This is a question we’ve been asked many times; in fact, this question gets asked during almost every product demonstration that we do. The answer is simple; if your reviews are hosted on any other site but your own, they are not actually your reviews.

It may feel like the reviews written about your dealership and about your employees should be yours since after all, they are mentioning your staff members by name and thoroughly detailing their customer experiences at your place of business. In actuality, when a customer writes a Google review, or a review on Yelp! or any other reviews platform, the content ownership agreement is between the customer writing the review and the reviews platform hosting the review. Essentially, lifting the reviews off of another third-party reviews site is stealing and is a violation of copyright laws. Now, will the lawyers of Google soon be knocking at your door if you were to copy and paste a Google review and send it out in an email blast? Probably not. But the problem of content ownership regarding reviews doesn’t end there. What happens when you put in hours and hours of effort to get your customers to write a Google review, only to wake up one day and see that most of your reviews have been removed?

This has been the case, particularly with Google in recent months. Google is often quite vague about why reviews were removed and it often times is never addressed until an industry uproar calls for answers. However, an answer doesn’t replace the reviews or time and effort it took to get those reviews posted by legitimate customers. Because Google technically owns the content, a small business who has put it’s best foot forward doesn’t have any legs to stand on when it comes to recovering those displaced reviews. Remember the saying ‘don’t put all of your eggs in one basket’? The same applies here.

Presto Reviews encourages business to collect and gather reviews on all platforms. The reality is that between 60-70% of people who use search engines use Google. Google has become the phonebook of the internet and is now an important source for customer feedback about products and places of business. If you are looking for a reputation management strategy for your business, having a website that allows you to collect and own your customer reviews is a great step forward.

In steps Presto Reviews.

Presto Reviews is a portal site that can be used by your customers to give feedback about your dealership and all of the content and reviews that they provide are yours to own. With the Presto Review platform, reviews can be syndicated to other feeds that accept an RSS and can also be deployed to Twitter, Facebook and other media outlets. It’s tough to rely on one single company to host your reviews, especially when that company keeps changing the rules on how to get reviews from your customer. With Presto Reviews, you’ll never have to worry about waking up one day and seeing all of your valiant efforts shattered.

If you have been struck down by the powers of Google, consider using Presto Reviews as your review hosting site. Our platform is SEO friendly and provides an owner response field for to you respond to your customers. In addition to that, the entire site was built to be SEO friendly, incorporating title tags, meta descriptions and more. You can also embed photos and videos into your reviews!

What we don’t recommend is that you do a complete full circle and stop asking customers to post reviews on Google. As the algorithm changes, the Google bots may get better at differentiating the real reviews from the fake reviews and having your customers post reviews on Google is still encouraged; we just don’t think you should put all of your eggs in one basket. This has happened before with Google and just as you woke up to see your reviews had disappeared, it’s possible that you may wake up again and see that they have returned.

Don’t wait for another Google algorithm to throw your reviews in the garbage. Keep your reviews and showcase them to the world with a Presto Reviews website.

An Automotive Press Release Site

Presto Reviews has brought a new press release site to market. Presto Auto News is an automotive press release site designed to help you get the word out about your automotive business with the perks of SEO-friendly exposure. Presto Auto News was designed to bring you maximum effectiveness with each article submitted.

Link Building

With Presto Auto News, each of your articles is allowed to contain two links in the body of the article and encourages the use of anchor text, unlike most free sites that only allow a link to a direct URL. While that type of direct link can help, the use of quality anchor texts in your linking strategy is preferred. Link builders who are looking for a safe place to add quality in-bound links to their properties will certainly appreciate these features.

Protected by Copyscape

Presto Auto News is human edited and protected by Copyscape to keep duplicate content and spammers off of the site. This level of effort has not been seen in the automotive space before and showcases the quality intent of the tool. Many of you know the challenges of building quality content on your own blog or site hoping that at some point it will mature enough to provide valuable traffic and links to your other properties. With Presto Auto News, you can now join forces safely with other auto webmasters by adding your content in one place and watching as the site grows in strength much more quickly than any individual project could. Think of it as a cooperative of like minded auto professionals who are all striving toward the same goal. Because the site is human edited, you can feel safe knowing your efforts will be rewarded and because the site will contain only automotive related subject, it will be a great place for you to add your articles and to receive favorable inclusion in the SERPs.

Automotive Directory

The site also comes with an automotive directory. Different packages allow for different placement of your business in the directory and auto professionals can submit their individual profile at no charge. Auto pros can showcase their social profiles as well by including links to Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Free 30 Day Trial

To make sure that Presto Auto News is right for you, take it for a test drive for 30 days  at no charge! Sign up at Presto Auto News Free Trial

Presto Reviews brings you new social tools to your reviews everywhere online.

Most of us have been reading how important social signals, like +1′s and the new Google Plus pages will be for SEO and Presto Reviews couldn’t agree more. That’s why we have begun to integrate existing social tool into your review platform.

Let’s get started with what’s new.

Salesperson/Professional Profile Page

One of the most important features of your review site is the fact that your team can aggregate reviews under their own names. We’ve already created a landing page showcasing your team’s reviews by professional, but now, we’ve taken it to a whole new level. Each person can now add a bio, picture, LinkedIn profile, Twitter account, Facebook account and also a Google Plus profile and push individual reviews to most of these platforms. All images are alt tagged with your dealership name for added SEO value. We encourage your team to connect their Presto Reviews page with their Google Plus profile as we have added the all important rel=”me” and rel=”auth” code to the site in an effort to showcase your pros in the SERPs by notifying Google that they have an important circle to share.

We didn’t stop there. We also added, as an-opt in only feature, the same connections for your reviewers. Now they will have the option to add their Google Plus profile and connect their review to their Plus page. The influence this can have on search is truly remarkable as anyone in their social connection (as seen by the SERP) can be impacted by their connection to your store when they do a search. Your store and or team member may now show up on a search performed by someone who has a connection to a current customer because of your review site. The more reviews you get by social influencers, the more likely your business is to show up in results. No added work on your part, but the results can be impressive when handled properly. Keep watching for more signals pertaining to Search Plus Your World (SPYW) and you’ll see why we are excited about this.

Tweet This

Each and every review site will now have its own Twitter account; every time a review is moderated by your business, it will be tweeted by us. Want some added Twitter love? We can show you how to connect your store’s account so that each time a review goes live it will be tweeted by your business. We’ve also added 10 different templates that are customizable by you, allowing you to add trending hash tags (#) and Twitter handles that you feel may be important to get the word out about your reviews. Imagine the brand manufacturer picking up on your reviews and retweeting to thousands of followers how great you treat your customers.

Presto Reviews is pleased to introduce a new automotive directory, Presto Auto Directory. The directory will include companies specifically serving car dealers, OEMs, and automotive suppliers.

Automotive consultants, car dealer review sites, website developers, advertising agencies, SEO companies, mobile developers and automotive community sites are just some of the categories that are available. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are also promoted.

The site is free to use and human edited. It also offers a very inexpensive featured section for companies interested in prominent placement.

Automotive companies realize the importance of having listings on search friendly sites and Presto Reviews is pleased to support the efforts of our associates. The directory will accept only automotive related services and protect visitors from sites that are spammy, contain only ads, are gambling sites or those unsuitable for general viewing. Automotive manufactures and dealership internet departments are free to post articles as well. If you are releasing a new product at your company, you are able to submit the information in article form. We will do our best to assist you with added SEO value to get your news promoted accordingly.

Presto Reviews clients will have their digital properties listed on the site as a value added service.

We encourage you to find a category that best represents your company or service and list it today.

Visit the Automotive Directory here.

This month’s Presto Reviews Spotlight takes us to Wichita, KS with our featured site of the month- Suzuki of Wichita. From the very start, Suzuki of Wichita was excited to get their Presto Reviews Web site live and working for them. In a few short months, they have become one of the most developed and utilized Presto clients we have. We would like to recognize Suzuki of Wichita and also use them as an example of what your Presto Reviews site can be doing for you!

Not only has Suzuki of Wichita taken the time to ensure the Presto Reviews features are fully loaded, but their reviews, replies, pictures, and video all show this dealership’s “personality”. More importantly, Suzuki of Wichita is able to convey a very clear message: They are having fun!

If you are looking to add personal touches and reach your community on a more sincere level, then visit Suzuki of Wichita’s Presto Reviews page today and notice what they are up to! From the sales staff to their customers, everyone is having a great time. It is easy to realize that this dealership is truly making a connection with the people who visit their store. Their pictures and video, right down to their review replies, shows everyone who visits their site that their customers are truly a priority.

You ARE your brand, and this is the number one secret to gaining complete control over your business’s online reputation. In order to completely manage your brand, you have to live your brand.

Just like Suzuki of Wichita, you must treat each customer as a unique customer; find out what makes them special and how you can connect with them. After you have made that connection, find creative ways to share this online. Whether it is through fun and/or thoughtful photos, or a cute video of a car buyer couple’s “talking” baby, you will be sure to stand out from the competition.

Suzuki of Wichita has become the NUMBER ONE Suzuki dealership in the United States for the 2nd consecutive year! They thank their great employees and customers for their success and are looking forward to another memorable and fun year. Suzuki of Wichita prides themselves on world-class customer service with a Non-Commissioned sales staff that talks the buyers language.  Check out what this dealership is doing online, and take a few notes from them.  Visit this dealership today for all of your new Suzuki and used car needs!

New Year, New Changes from Google

Google recently made some important changes to their search algorithm. We thought it would be nice to recap the current list and expand on the aspects that may directly impact your review site. Below is a list that appeared on Google’s Blog on Dec 11, 2011.

Here’s an updated list since our post on November 14th:

• Related query results refinements: Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are similar to the actual search you type. This change makes it less likely that these results will rank highly if the original query had a rare word that was dropped in the alternate query. For example, if you are searching for [rare red widgets], you might not be as interested in a page that only mentions “red widgets.”
• More comprehensive indexing: This change makes more long-tail documents available in our index, so they are more likely to rank for relevant queries.
• New “parked domain” classifier: This is a new algorithm for automatically detecting parked domains. Parked domains are placeholder sites that are seldom useful and often filled with ads. They typically don’t have valuable content for our users, so in most cases we prefer not to show them.
• More auto-complete predictions: With auto-complete, we try to strike a balance between coming up with flexible predictions and remaining true to your intentions. This change makes our prediction algorithm a little more flexible for certain queries, without losing your original intention.
• More complete and fresh blog search results: We made a change to our blog search index to get coverage that is both fresher and more comprehensive.
• Original content: We added new signals to help us make better predictions about which of two similar web pages is the original one.
• Live results for Major League Soccer and the Canadian Football League: This change displays the latest scores & schedules from these leagues along with quick access to game recaps and box scores.
• Image result freshness: We made a change to how we determine image freshness for news queries. This will help us find the freshest images more often.
• Layout on tablets: We made some minor color and layout changes to improve usability on tablet devices.
• Top result selection code rewrite: This code handles extra processing on the top set of results. For example, it ensures that we don’t show too many results from one site (“host crowding”). We rewrote the code to make it easier to understand, simpler to maintain and more flexible for future extensions.

While this list may be a few weeks old, I wanted to re-share it all and focus on three particular aspects that I think should have garnered more attention. Let’s start with this one:

More Comprehensive Indexing

More comprehensive indexing: This change makes more long-tail documents available in our index, so they are more likely to rank for relevant queries.

What does this mean for your review site?

Search is evolving each and every day and searchers are becoming more sophisticated. Rewind for a moment to 4 or 5 years ago; a search for a “used  black Mercedes Benz 350 GL” may have been done by someone searching “Mercedes”. After a plethora of results that don’t provide an answer, most searchers probably became confused and submitted a lead to a 3rd party provider for this very same specific query.

Fast forward 3 years; now a searcher is likely to be much more knowledgeable in how searches typically work. They might type, “Used Mercedes GL” or something close, but they may still be inundated with searches that didn’t reflect their intent. The user is smarter but might need a little more insight as to how search works or perhaps Google has evolved and made search a little easier.

Nowadays, when a user types “used black Mercedes Benz 350 GL in Miami, low mile, navigation”, they are delivered results that they can actually use. Let’s shift the search gears for a moment to something that we know is getting more and more popular. A “geo specific” review of a business. How many of your searchers are entering a search for “Dallas Toyota Dealer Reviews” or “Joe Smith Dallas Toyota Reviews”? Or maybe even a more specific search term like “Park Cities Toyota Dealer reviews”, or “Plano Toyota Dealership complaints”. Check a search for your business and see what shows up on the page one search results. Presto Reviews customers now have an automatic tool that will help index for these types of searches.

Auto-Complete Predictions

More Auto-Complete Predictions: With auto-complete, we try to strike a balance between coming up with flexible predictions and remaining true to your intentions. This change makes our prediction algorithm a little more flexible for certain queries, without losing your original intention.

What does this mean for your review site?

Turn on the auto complete feature and start typing your business’ name. Add a different first letter following the completion of the business name to see what Google may present as a suggested search. Does the word “Complaints” or “Reviews” show up? There is a very good chance that it does. If there is a negative connotation to your name, it is inevitable that shoppers will click on the suggestion. People tend to click on “Joe Smith Toyota Complaints“, based on curiosity, compared to the result, “Joe Smith Toyota Reviews”. Knowing this, have you started using effective meta description to ensure that your positive reviews are being delivered as a result? Do you have any You Tube videos of customers that could be labeled complaints that are in fact positive testimonials? It would show your prospective clients  (who have yet to buy from you), that you take customer service seriously.

Fresher Blog Search Results

More complete and fresh blog search results: We made a change to our blog search index to get coverage that is both contemporary and more comprehensive.

What does this mean for your review site?
“Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh.” – Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

Google’s Freshness update means that content on a site that is being updated regularly will get preferential treatment in search. As they explained on their blog , the Freshness Update will serve the latest results for queries that are time-sensitive—recent events or trending topics, regularly recurring events (like elections and major sporting events), and frequent updates (information that often changes, but isn’t necessarily a “hot topic” like reviews on new technology). Or perhaps reviews of your business? No one knows for sure, but it is a logical assumption that a current review is the “freshest” opinion available about your business. Certainly good for users to know this. So with this update, an article from an authoritative website that has regularly updated contents (reviews) about your business could receive preferential treatment.

If you’re like some of our Presto Reviews users, you know that sometimes it can be a challenge to keep up with the review moderation process. In fact, sometimes the review gathering process gets put on hold because there are just too many reviews….BIG MISTAKE.

The Solution

Presto Reviews has a solution to this problem. We’ve created a system that simplifies the review process and automatically moderates pending reviews without the need of a human moderator. Cool, huh? Don’t worry, we’ll add all of the correct SEO value and geographic information in your metadata so you won’t have to do a thing.

*NEW* Go Live Technology

Set your Presto Reviews website to automatically approve a review after one day, two days, or even twenty! The choice is yours. When your customer review goes live, a title (and URL) is automatically created, as well as industry-varied title tags and meta descriptions that are added to ensure compliance with search engine best practices.

Reply Field & Auto-Respond

Once you try Go Live, you’ll want to turn on the automatic reply feature. This allows you to utilize up to 25 pre-populated replies in conjunction with the automatic approval process. Your replies can be set to show up in varying patterns that range from every review, to every fifth review. We’ll handle the automation process so you won’t have to worry about a thing!

Platinum SEO

Are you still confused about how to create quality links to your digital properties from your Presto Reviews site? Problem solved! Our anchor text builder will embed links into your reviews using a varied pattern and mix.  This also helps to maximize the Search Engine Optimization process for your Presto Reviews website. The content is carefully created and placed sparingly in appropriate locations to ensure the SERPs reward your efforts.

We hope the Go Live and Platinum SEO features will improve the review process and make it easier to run your business online.

For more information, contact us or call us at 708.720.3450

Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday stirs various feelings in business owners and employees across the globe. Most owners are excited and ready to push the envelope to capture their share of online dollars as spenders flock to the web for great deals on just about anything. Others may not be so excited; your webmaster for one, who has to ensure that everything is running smoothly and every functionality is operating flawlessly during this crush of traffic.

This is not an easy season for those who have to maintain an e-commerce site, but it is a great chance to accomplish two things. Or perhaps a better way of stating that is to say, it is a chance to enhance two areas of your business.

Gather Reviews

This time of year is perfect for collecting numerous customer reviews online. The influx of visitors and customers is tremendous and should be capitalized on by your team. Here are a few ideas of where you can get these reviews from your site visits:

• Online Chat – If your site has online chat why not instruct your team to ask for a review once the purchase has been completed. Done in a timely fashion, a moderately satisfied or un-satisfied customer could be turned around with a simple request for a review. The experience is still fresh in the customer’s mind and may shed some light on a previously unknown issue at your company.

• Review Pop-up – A simple questionnaire that appears just before your visitor is about to leave. Provide a link to source you have that allows for feedback on the customer experience. The option of selecting “Did you purchase with us” and “You did not purchase with us” should be given to achieve better feedback and may expose a problem area in your transaction process.

• Simple email – After the transaction has occurred asking for feedback/review. One additional tip here is that someone is reading these emails as quickly as they are coming in to identify a problem that is happening in “real time” so it can be corrected quickly.

Page One Presence- Who else is there?

With so much traffic coming from an organic search of your name, it’s a perfect opportunity for your team to evaluate what customers are doing/seeing at the point of page one arrival. Are they seeing a page that is dominated by “you” and your company assets such as your Facebook page, Twitter account, separate blog if your company has one, etc., or are they inundated with poachers who have latched on to your name and are riding your brand’s coat tails in order to steal your traffic?

Think about how that appears to your customers. What do they think of a business that delivers page one results that give the impression your company doesn’t care what shows up here. Customers are much more “search savvy” and expect certain results when they search now. Especially if it is a direct search for a business name.

Imagine if a customer was driving to your physical location and within two blocks of your store and in front of your store there were billboards, signs, and banners placed there by your competitors. What would your customer’s think? They would think that you weren’t engaged with what’s happening right in front of you. They could be thinking the same thing when they “drive by” your digital location; your primary page one. This can dramatically alter your customers’ opinion of who you are and how important your brand name is. This is another touch point that must be managed or it could cost you dearly on Cyber Monday or in the long run.

Over the last year (plus) there have been numerous hypotheses shared regarding Google Places and the practice of customers entering reviews while still in the dealership or business. The crux of the discussion was whether or not Google was blocking reviews from a common IP address because of the possibility of gaming the system or as some have suggested, because a customer might feel “pressured” if asked to do this review while still at the business location.

Many opinions and theories have been discussed and argued, many agendas fostered, and many hours wasted on ineffective and expensive processes that did very little for the user experience or to solve the real issue of getting to the root of the rumor, to dispel or confirm it.

We now have a definitive position from Google. The following is a correspondence to Presto Reviews regarding this very important matter:

Nov 10, 2011

Hi Scott,

I met with the Google Places team today to discuss many of the reoccurring issues you rolled-up in regards to this product over the last several months. Our conversations have been meaningful and I thank you and the team at Presto Reviews for the efforts.  Before we recap the takeaways from this meeting, I want to reiterate that dealer business is important to Google and that we are listening to these complaints and committed to finding a better solution.

Pressing Issue (action requested):

Reviews: It is not against Google policy for reviews to be left at a single IP address. Submitting a review at the time of purchase is acceptable. You mentioned that many dealers have received written communication from Google warning them about this practice.  I have also heard that dealer’s reviews have disappeared from their Places page as a result of this practice. Neither situation should be occurring.

Action Requested: Please pass along examples (both emails from Google and instances where a dealer has lost reviews) of this issue and I will forward them to our Place team for resolution.

Other Issues (no action requested):

Clustering/Merging Listings: We are aware that a multi-franchise dealer’s Places pages are merging into one listing.  For example Joe Smith may own a Ford and a GM dealership located at the same physical address.  Despite the fact that Joe Smith has set-up two places pages the system is merging these listings into one. Our team is aware of this issue and are working on a solution.

Time frame for changes to go live: after a change is made to the Google Places page it takes 4-6 weeks for this change to go live on Google.com OR Google Maps. Our team is aware this is a burden to your business and they are working on enhancing the product to allow for more timely changes to occur.

Expect an update from me at the end of 1Q regarding the progress on the issues listed above. If there are any other reoccurring issues you’d like to address, please feel free to pass them along via the channel you and I discussed. Your help is appreciated and we will roll-up the overarching issues dealers are experiencing.  I would appreciate if a description of the problem as well as a screenshot is included.

If Dealers are looking for specific answers to individual Places questions, please have them visit one of the appropriate links below.  By answering a few short questions, Places page owners will have the opportunity to submit their issue directly to our Google Places team. Please note that typical turnaround time from the team is 7-10 business days.

For incorrect information (or other issues) on any external listing, please visit this Google troubleshooter.  For difficulties verifying a listing (either via PIN or bulk verification), please visit this Google listing troubleshooter.

Thank you again for your dedication and efforts to making the Places experience better for all parties involved.  We truly appreciate you and your team’s willingness to help!

 

Thank you,

Peter
Google Dealer Jumpstart Team

This is great news for dealers and other businesses alike who have been concerned that they may be violating a TOS or some other policy at Google. It does seem pretty clear that Google’s intent is to provide a good user experience during this process, but making a customer go to a different location such as their home, or mobile device in order to game a system to provide feedback to a business, does not fit that definition. It’s also a positive thing when Google offers up detailed information like this to SMBs who really need it and shows the effort that they are making on becoming more engaged on a local level. Special thanks to Peter who was instrumental in connecting with the Places team on behalf of the dealer body with these issues.

Please visit this Help Page to submit your issues.