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Mike Blumenthal on Onsite “Review Stations” and Google

Breaking News from Blumenthal: A definitive response to review stations and reviews written by employees!
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Google has just updated the review content guidelines to explicitly prohibit review stations AND employee reviews.
The changes to the policy are noted in italics:


For instance, as a business owner or employee you should not review your own business or current place of work. Don’t offer money or product to others to write reviews for your business or write negative reviews about a competitor. We also discourage specialized review stations or kiosks set up at your place of business for the sole purpose of soliciting reviews.
 
Breaking News from Blumenthal: A definitive response to review stations and reviews written by employees!
_________________________________________________________________________________________________


Google has just updated the review content guidelines to explicitly prohibit review stations AND employee reviews.
The changes to the policy are noted in italics:


For instance, as a business owner or employee you should not review your own business or current place of work. Don’t offer money or product to others to write reviews for your business or write negative reviews about a competitor. We also discourage specialized review stations or kiosks set up at your place of business for the sole purpose of soliciting reviews.

Somehow I think we will see updated policies several times during 2013.
 

✨ AI Highlights

The thread debates whether car dealers should install in-store "review stations" to collect Google Places reviews immediately after customer transactions, citing Mike Blumenthal's expert analysis that warns against this practice despite Google's apparent allowance of it. A key disagreement emerges between Ryan Leslie, who argues that review collection should focus on authentic customer satisfaction rather than gaming the system, and kcar, who shares technical testing data on posting frequency and account age to avoid Google penalties—prompting Ryan to criticize this approach as unethical review manipulation. The core tension is whether the goal should be generating genuine customer feedback or strategically accumulating reviews through mechanical means.

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