You’re searching for a local Plumber using Google Local Listing (also known as Google Places).

However, how do you know whether the plumber is reliable and reputable ? The Reviews !  But how do you know if they are authentic reviews ?

We’ll go over a few Google Local Search Reviews to see for yourself if they are real reviews. Also we’ll go over Google Review Syndication.

Local Search Analysis:

I did a random search for “plumbers san diego ca” in google ( http://ow.ly/2qB9D ) and saw one listing (Bill Howe Plumbing)  that stood apart as it had 106 reviews !

If you click on the reviews for this fellow you’ll see that the top 5 reviews are all 5 stars, perfectly happy customers ! Thats a good thing right ?

So i decided to look into the details for the top 5 reviewers and noticed an odd pattern. I’ll use the latest reviewer : “Chappy” as an eg to show the odd pattern i found

This fellow is someone who takes posting reviews very seriously. All his reviews are 5 stars. On August 6th chappy has posted 17 reviews. Most of us dont have the time to post more then a couple in a day but thats ok, “chappy” takes reviews seriously.

However should one look further in detail you’ll see a lots of odd things :

1) On the review for Bill Plumbing “chappy” claims to be Megan M of San Diego Ca, however on the same day posts reviews under the names of Craig B of Denver CO, D G of Chicago IL, Danielle of Minneapolis, MN, Christi of Costa Mesa, CA

2) Chappy claims to be living at Legend Park Apts in Schaumburg, IL yet takes his/her ( not sure )  garage door to be fixed in Lake Forest, CA ! Further goes to a dentist in Boston, MA and uses a Spine Doctor in Chatham, NJ.

3) Posting of 17 reviews on Aug 6th alone and buying of several cars from various dealers all across the country

4) Always posting 5 star ratings ! I guess he/she is always extremly satisfied.

Now, would you agree with me, that there is an odd pattern here ? Also its the same pattern with the other top 5 reviewers for Bill Howe Plumbing. Which brings the question: Are these Reviews Authentic ?

There could be some explanations for the reviews done. Perhaps chappy is a young billionaire who has houses all over the country, travels on a daily basis for leisure or business. Perhaps used their services at one time and just got to posting the reviews on a day when they had nothing else to do.  I dont think thats its likely, but i really dont know. Perhaps you can come up with an explanation and share with all of us here ?

Now i must say that this is not an odd incident. I found similar questionable reviews for several other service providers like Chiropractors and even Criminal Attorneys. I found one case for a Criminal Attorney in Texas that specialized in military cases, where they had a review posted every 7 days on the dot. All of the reviews gave 5 star rating, each reviewer had only 1 review under their profile and the writing pattern was the same for all reviews.

I’d have to say that they were probably done by a Review Providing Service … Google Review Syndication. There are firms that provide reviews for business by either posting fake reviews using various techniques or claim to find your customers and get them to write their reviews on a post card, mail it to the review firm which then posts the customers reviews online under various accounts. Is this service acceptable to google ? While there is no official statement from Google regarding this service, i’m sure google review syndication would not classify as a review but as a comment.

Google’s guidelines are very straight forward. NO FAKE Reviews are acceptable and they do remove fake reviews, ban local listings for business if found to indulge in unfair and unethical methods. Are you willing to take that risk ? I’d recommend thinking twice before you hire a firm offering a review providing service.

I hope you’ll use this post to determine if the reviews you see in local listings for business are authentic or not and do share your thoughts on the eg’s i provided and let me know if you think they are authentic.

On a key note, i have to clarify that I have no affiliation with any Plumbing service. Also am not liable to any loss of business that any firms used in the eg’s may face due to this post. Also i would not be liable if google decided to ban the local listings for any firm mentioned here for unethical methods or non authentic reviews posted. I am not saying that they indulged in any unfair methods, thats for the readers to decide for themselves based on the facts i provided from the reviews.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts on whether you think the reviews are authentic or not. Also if you have other methods to determine if a provider is reputable to not. I can be followed on Twitter and you can fan me on FaceBook. Also feel free to sign up for my Free Newsletter for more exciting articles.

In my next post i’ll go over Top Citation Sources For Local SEO

UPDATE ( Aug 18, 2010 ): Stephanie, Communications Director from Bill Howe Plumbing contacted me to inform that all the reviews posted were genuine and that they had provided them to a Review Syndication firm they hired. The Syndication firm then posted the reviews for Bill Howe Plumbing.

This brings  me to ask

Should Review Firms Provide Proof that the Reviews posted are Genuine ? (Some do by posting a link to a scanned copy of the correspondence from the customer) Let me know your thoughts.

UPDATE ( Sep 13th 2010 ) : Looks like Google has responded to Review Syndication. At the time of writing this post Bill Howe had 106 Reviews showing on Google Places. Now there are only 75 Reviews showing. Did Google respond by removing the reviews they found questionable ? It would seem that way. Will this mark the end of Review Syndication ? feel free to post your thoughts on this below.

UPDATE ( Oct 2nd  2010 ) :  Google removed more reviews for Bill Howe. They have only 49 reviews showing on Google Places.

I was having a conversation the other day with a good friend of mine and he wanted to know if it was possible to measure the ROI on a Social Media Campaign. In this post i’ll cover

The Value of a Social Media Campaign

How To Measure Social Media ROI

However, should we really be measuring the ROI on Social Media ?

Why Every Firm Should be Running a Social Media Campaign

I get these questions asked quite a bit.  Why should a firm run a Social Media Campaign? How will it generate Sales for my firm ? In other words the Value of running a Social Media Campaign. I’d say Everyone SHOULD have a Social Media Campaign for their firm, regardless of their size. Dont agree with me ? Thats ok, you will after you see this video from Erik Qualman from Socialnomics This video is amazing and shows everyone proven stats from firms using Social Media Successfully.

Now that you’ve watched the video, are you on board with the idea that YOU SHOULD be running a Social Media Campaign ? I know you are !

Now that you see the value of Social Media. You need to understand that Social Media is NOT FREE. So what’s required for Running and Managing a Great Social Media Campaign:

1) It takes Qualified People to run your Campaign.

2) You need the proper tools to run your campaign.

3) All of this takes Time ( Don’t expect results overnight )

How to Measure Social Media ROI

Is it Possible to measure the ROI on Social Media? Sure it is. Here’s how

ROI = (Gain From Investment – Cost of Investment)  / Cost Of Investment

Eg. Lets say you spend $1000 to start your campaing and you make $4000 from sales arising from the campaign , then

ROI = (4000 – 1000 ) / 1000 = 3 times your Initial Investment ! These are just random numbers and your campaign success could vary based on number of things.

Steps to Measure the Success of Social Media Campaign

1) Look at Growth at Start of Campaign

2) Track All Activites done during Campaign

3) Measure Sales Growth from start of campaign to present

4) Use Special Landing Pages for tracking Targeted Traffic for a Campaign

I agree that one should track the ROI for their Social Campaign but not to make a big deal about it. After all do we see everyone asking for the ROI for their Ads on SuperBowl ? I hope all of you agree that Social Media Campaigns DO work and get targeted traffic to your site along with developing your online presence and increase your sales. Do Share your opionions with me below in the comments.

I hope you found this write up on Social Media ROI helpful and  feel free to share your thoughts and feedback  in the comments below.  We do reward regular commentators with do follow links.  Don’t forget to sign up for my free newsletter and follow me on twitter ( i will follow back )

One of the Best Social Media Marketing Strategies one can implement, is to get targeted traffic from YouTube.

Yesterday, a friend of mine sent me a link to his YouTube Campaign and wanted me to take a look before it went live. Looking at his mistakes i decided to write this post.

In this post i’m going to show you how to optimize your social media marketing campaigns to get the most traffic to your site.

1) Add Keywords to Your Video Title

By adding relevant keywords to the beginning of your video title you actually assist search engine spiders to find your video and rank it higher in search engines. Remember when someone searches in YouTube for a video they are entering keywords and having your keywords in the beginning of the title helps.

You do this for your website pages then why not for your video campaigns ? Same principle applies.

2) Add a Reason to watch the Video in the Title Image

Think about it, if the image you see is not appealing would you yourself click to watch the video? Probably not. So why not make the image appealing, to make the person want to click on the video to see what it is about.

What you can do is use Windows Movie Maker ( imovie for Mac owners ) which is free with windows XP and add an appealing Image at the beginning and at the end of the video, enticing them to wanna see the video.

3) Add an Informative Description for your video along with Contact Info

You already have a great image and you can take it further. Add relevant description for the video letting viewers know what the video is about and how they can benefit by watching it. People need a stimulus and you need to provide it to them.

You may also want to provide a URL and an Email for people to be able to contact you in case they want to. Always make it easy for viewers to reach you.

4) Add a Reason to Visit your Site at the end of the video

Now that they’ve watched your video and liked the information you had to share, don’t leave them hanging. Entice them with a reason to visit your site for even more information. Add your site URL preferably a deep link to the relevant page letting them know how to reach your site. Whats better is if they hear you speak your reason to visit your site spelling out the site URl helps !

Dont just ask them to visit your site for more information, give them a reason to visit your site. Clarify what other information they can get at your site. If you can add a free offer.

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I hope you liked this post and do let me know if there are any additions that should be made by leaving a comment below. I do reward regular commentators with do follow links. In case you liked this app do comment below to let me know and don’t forget to sign up for my free newsletter and follow me on twitter ( i will follow back )