Is Review Funneling Black Hat?

[thewizardofcroz]

Do you know if review funneling is black hat? It seems like a great concept. Google, Yelp, InsiderPages, have no way of knowing if a review came from a review funneling site. However, long-term, review sites may find a way to filter positive reviews that came through a funneled site.

Am I being paranoid or are my concerns legitimate? Has anyone had success with this method? It seems like a great way to get only positive reviews. I'm just not sure how well this works in the real world and whether it has long-term problems.

 

[WrightWilliams]

Yeah, it is blackhat if you do it in the traditional:
we post good reviews onto Google but low reviews get rerouted to a private inbox, style way.
Most reviews like that are already going to be screened by Google or Yelp anyways, and so the positive reviews posted by your third party are likely to be ignored if they come from the same IP, etc, repeatedly.

 

[Aaric]

No not blackhat.

 

[thewizardofcroz]

Yeah, it is blackhat if you do it in the traditional:
we post good reviews onto Google but low reviews get rerouted to a private inbox, style way.
Most reviews like that are already going to be screened by Google or Yelp anyways, and so the positive reviews posted by your third party are likely to be ignored if they come from the same IP, etc, repeatedly.

What do you mean "in the traditional." Also, is there a way to make this undetectable and/or whitehat?

 

[WrightWilliams]

What do you mean "in the traditional." Also, is there a way to make this undetectable and/or whitehat?

You are 'unethically' tricking the reviewer into posting reviews which they think will be equally placed, there isn't a way this could be 'whitehat' since it is inherently deceitful to the user.

 

[thewizardofcroz]

You are 'unethically' tricking the reviewer into posting reviews which they think will be equally placed, there isn't a way this could be 'whitehat' since it is inherently deceitful to the user.

Is there a way for this to not be detectable by Google?

 

[HighRiskJohn]

You are 'unethically' tricking the reviewer into posting reviews which they think will be equally placed, there isn't a way this could be 'whitehat' since it is inherently deceitful to the user.

Um...NO! Having a private testimonials page that customers can leave a review on is not tricking anyone. I use a review page and the negative get send to one page and the positive get asked to please leave the same review on one of the 3rd party sites. How is that tricking anyone?

 

[WrightWilliams]

If the traffic forces the good reviews to be placed on legitimate review sites but forwards bad reviews to a private inbox with no intent to ever publish the bad reviews then it is seen as non-kosher to Google, Yelp, etc. They monitor these things now and often times all good reviews that come through those services will be rejected, despite their review rating. This is because Google sees that system as blackhat, plain and simple.

 

[thewizardofcroz]

Anyone have any more opinions?