We all know Google will pull reviews from select review websites and add them to a SERP that shows Google Places (Maps). There is a company called "dealer rater" that is taking full advantage. They will let anyone leave a review, but if the dealer wants to respond they are forced to pay 300.00 a month? Nobody I know is happy with it, and they feel it's borderline extortion. Once the dealer signs up, they encourage the dealer to get their customers to write more positive reviews on dealer rater. I asked "Why don't you just send them to google and add a review"? They said the Dealer rater rep said you can't send a link of your Google Places page in an email. Now really, don't you all think this is a bit shady? How could Google actually pull reviews from their site when they are taking advantage? I mean, 300 dollars a month? All while google "endorses" them?
Sources? Especially if you say Google endorses them. This is the kind of thing that will get you sued. If the situation is actually as you describe then I highly doubt that Google would endorse that. In my personal opinion I definately think this is extortion. HOWEVER, I also know shady "dealers" who will make more than one Google account and leave positive reviews of themselves. Of course that doesn't justify these guys.
There are three possible scenarios here: 1) Google don't know about this problem or how prevalent it is 2) Google know about it and are working on a way to combat it 3) Goggle are endorsing it The third one seems to be the least realistic option.
It is a shady of course..but could you please provide the source? Since you claim a company for this endorsement then proof is a must. This is very interesting story on Google side anyway.
That is why I put "endorses" in quotes. I know they wouldn't intentionally, but they pull their reviews into the serps is what I'm saying
The source is their salespeople trying to sell it to me. If you know anybody in the car business that works the internet they'll know about them.
I've been approached by that company for my dealership, and until they tell me what I'm really paying for I will not sign up. I think it's wrong to charge 300.00 just to respond to a bad review. I would pay 30.00 a month for it, but not 300.00.
Why are you bothering with them in the first place. They seem shady so avoid them. There are plenty of ways to get the same tasks done. Keep in mind that reviews aren't everything when it comes to Google Places in the first place. Prime example, demandforce says that their reviews are "certified" which doesn't mean jack. You can look at clients of theirs and it shows as well not to mention that many of the reviews are pathetically spun and repeat with other customers when comparing them. I have placed in GP SERP results clients in above them when their client has had 90+ reviews and mine had 2. Review spamming is not going to get you very far, but if you do have a lot of good customers direct them to other sites or services and avoid the shady ones. If you have control of your GP listing you can reply to reviews there for free anyways.
This is the car business localdominator. They're spending thousands of dollars on a vehicle, not just a book or CD for 10 bucks. Reviews mean a lot for educated buyers, and it's not easy to ignore bad reviews. Most dealers please hundreds of people every month between sales and service, but only the angry ones leave bad reviews. The last sentence of your comment said "If you have control of your GP listing you can reply to reviews there for free anyways". It sounds like you didn't read the post...you cannot respond to a review unless you pay 300.00 a month for that vendor,
Hey All, Great discussion, I hope I can answer some questions for you. My name is Chip Grueter and I am the president of DealerRater.com. I wanted to clear up a few misconceptions, the first being the ability to respond to reviews. Since we started the site in 2002, dealer's have always had the ability to publically respond to reviews for free. All we need is your username or email address you registered with and we can link it to your dealership and it will enable you to respond to reviews. If a reviewer responds to your response you will receive an email alert. Our Certification program allows you to publically respond, but it also allows you to privately respond as well. It also gives you a two week reconcilation period where the review doesn't go live until 14 days after it was submitted in which time you may work directly with the reviewer privately to try and fix the situation. Other benefits are our training program, email alerts for new reviews, testimonial feeds of your reviews to your website/blog/facebook page, leads, rating reminder postcards to hand out to your customers and the Certification seal which shows up on your review page and the directory pages. This program is $95/month and has been this price since we created the program. There are no different levels or anything, everyone gets the same services, not sure where $300 a month came from unless you were looking into some sort of advertising on the website as well. Please let me know if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them, also happy to hear any suggestions, Thanks again, Chip-
Hi Chip: Thank you for clearing that up! I've had many people ask about this (dealers) and I never knew what to say to them. For some reason, all of them say they have to pay to respond. Maybe you should consider making your message a little stronger to avoid confusion? I have dealers in Chicago and Florida who all say the same thing
Believe me, it's my pleasure - I love an engaged community. I wrote it on my things to bring up tomorrow, as I couldn't from memory remember where we talked about it (we call it the Affiliate Program) on the site. I'm going to have the team create a "Respond to Reviews" sections on the main menu and put the info there instead of on the page that comes up when you click "Respond to this Review" inside a review. Seems appropriate to have it more visible if all it's doing now is getting lost and not used. What would be really good is if Google started picking up the responses in GP from 3rd party sites! Seems only appropriate. Chip-
In Google Places, you can respond to the reviews by logging in if you are the "owner" of the GP account, doing it on a third-party-site will not get picked up. The only way to "get rid of bad reviews" is to push or "bump" them in your listing by collecting more positive reviews that will push the older more critical ones off to another page. They will not go away once Google has them unless you go through a very long arduous process. Sorry you are getting hit up so hard. I think we may have a misunderstanding about the part where you say that may be true if you are using a third-party but like I said, if you control the listing, you don't pay anything to do that.