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Our stance on 'Review Gating'

Change is a constant in the world of digital marketing, and review management is no exception. What was originally considered a benign form of cleverly cultivating your reviews is now considered deceptive and unacceptable.

Imagine this: asking your customer to rate you on a feedback form, and if they indicate displeasure then you redirect them to an internal feedback form, whereas if they indicate happiness then you ask them for a public review.

This method of avoiding negative reviews is called "review gating". It used to be the norm, and very common. But times have changed, and it's now against the Terms of Service for most major review platforms, and it's basically illegal in the US too.

At Gumado we are constantly looking out for our clients' safety and reputation, and for that reason we don't offer review gating. Why? Read on.

Google prohibits it

Google specifically bans review gating. They don't use those exact words, but the description in the 3rd bullet point on the Google policy page linked below is crystal clear: discouraging negative reviews is not allowed, and asking only people who are likely to leave a great review is not allowed.

Source: https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7400114 🔗

What would happen if Google noticed?
If you were not compliant with Google's Terms of Service in this manner, you could lose reviews, lose SEO ranking, or even have your account banned. Not worth it. Google doesn't like it and considers it fraudulent, and therefore you shouldn't do it.

Prohibited on Yelp, Amazon, Expedia, Booking, TripAdvisor, TrustPilot too

TripAdvisor explicitly disallows review gating by name (see screenshot). They are aggressive about enforcing this policy, and penalizing those who break it.

What's more, they've teamed up with Amazon, Expedia, Booking.com, and TrustPilot to form a "Coalition for Trusted Reviews" to combat review gating.

Sources:

The FTC has made it illegal

In case there was any question, the FTC has recently made it unequivocally clear: review gating is fully illegal in the United States, with stiff consequences for offenders. Check out bullets #1 and #3 in the screenshot. It's from the first source linked below.

"Oh come on! This is a gray area, and the FTC isn't going to come after little ol' me," you might be tempted to think. You'd best think again!

Here are some of the penalties they've already imposed:

• $75k fine to Carmel Car Service in NY, for review gating
• $4.2MM fine to Fashion Nova, for review gating
• They might send you a nasty letter, like the 3rd link under Sources below

Sources:

You don't need it anyway

At this point, it should be clear that engaging in review gating is a losing proposition: you could get penalized or banned by the review platforms that are important to you, and the FTC might penalize you. It's not an overstatement to say that this would be catastrophic for your business.

But if you avoid review gating (as you should), then you're missing out, and your reviews are going to suffer, right? Actually... no!

Recent research by GatherUp across 10k businesses found that turning off review gating had very little impact on overall rating. What's more, the data showed that review volumes grew significantly — that is to say, the sheer number of reviews received actually increased. (And Google loves the higher volume, by the way.)

To put it another way: real-world experience shows that avoiding review gating leads to more overall reviews, with negligible impact to overall rating score.

Source: https://searchengineland.com/study-killing-review-gating-doesnt-hurt-scores-and-grows-overall-volume-324310 🔗

What you should do instead

1. Avoid review gating, of course. Most of our competitors don't offer it anymore, but there are still a few sketchy operators out there.

2. Emanate authenticity. Your customers aren't stupid - they understand what review gating is, even if they don't know the term. And they understand it's a sly way of manipulating ratings. Offer them authenticity instead, and watch them return the favor. Be ahead of the curve, and reap the benefits.

3. Embrace all reviews, even the negative ones. Instead of thinking about negative feedback as the bane of your existence, try to view them as an opportunity to turn an unhappy customer into a happy one, and a chance to demonstrate publicly how much you care. Your next customer will see how you approach adversity and judge you accordingly.

4. Respond to all reviews, including the positive ones. This is an opportunity to show your future customers how responsive and transparent you are, and how much you care. An obviously-active review profile with responses is more attractive than one with no responses from the owner at all.

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You're still here? Just kidding, good for you reading the whole thing.

At this point you might be curious about Gumado and how we approach review generation the right way. There are some details below, but maybe you'd like to book a demo?

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Everything you need

Your New Review Management Platform

Displaying and requesting reviews for your business has never been easier. Reviews help establish trust, improve brand reputation and SEO, and can significantly boost your sales.

All-in-one platform

Displaying and requesting reviews for your business has never been easier.
Reviews help establish trust, improve brand reputation and SEO, and can significantly boost your sales.

Automatically sync your reviews: Import existing reviews from over 35 of the most popular review platforms, including Google, Facebook, and Yelp.
Customizable widgets: Give your display widget and request forms a branded makeover to fit the style of your business.
Effortlessly respond to reviews: Respond to reviews directly from the platform and automate the responses with AI.
Automated review requests: Take a hands-off approach with our automated process of requesting reviews from your customers via email, text message, and WhatsApp.
Analyze what your customers think: Get a better understanding of what your customers think about your business with our sentiment analysis tool and easy to understand dashboard.
FREE Setup and Integration: That's right - we'll do all the work to completely set up your account and integrate with your CRM/database, to make everything as automatic as possible. At no additional cost!

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