Will I be penailsed, banned or something Else ?

I recently set up a new site. Part of the site is for user reviews of local services and businesses. I sneakily asked some friends to add a review or 2 to get the site running and create that active feel. Unbeknown to me (at the time), one of them copied some reviews from another site.

So what will be the outcome of this ? Will the site be banned from google, will the page be banned and the rest of the site left to perform as normal ? Will I recieve a penalty of some form, or does duplicate content really not matter.

Oh, and should I remove the copied reviews. Probably a good idea as its not a friendly thing to do to a competitor.

You'll be fine as far as Google is concerned as long as your not duplicating content in mass.

Earn Real Reviews. Not trying to be rude, but it will help you sleep better at night.

Not sure what you guys think ?? My belief is that for a site to become active, it must appear active. If you came to a site with no comments, reviews etc you would think it was dead ?? So having a few fake reviews comments (Pitched at the right level, some contraversial stuff, some positive, some negative) sparks debate ??

Is that not how you guys see it. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Certainly dont think your rude. Always willing to listen to others thoughts.

Writing reviews yourself, or asking someone to write for you (where reviews should really be written voluntarily), is different from writing fake reviews that may mislead people.

If you want to spark things a little, at least try to write the reviews truthfully.

Don't get me wrong. It's "clever" and it probably would work to an extent, but just as you know with lying you have to remember what you said and with getting a fake review written you have to worry about a lazy friend COPYING and PASTING to your site. At least tell them to be smart about it.

All in all, its like me coming out with a new product that hasn't hit the market yet and giving it rave reviews from customers when no one has bought yet. Give the product away in exchange for that testimonial or review. Good testimonials take hard work or a great product and a satisfied customer. Those are the most effective reviews.

And you CAN tell when a review is fake. Go on amazon and look at some of the reviews that you can tell are fake or the new author asked a friend to get on there and write a review like their life depended on it.

This kind of thing is what is going to make Google not give any credit to other people's reviews that may have worked hard for their reviews and were given honest ones.

My main site is now a bit of a conglomerate of related businesses. Personally I do not think reviews/testimonials help at all. One of our other business managers does and has included real reviews from customers about that part of the business. These reviews are from medium to large companies in our market. They are all genuine. Checking analytics this page gets almost zero traffic even though it has prominent links from pages that get heaps of traffic.

To me the problem in general is what you are doing is done by so many. Reviews/testimonials just seem fake even if true. No one is going to leave a bad review posted.

I s’pose they work fro particular types of products ie books but fro most products I doubt people read them or if they do give them much credence.

In my view people are looking for solutions to their particular problem. Offer these and you will get conversions.

The point re active/stale once again I think depends on what type of site you have and what you are selling. Most people do not visit that much of a site really. Content for the sake of content I do not think helps much.

All this is just my opinion I am sure others have different ones….

I certainly here what you are saying, and appreciate your point, and indeed fully agree that content for the sake of content is not good. As one site member who has always replied to my posts and offered good advice, your opinion is really appreciated.

Maybe my thinking is a little wayward ? What Im hoping, is to create a resource site that offers a lot, certainly not just reviews. There are galleries of high quality images of the town, which I think people will enjoy. There is also the facility for people to add their own images. There is an active political debate category, a free business directory with a premium option, a classifieds area, listings of clubs, associations etc. I also have plans for some unique and interesting articles, but I wont say too much about them at present.

My site is about my hometown, Im quite fortunate in that my town is very unique in the UK. It has been voted the UK's number 1 holiday destination on several occasions, there is a lot of interest in the town from across the country, and our town has a great history. There are many sites out there about the town, but I feel there is room for improvement. There is IMO a space for something fresh.

I have looked at other sites offering something similar. I think they make the owners a nice bit of money in terms of people paying to advertise on the sites and in terms of adsense revenue. What Im seeing so far is you dont need a real lot of clicks to make a nice few shillings. The other sites Ive seen look dated and dont have the facility to foster participation and debate.

Im hoping that the reviews, if written in the right way, will draw some traffic to the site. Maybe that business owners, unhappy with the parts of the reviews, start asking their customers to leave reviews on the site for them. In doing so they see the site, they like the content and the active debate, and they bookmark the site and return time and again to use the site and forum.

Maybe not the best business model in the world, but Im not aiming for megabucks, a small extra income from the site would be welcome.

So whats your thoughts ?

Cool

Here some possible ideas for content.
1) A free jobs board for the town.
2) A 'two for one Monday' type printable voucher for something like meals from restaurants.
3) A letter to the editor about community related issues
4) A calendar of events in the area including school events etc (ask for people to submit dates)
5) Sports dates and results. Ask the clubs to submit articles about games.

Good luck with your site

Do you think it could be worth the effort ?

Make your site the place that people go to see what is happening and then selling the advertising will be easy.

There will be no penalty. If all your content is leeched, Google might simply relegate your site to a low-PR pile, or display you lower in the searches.

A lot of content gets duplicated - as a general rule, Google would rank a site that has original content - i.e. your copied reviews appeared earlier somewhere else, right? - higher than the site that has the same content put up later on a timeline.

You'll be fine. There is no way Google can confirm that two pieces of content are the same. I had two websites exactly similar with two different domain names. Both ranked well.

This would be a human thing, not a google thing:

I would simply change the names of the testimonials to make them a bit different and then as soon as possible replace them with real testimonials. Marketing is marketing, but plagiarism is wrong. Besides it doesn't make you look lazy, it makes it look like you have no happy customers.

People comparing between you and a competitor might find it odd.

Also, please remember that ethics is important on the web. There are too many people up to no good. Be one of the good guys.

Lou