Thanks for asking the question, it didn't sound negative to me at all...let me take a stab at convincing you. I completely agree with you that it will become common knowledge that some sites aren't as credible as others, and ultimately our success in what is becoming a populated space depends on maintaining our review integrity. In a sense you've answered your own question, the payoff for us to strictly enforce our TOU, especially for certified dealers, is the eventuality that consumers will gravitate to trusted sources for review content because they are wary of gaming the system.
I've referred to this before as the ABC's of Review sites; Authenticity, Believability, Credibility, these are the key differentiators between marketing sites like Yago builds where a dealer has editorial privilege and DealerRater. The consumer gravitates to verified content from an independent and trustworthy source. They show a strong preference for unbiased 3rd party review data over self-populated testimonial pages, for example, and they are very savvy about sniffing out the fishy stuff. If you go back through this thread and look at some of the screen caps of obvious manipulation I think you'll agree that it doesn't take long before a customer is conditioned to discredit the source, not just the individual review. To Brice's point, and mine earlier in the thread, Google can't afford to lose credibility by allowing this kind of gaming of their platform. I expect the gaming to get worse with the "freshness" update.
I won't share ALL the methods we employ, and no doubt you can't be 100% effective, but IP tracking and filtering, GUID tracking and filtering, live-eyes on every review, and my favorite, real investigation of reported reviews (we contact reviewers on occasion and ask for key data to verify their claim, ie "what is the VIN of the car you say you bought from dealer x?") do affect content. All of these things play a significant role in preserving the integrity, the ABC's, of reviews on DealerRater.
We are by no means a non-profit, but don't confuse that with bias or partiality. A lot of what you pay for is training and the tools to build and leverage reviews and reconcile negatives when possible. I have plenty of certified dealers that get mad when negative reviews post and multiple reviews from the same IP don't. I've also turned down several dealers that offer to certify if we'll just remove that one negative review. You can't buy editorial privilege and reported reviews are investigated and removed regardless of your certification status. We think that can only help us as consumer awareness of gaming becomes more prevalent.
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