Small business owners should avoid paying marketers to create local reviews on sites like Google Places (aka Google Local, Google Maps), Yahoo Local or Yelp, says Miriam Ellis.
Since her firm, Solas Web Design, specializes in local search engine optimization, she has watched the marketing of local reviews with concern. She suspects that a few unscrupulous marketers gather reviews for businesses via telephone. Then they create profiles in Google Maps and leave reviews, pretending to be legitimate customers rather than just a paid proxies.
As evidence, she points out that “reviewers” of several car dealerships have created multiple reviews for dealerships across the country on a single day, lending doubt to the authenticity of such reviews. Here’s her post: “Are these Reviews Authentic? You Be The Judge.”
In fact, at the end of 2009 the Federal Trade Commission required that all relationships in advertising, endorsements, and testimonials be publicly disclosed. No such disclosure is made in those reviews.
Ellis states: “The inherent risks of hiring someone to do this should be made clear, but I suspect that many small business owners are unwittingly paying for a service that could potentially jeopardize their business, their rankings and reputation.”
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