out and exposed no matter how many fake reviews you (or a reputation management company) post online.
I personally would rather have a bad review and the ability to respond publicly, than to have fake reviews on my listing. Consumers that read reviews are trying to get an idea of the “human” element behind the company they are reviewing. A bad review with a good positive response will go a lot further showing the human element than faking good reviews.
The way I see fake reviews is like this…say you have a dog that poops on the carpet and your teenage kid is too lazy to clean it up, so…they just put newspaper on top of it and go on their merry way. Well, when you get home, you may not be able to see the dog crap, but your nose knows it’s there, and will eventually sniff it out. Fake reviews may cover up the fact that a dealership is dog crap…but, eventually they will be sniffed out.
I personally would rather have a bad review and the ability to respond publicly, than to have fake reviews on my listing. Consumers that read reviews are trying to get an idea of the “human” element behind the company they are reviewing. A bad review with a good positive response will go a lot further showing the human element than faking good reviews.
The way I see fake reviews is like this…say you have a dog that poops on the carpet and your teenage kid is too lazy to clean it up, so…they just put newspaper on top of it and go on their merry way. Well, when you get home, you may not be able to see the dog crap, but your nose knows it’s there, and will eventually sniff it out. Fake reviews may cover up the fact that a dealership is dog crap…but, eventually they will be sniffed out.
I recently posted this graph in another thread.
This emphasizes the importance of good reviews. With DealerRater, Yelp, Google, Insider Pages, just to name a few, it is going to be very difficult to look good without being good.
On AutoTrader, you can select a review site that you want displayed on your VDP. Cars.com has its own reviews. I was looking at a few of the local Nissan dealerships, in the area, on Cars.com. I sorted the dealerships by model and price. As I clicked through the dealerships with some of the lowest prices, I noticed many of them had really low scores. I started reading some of these and wondered if the dealerships did. One after another said "don't believe the internet price". Then I noticed one with a really good score and a lot of reviews. I started reading them and noticed that they had twenty five reviews on Cars.com that were service related. I thought that it was odd for customers to go to Cars.com to review a dealerships service department. I looked at their reviews on other sites and couldn't find nearly that number of service reviews. Looking back at the reviews, for this dealer, on Cars.com, I noticed the dates of these service reviews: 14 of them on March 30, 5 on March 31 and another 6 on April 1st. Once you get past the 25 suspect service reviews, you see the four sales related reviews that are all bad. Without the service reviews this store would have a 1 rating out of a possible 5.
I am and have always been a fan of Cars.com. I think that if they are going to have their own reviews, better oversight might be in order.
This emphasizes the importance of good reviews. With DealerRater, Yelp, Google, Insider Pages, just to name a few, it is going to be very difficult to look good without being good.
On AutoTrader, you can select a review site that you want displayed on your VDP. Cars.com has its own reviews. I was looking at a few of the local Nissan dealerships, in the area, on Cars.com. I sorted the dealerships by model and price. As I clicked through the dealerships with some of the lowest prices, I noticed many of them had really low scores. I started reading some of these and wondered if the dealerships did. One after another said "don't believe the internet price". Then I noticed one with a really good score and a lot of reviews. I started reading them and noticed that they had twenty five reviews on Cars.com that were service related. I thought that it was odd for customers to go to Cars.com to review a dealerships service department. I looked at their reviews on other sites and couldn't find nearly that number of service reviews. Looking back at the reviews, for this dealer, on Cars.com, I noticed the dates of these service reviews: 14 of them on March 30, 5 on March 31 and another 6 on April 1st. Once you get past the 25 suspect service reviews, you see the four sales related reviews that are all bad. Without the service reviews this store would have a 1 rating out of a possible 5.
I am and have always been a fan of Cars.com. I think that if they are going to have their own reviews, better oversight might be in order.
Doug – Greatly appreciate your feedback on our reviews. Authenticity is my #1 priority; so much so that we’ve engaged the definitive expert on the matter. Bazaarvoice moderates millions of reviews every month, including the ones on Cars.com, and based on our spot-checking and monitoring, we’re pretty confident that the company’s claim that they catch 99% of reviews is accurate. Eliminating that last 1% is a more reactive process, so while no site can say that 100% of their reviews are authentic, we’re working continuously to implement new ways to come as close as possible.
To your point questioning the number of service reviews, much of that has to do with a dealership’s process for asking, down to the department level. It’s possible that the dealership in your example has a service department with an especially admirable process in place for acquiring reviews. In fact, we actually encourage dealers to focus on service in addition to sales, as service reviews are easier to get (based on sheer volume) and can be a big differentiator, particularly for shoppers considering buying a new car – According to a DriverSide/Kelton research study from April 2011, 91% of new-car shoppers want to read your service reviews prior to purchasing a vehicle.
There are definitely good dealers out there that have poor ratings based on one or two bad reviews, unfortunately, which I think speaks to the importance of having a good process in place for monitoring, responding and proactively building volume across multiple sites (an important point – we don’t expect to be the only reviews site a dealer uses, which is why we recommend that dealers prioritize a few sites they know attract car shoppers in their market). Imagine what could happen if even 10 of their best customers wrote a review on Cars.com – from a consumer’s perspective, that vehicle suddenly becomes much more valuable, which was our intent from the beginning. Dealer Reviews exist alongside vehicle inventory to play a prominent role in differentiating your store with our audience. While it may be easier to send people to one destination and have those reviews appear on multiple sites, owning the content gives us more flexibility in how we use it on our site, to Jeff’s point in his response to our blog post about the enhancements to our ad package we introduced for franchise dealers.
Doug, thanks for being fan of ours and providing feedback – good or bad, we want to hear it. Feel free to contact me at 312.601.5533 or [email protected] if you have any additional questions and want to chat offline.
Lauren Beaubien
Manager – Dealer Advertiser Solutions, Cars.com
To your point questioning the number of service reviews, much of that has to do with a dealership’s process for asking, down to the department level. It’s possible that the dealership in your example has a service department with an especially admirable process in place for acquiring reviews. In fact, we actually encourage dealers to focus on service in addition to sales, as service reviews are easier to get (based on sheer volume) and can be a big differentiator, particularly for shoppers considering buying a new car – According to a DriverSide/Kelton research study from April 2011, 91% of new-car shoppers want to read your service reviews prior to purchasing a vehicle.
There are definitely good dealers out there that have poor ratings based on one or two bad reviews, unfortunately, which I think speaks to the importance of having a good process in place for monitoring, responding and proactively building volume across multiple sites (an important point – we don’t expect to be the only reviews site a dealer uses, which is why we recommend that dealers prioritize a few sites they know attract car shoppers in their market). Imagine what could happen if even 10 of their best customers wrote a review on Cars.com – from a consumer’s perspective, that vehicle suddenly becomes much more valuable, which was our intent from the beginning. Dealer Reviews exist alongside vehicle inventory to play a prominent role in differentiating your store with our audience. While it may be easier to send people to one destination and have those reviews appear on multiple sites, owning the content gives us more flexibility in how we use it on our site, to Jeff’s point in his response to our blog post about the enhancements to our ad package we introduced for franchise dealers.
Doug, thanks for being fan of ours and providing feedback – good or bad, we want to hear it. Feel free to contact me at 312.601.5533 or [email protected] if you have any additional questions and want to chat offline.
Lauren Beaubien
Manager – Dealer Advertiser Solutions, Cars.com
Anyone have any tools to monitor google reviews on their + pages.
We prior used a plugin on firefox that would identify changes automatically, when places switched to + we lost this functionality.
Any ideas for automatic updates?
We prior used a plugin on firefox that would identify changes automatically, when places switched to + we lost this functionality.
Any ideas for automatic updates?
- Dec 30, 2009
- 1,883
- 480
- First Name
- Yago
Victor,
Open a new thread, this is an important subject and will be good that people share what tools the are using to monitor things.
Lauren,
I won't disagree with anything you say about the importance of positive reviews.
I am not familiar with Bazaarvoice and how they monitor reviews.
I have never had any contact with this dealership and they are not competitors. I noticed this totally by accident. Call me cynical, but this dealership has 27 reviews on Cars.com with 25 of them coming over a three day period. I am also concerned by the fact that they all sound alike. I believe their "process" is to write and submit them.
Lauren, most stores just want a level playing field. Look up Nissan dealerships in Phoenix. If you tell me that these are legitimate, I will accept your opinion. If you agree with me, you might want to bring this to Bazaarvoice's attention.
To me it looks like they saw that their first four reviews were one star, and wanted to find a way to cancel them out. They took these from comment cards or solicited surveys from their service department, and the dealership employees went and entered them in Cars.com. But it seems pretty clear that something is not totally "transparent" there.
