Are link shorteners cool for reviews?

whiz · Sep 3, 2018

Check out this review card I designed:

My client (dentist) will be asking his patients to give him reviews by visiting the links.

The traffic will all be natural - not spammy or all in one day. He might get 5-10 per week if we're lucky.

Is it ok to use link shorteners in this case?

tophi · Sep 3, 2018

I guess the idea behind is not to type 5 min to go to the final url

in this case, I find it cool

Topiano · Sep 3, 2018

whiz said:
Check out this review card I designed:

My client (dentist) will be asking his patients to give him reviews by visiting the links.

The traffic will all be natural - not spammy or all in one day. He might get 5-10 per week if we're lucky.

Is it ok to use link shorteners in this case?

It's cool but not really to me.
This is what I always do in cases like this... Get yourself Pretty Link Plugin : https://wordpress.org/plugins/pretty-link/

Shrink and go with : domainname.TLDs/Review page Name.

Makes it look way more welcoming than using a generic link shortener.

whiz · Sep 3, 2018

Sorry, I meant "cool" like:

Is it okay in Google's eyes? Or can you get a penalty for "filtering reviews" or something?

Topiano · Sep 3, 2018

whiz said:
Sorry, I meant "cool" like:

Is it okay in Google's eyes? Or can you get a penalty for "filtering reviews" or something?

Yeah .. It’s just so cool

terrier2018 · Sep 4, 2018

whiz said:
Check out this review card I designed:

My client (dentist) will be asking his patients to give him reviews by visiting the links.

The traffic will all be natural - not spammy or all in one day. He might get 5-10 per week if we're lucky.

Is it ok to use link shorteners in this case?

If the URLs (their names) are cool then yes, they works.
And, how is about QR CODE ?.

Stavro · Sep 5, 2018

whiz said:
Sorry, I meant "cool" like:

Is it okay in Google's eyes? Or can you get a penalty for "filtering reviews" or something?

Google's guideline is that you cannot "selectively solicit positive reviews". If these cards are given out to everyone, it's fine.

That said, I'm 75% certain that Google doesn't have roving manual review teams checking offline businesses for selective or incentivized reviews, so you can get away with some grey-hat tactics (selective encouragement, discounts, etc) without ever getting caught.

Also, I'll second the Pretty Links and QR suggestions. I've personally had the best results with only one review URL, clientname.com/feedback, then set a redirect to rotate between all the relevant review sites (or if a bad review pops up, turn off the rotation and send everyone to the site where positive reviews are most needed).

Jiung · Sep 5, 2018

Instead of using tiny url, why not use your own custom domain thats short and branded? It will seem much more professional.

whiz · Sep 5, 2018

He's a pretty good dentist so he's just giving them out to everyone - I doubt he has much disappointed patients.

I'll see how this works for a month or two and maybe I'll print some using Pretty Links.

One link ---> review selection is probably the best. I'll do that.

1Enigma · Sep 5, 2018

whiz said:
Check out this review card I designed:

My client (dentist) will be asking his patients to give him reviews by visiting the links.

The traffic will all be natural - not spammy or all in one day. He might get 5-10 per week if we're lucky.

Is it ok to use link shorteners in this case?

He can use his own custom link shortened. Sorry if this answer was already given.

MaxGuard · Sep 5, 2018

QR codes will be more "cool" and easy to visit, new mobiles can scan QR codes directly from phone camera without any third party apps. just my 2 cents.

whiz · Sep 8, 2018

Another question - to those who direct to one page and then link out to the review pages:

1. Do you do it on their domain or do you register your own? I would probably register my own for a) control and b) I'm not a good designer to I use Wordpress with OceanWP/Elementor. Anything else gets to be too much for me.

2. Does all the traffic coming from one page raise any suspicion to Google?

Thanks

Stavro · Sep 9, 2018

whiz said:
1. Do you do it on their domain or do you register your own?

I've found the clients own domain works best, otherwise people tend to think it's some sketchy unknown review site.

whiz said:
I would probably register my own for a) control and b) I'm not a good designer to I use Wordpress with OceanWP/Elementor. Anything else gets to be too much for me.

There's no user-facing pages at all, and no coding, it's just a straight 30X redirect. Set your redirect URL to "clientdomain.tld/reviews", set the outgoing URL(s) to the review site, set the weighting if there's multiple sites, and you're done.

whiz said:
2. Does all the traffic coming from one page raise any suspicion to Google?

As long as you're not selectively redirecting the reviews, you're still within the TOS. And by default, 30X redirects maintain the original referrer, so type-in traffic to your redirect would be indistinguishable from type-in traffic to the review page itself.

Are link shorteners cool for reviews?

whiz

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tophi

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Topiano

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whiz

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terrier2018

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Jiung

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whiz

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MaxGuard

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