How I Removed A Slanderous Google Review – A Case Study (2013)

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* Important intro note * – Originally the title of this post was “How To Remove Slanderous Google Reviews,” because – at the time (March 2013) – following these steps (especially #4, country-depending) would work well to remove your review. Over the years however, Google have changed their processes, making this post obsolete in some aspects – you’ll see in the comments (especially later ones) that more and more people have said that the steps below haven’t necessarily worked for them. I wanted to keep this post up for reference, but please understand that what’s written here may not 100% correspond with what you need to do these days. I’m actually considering writing a follow-up, as my folks’ business has been hit by another fake bad review (as of October 2015), in which case I’ll update this post with a link to it.

* Regarding contacting me * – I sometimes get people contacting me asking for help with this, especially if they’re struggling. Please understand that if you followed the instructions in this post, there’s really not much more I can do to help I’m afraid. And while you can hire me for SEO work, I don’t offer help on this front on an individual basis. Sorry.

Evil Computer photoEarlier this week, I had to deal with a slanderous review left on my parents’ company’s Google Places (a.k.a. Google+ Local) page. When researching how best to get it deleted, I came across a mishmash of info on a mix of blog posts and forums, which wasn’t very helpful, so I wanted to write about my experiences in getting it sorted.

Surprisingly, Google doesn’t exactly make the process easy. Well, they do, but it’s one of those ‘once you know, you know’ scenarios. And after reading about some horror stories, I wanted to outline how I managed it. So if you’re in a similar boat then I hope this helps you out.

The review’s discovery

Computer Recruiter logoMy parents run an IT recruitment agency called Computer Recruiter. I’d been working from home on the day that we discovered the review, as I was still recovering from an on-going, on-again-off-again illness (more about that in an upcoming blog post by the way), but as my folks are based nearby, they invited me over for lunch. We were talking about recent rankings (as I’ve done a bit of work for them in the past) and we got onto the subject of their Places page. I wanted to show them something on the page, but then we spotted it…

A review, left 3 weeks ago, with a rating of “Poor to Fair.”

Then we actually read the review…

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The rel="author" SERP Challenge

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Update: Someone’s found a SERP with 10 in it. Scroll down to learn more!

The other day I was doing a vanity rankings check to see if my recent rel="author" case study post was ranking for anything. I found out that it was ranking 1st for “rel author case study” (which is nice, but apparently doesn’t get searched on much) and also found out that I’m on page 1 for “rel author implementation” (which does get a bit of search volume).

But something else caught my attention about the SERP…

rel="author" SERP screenshot

Do you see it? EIGHT faces, i.e. 8 instances of rel="author" implementation. Given the keyword in question, I can’t say I’m surprised.

And then it got me thinking… Is there an instance of a SERP with 9 or even 10 Google+ avatars in it?

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Confusing Google: A rel="author" Case Study

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Question imageThis post is mainly about what happens when you implement rel="author" twice on a webpage and the confusion and potential mistrust it carries in Google’s eyes. However it also covers the following areas:

  • The best and easiest way to implement rel="author" on a WordPress blog,
  • How to handle rel="author" if your blog allows guest posts (whether it’s on WordPress, another blogging platform or a self-hosted blog).
  • Discrepancies between what the Rich Snippets Preview Tool shows and what actually shows up in Google’s SERPs (search engine result pages).

What is rel="author"?

rel="author" is a type of rich snippet whereby your Google+ profile picture and links to your profile appear in Google’s search results. While you may not know it by name, if you’ve been using Google at all in the past year or so (which I’m guessing is extremely likely!) then you’re bound to recognise this:

rel-author-example-annotated

Rather than simply showing a standard search result, the following is added:

  1. A Google+ profile pic, which studies have shown can improve CTR (click-through rate). One of my favourite studies talks about how optimising the picture (of all things!) can further increase CTR.
  2. A “by [name]” link, which links to the person’s Google+ profile.
  3. The number of G+ circles that the person is in.

Although it’s not shown above, I’ve also seen some instances where it says “More by [name]” in place of #3.

In addition to improving CTR, Eric Schmidt recently revealed that it could even lead to higher rankings, which is something that many had previously speculated and that Jeff Sauer has recently investigated.

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How To Market Your Live Music Bar Online

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Intro from Steve: After my first guest post publication, Mike – who I’ve known on Twitter for a while – asked if he could publish one as well. Given its subject matter, I couldn’t say no. I used to work at a live music bar a lifetime ago (The Musician Pub in Leicester, if you’re ever in the area), so this post struck a chord (oww, sorry!) with me. Enjoy!

Following the Live Music Act 2012 (which allowed venues with a capacity of less than 200 people to put on live music without a license*), it seems a growing number of bars are taking advantage and starting to book live bands. With the growing number of options for live music lovers, how do you stand out and persuade potential punters through your door?

The following tips will help you to stand out against your local competition and dominate the online arena.

*Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19783855

Get a Google Places Listing

For any local business, a Google Places for Business listing is essential – not only will your business show up in Google Maps enabling people to easily get directions to your premises, but it will also provide searchers with an ‘at-a-glance’ overview of your address, contact details and opening hours direct from the search results page.

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The Ever-growing List of Inbound.org Ask Me Anything (AMA) Threads

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Inbound.org AMA header image

* Update * – When I started this list, there wasn’t a dedicated AMA category on Inbound.org. Now there is. So I’ve decided to stop continuing this list.

On January 16th 2013, Ed Fry announced that Inbound.org would be introducing Ask Me Anything (AMA) threads, starting with the mighty Rand Fishkin, one of the founders of the site. As I type this, there have been three official AMAs to date (by “official” I mean announced by the Inbound.org team – I thought I’d make this point as some people have created their own AMAs). However, as there isn’t a dedicated category for them and the three so far have been submitted in different categories, there’s no easy way to keep track of them all.* So I thought I’d start a list…

* You could do a Google search such as site:inbound.org “ask me anything”, but for the purposes of this post, we’ll pretend that’s not an option, okay? 😉

Interestingly, while researching this post, I found out that Jonathan Colman was the one who first came up with the idea for AMAs for Inbound.org – inspired by Reddit – in this thread (I can’t link to the comment directly, so you’ll have to scroll down).

Anyway, here’s the list, which will be updated as-and-when new AMAs take place. Please feel free to check back if you miss one or want to refer back to an old one!

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