Maybe Samantha is just a total *****? Although She looks quite professional!
Back on topic...
Google really should have figured out how to police this stuff BEFORE making all of these things (reviews, places, etc.) influence ranking and relevance. Businesses are going to do what ever it takes to make the effect positive. What did they think was going to happen?
Different review sites do things differently as well which makes managing everything difficult. Dealer Rater has been nothing but great with us. If we have a negative review there is a clear cut process in handling it. If we do our due diligence and it is found to be false it is removed.
Yelp! on the other hand is a pain in my..... I do not appreciate them choosing only to display negative reviews on the main business page for the sake of maintaining review validity. City Search (which seems to be Bing's main review provider) makes you pay if you want to respond to comments.
Let's not forget too that MOST consumers will only choose to leave reviews when they feel some wrong has been done to them or if they're floored with excellent service. Although this whole reputation management stuff has changed my ways recently, historically I would only leave a review if I was totally blown away. I think this is still how the average consumer feels. Now it's just working on that realization, and trying to 'blow away' the customer with service and attentiveness.
I look into a lot of our reviewers on sites like Yelp! and City Search to see what else they reviewed. You would think think some of them are vying for their own show on the Travel Channel! It also gives me a heads up (along with talking to sales/service) on who I may be dealing with when it comes to responding. How do you even respond to someone who bought a 10 year old 150k mile as is car for $3,000 cash and 4 months later is upset that the car needs work?
Not going to lie, we are employing a company that is being hammered in this thread. When I got here we needed help fast and culture change does not happen overnight. This particular solution is doing it's job for now, but we will be moving on in the near future as I have been noticing some of the very same things brought up in this discussion and have now had some time to really study other practices and how to implement.