We all know how important online reviews are. It has become the norm when we are going to use a business or service to grab our phones and pull up their reviews. We want to know what other customers or clients have to say about this company or service. But, what happens when the business you are looking up has a lot of reviews and they are all from a small time-period? It generally means that the company was asking people for reviews.
Google does not have a problem with websites asking for reviews. What they do take issue with is a bunch of reviews coming from a single IP address. Especially if that IP address is your work IP address or home IP address. This would indicate that someone was sitting at your business or in your home, reviewing your place of business. Further, you do not want a lot of reviews coming from your office WiFi address. This would indicate that you are asking for reviews and clients are taking care of the request while they are waiting. This is the type of problem Google will act upon. So, as long as the reviews are unique, the time frame is not an issue for Google.
Examples
We have had clients that have gotten 20 or 25 reviews in a short period of time. About 5-years ago, we had a personal injury attorney in Pasadena, California that got 47 reviews in 2-weeks. To this day he still gets a ton of calls just because he has all these reviews. Google has never had a problem with it.
Yelp
Yelp is very careful about the reviews posted on their sites. They watch it closely. If your site normally gets a few reviews at a time and suddenly you get 10 or 15, Yelp is going to filter every one of them. If you are not familiar with Yelp, that means they are going to take them down and put them up as they feel they are related.
We had a personal injury lawyer in Orange County, California that we were working with. The entire time we worked with him, he had failed to do a single thing we had asked of him. We would give him detailed instructions and they just did not do them. I had mentioned to him that we would need some Yelp reviews. I did not go into detail (like telling him that we would need to post them over a year) because he had never given me anything I had asked for and I was not expecting this to be any different. I was shocked when he delivered 12 Yelp reviews in a three-day time. He was just as shocked when Yelp filtered them just as quickly. He is probably still hot about that one.
So, if you are going to gather reviews, be sure you know where to put them. As important as reviews are fake reviews or reviews that do not really tell you anything are worse than worthless. If a client reads a review and does not come away with some knowledge about your service, and merit, he is left frustrated This is usually enough to send him to the next attorney. They are looking to see if you have the personality, work ethic, and drive they want to work with. If your review leaves them dry, they may leave you too.
