The Core

Why We Are Here => Marketing => Topic started by: I, Brian on March 02, 2012, 09:49:18 AM

Title: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: I, Brian on March 02, 2012, 09:49:18 AM
Noticed an interesting result the past couple of months in the injury claims sector - a couple of sites coming in to strong positions, and Google highlighting these sites with 5 stars and thousands of votes or reviews.

For example:
http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&cr=countryUK%257CcountryGB&tbs=ctr:countryUK%257CcountryGB&sclient=psy-ab&q=whiplashcompensationclaims.info&pbx=1&oq=whiplashcompensationclaims.info&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=12&gs_upl=27272l27272l18l27874l1l1l0l0l0l0l95l95l1l1l0&gs_l=serp.12...27272l27272l18l27874l1l1l0l0l0l0l95l95l1l1l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=887a783ce4dd3881&biw=1600&bih=732

I'm curious - where did it get the 9/10 rating and 2567 votes from?

More to the point, is this a signal Google are placing significant emphasis on?
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: Adam C on March 02, 2012, 10:25:34 AM
really crude hcard spam by the looks of things

Quote<div class="hreview-aggregate">
<span class="item">
<h2><span class="fn">Whiplash Compensation Claims</span></h2>
<ul>
<li class="desc">Whiplash compensation from specialist solicitors</li>
<li>
<span class="rating">
     <span class="average">9</span> out of
     <span class="best">10</span> customers receive a response within the hour
</span>
</li>
<li>Our most recent payout: £<span class="votes">2,567</span></li>

Seems Google will take this as read these days.  Wonder how long it will last for.
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: I, Brian on March 02, 2012, 12:16:23 PM
Am sorely tempted to test it out for CTR on one or two of my own sites. >:)
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: ukgimp on March 02, 2012, 12:19:58 PM
That's and eye catcher

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Whiplash+compensation+claims
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: TallTroll on March 04, 2012, 11:04:11 AM
Might borrow this for a friends site
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: littleman on March 05, 2012, 05:02:10 AM
That's a hell of a trick!
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: Rumbas on March 05, 2012, 10:31:46 AM
We've had them on a couple of sites sitting at #1. Nice strong increase in ctr. Easily implemented as Adam pointed out. Just get that in the html and Google will eat it up.

Watch out for:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/request.py?contact_type=rich_snippets_spam though. So adding some actual voting options to the page is probably a good idea.
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: Rumbas on March 05, 2012, 10:32:45 AM
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets to test.
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: I, Brian on March 05, 2012, 12:39:00 PM
Hm, using the HTML only I'm not getting any showing so far after indexing.

Can't find any actual CSS values being called, or am I just being impatient?
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: TallTroll on March 05, 2012, 01:45:51 PM
As it's unlikely to be an important ranking signal, maybe they just run occasional updates of the data, rather than totally live
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: hungrygoose on May 10, 2012, 11:13:36 AM
Brian did you get this to work?  I have it working on a few sites, don't mind sharing the code.
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: I, Brian on May 10, 2012, 02:33:23 PM
Quote from: hungrygoose on May 10, 2012, 11:13:36 AM
Brian did you get this to work?  I have it working on a few sites, don't mind sharing the code.

That would be welcome. :)
Title: Re: Vote rigging for Google?
Post by: hungrygoose on May 13, 2012, 10:04:33 PM
Ahh just seen this will fire an email over in the morning.  1 site lost the rating over the weekend and that was the site which has the most crawling, I think the rating or number of ratings needs to slowly go up to keep it there.