Local Hotel Reviews/Citations and the ISP address
-
Happy New Year Mozzers,
If a hotel guest signs into the free wireless provider that is provided by the hotel and writes a review of the hotel while logged in, by chance will Google perceive this as hotel staff writing phony reviews to hype the hotel? I ask this because I wonder if Google will view the ISP address as the hotel ISP and not differentiate a hotel guest versus the hotel staff.
Thanks everyone!
-
Hi Hawktv1, So glad to know you've found some helpful guidance on this topic. You asked a very good question! Miriam
-
Thanks for the answers! Sheesh, it never even occurred to me to think of sites like Trip and Yelp.
Very helpful, as always the decision rests with the client, I can only provide as much insight as possible.
-
Hello Hawkvt1!
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum and will do my best to give you some helpful feedback.
Thumbs up for Ross for remembering the slight stir created a few weeks ago regarding this very topic. Mike Blumenthal wrote a good piece on this here:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/12/06/google-places-onsite-review-stations-aok-with-google/
Read the whole article. And definitely read the comments that follow it, too. This should give you a good summary of the issue.
Like Mike, I felt that Google's encouragement of this practice was a poor choice because of the wide door it is opening for abuse. This practice has never been viewed in the past as appropriate by any review index, and there has been some evidence that some review entities were using signals of this as a way to weed out spam. I am not actually recommending this practice to my own clients at this point, but according to Google, it's okay.
You will need to make a judgement call on this. If you feel the benefits are substantial, you can go forward with Google's apparent sanction, but I remain wary. Hope my thoughts help!
Miriam
-
This is something I read back in early December, though I have no hard data on this... so consider it hearsay for now.
Google are apparently trying to make the places system more robust by introducing a real places support team and are rolling it out slowly. These "technical reps" started in Kansas City and recently answered a few questions including yours.
_Google is going to begin advocating to businesses that they set up computers/workstations where clients can post live reviews in their place of business. There is no penalty for "same IP address" moving forward, assuming a "reasonable number". The technical Places sales rep indicated 10 or less per would be acceptable, and more if the business type warranted it. _
There algorithm will flag more than 10 a day.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to no index / no follow CAD files .dxf .dwg
Hi, I have a new Wordpress site with a number of CAD files (.dxf& .dwg) downloadable straight from the site. These have been flagged in MOZ as warnings with everying from No Title/Description to duplicate content. Does anybody now how I would no index these type of files? Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | Jon_Pearce0 -
Wrong Hotel Amenity Being Pulled Into Meta Description
Hey Mozzers, Have a quick question for you hospitality folks. We have a hotel property that has amenities being pulled into the meta description that aren't correct. We do have a custom meta description in the CMS but it is only pulling a portion of our meta description and is then including what appears to be a dynamic list of hotel amenities: "free covered parking; full service catering; complimentary airport shuttle". The airport shuttle is no longer free and the property is charging a small fee. All copy on the page (and across the site) has been updated to reflect this change. My main questions are: 1.) Are these amenities just pulled by Google? Do we have any control over this? 2.) Is there anything we can do to correct this error? Or do we just need to wait for it to hopefully update automatically? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | mbochic0 -
Page Speed/Website Optimization Question
We recently relaunched our website and after running multiple page speed tests (GT Metrix, Google, etc.) our results aren't great. We would love any suggestions on how to improve our site as we are not experts in what exactly these results mean - https://gtmetrix.com/reports/loyalty360.org/DKRN0hKg. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | carlystemmer0 -
Cost/Benefit of modifying a URL
Just as the title says, I'm looking for the cost/benefit breakdown of modifying a URL for SEO purposes. What are some examples of issues where the benefit outweighs the cost, and vise-versa? Thanks all! Frank
Technical SEO | | FrankSweeney0 -
Schema / microdata under Google listing
I was wondering if it was possible to add any schema, or microdata, or anything of that sort, to my website/webpage in order to show the location of the business just underneath the snippet of the website in Google. I have seen this with other businesses and I am not sure if it is only because they have the business listed on Google Places, or if it is because they have schema data on their website and when it is read by Google it shows underneath their snippet in Google search. Also, if there is an ability to make the address, phone, etc show up underneath the Google search listing, can I do this with a plugin or widget for wordpress? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | SEOWizards0 -
301 Redirect / cross-domain canonical to a URL w/ Ampersand
I have a question regarding ampersands, we are needing to redirect to a URL w/ an ampersand in the URL: http://local.sfgate.com/b18915250/Sam-&-Associates-Insurance-Agency Will Google pass page authority/juice despite the fact that there is an ampersand in the URL, if we were to 301 redirect or cross-domain canonical to the url? Should we 301 redirect to http://local.sfgate.com/b18915250/Sam-%26-Associates-Insurance-Agency instead of http://local.sfgate.com/b18915250/Sam-&-Associates-Insurance-Agency? I don't have the option of removing the ampersand Thank you for your time!
Technical SEO | | Gatelist0 -
Getting multiple errors for domain.com/xxxx/xxxx/feed/feed/feed/feed...
A recent SEOMoz crawl report is showing a bunch 404's and duplicate page content on pages with urls like http://domain.com/categories/about/feed/feed/feed/feed/feed and on and on. This is a wordpress install. Does anyone know what could be causing this or why SEOMoz would be trying to read these non-existent feed pages?
Technical SEO | | Brandtailers0 -
Moving to the cloud - dynamic or static IP address?
We're looking at moving our websites to the cloud. Most services seem to default to providing a dynamic IP address, with static IP addresses being offered as paid extras. Is there an SEO disadvantage to having a dynamic IP address?
Technical SEO | | heatherrobinson0