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  • 5 for Fridays — Links, Stories, & Posts for Your Weekend

    5 for friday12 Most Valuable Personality Traits of Top SEO Consultants — 12 Most

    This article is an oldie, but a goodie on the 12 best qualifications for a top SEO consultant. Sure you are driven, intelligent and articulate, but if you do not feel that you combine your technical, artistic, and analytical sides, perhaps it is time for a refresher course.

    Google Glasses: Don’t Plan on Buying Them for Christmas – Washington Post

    Google-Vision: Like Wonka Vision, but with more SIRI and less mini Mike TeeVee.  Google’s Project Glass has revealed its Google Glasses this week as co-founder Sergey Brin donned these enhanced spectacles while out to dinner. Don’t get too excited though. These glasses will not be available to consumers for months or even years. To get an idea what these snazzy shades are capable of, check out this photo gallery.

    Google Sending Warnings About “Artificial” or “Unnatural” Links — Search Engine Land 

    If you’ve received a warning about “artificial” or “unnatural” links pointing at your site, you’d probably like to know that Google has recently taken a new stance on link networks. While previously, these link networks were “silently distrusted,” now Google has decided to report such potentially black hat link issues.

    Show Keyword Position Using Filters and Advanced Segments  – SEOMoz

    Here at Search Influence, it is time to send out reports again, so what could be more pertinent to our reporting endeavors than a strategy to provide useful, easily-understood information to clients. Through this easy-to-follow 2-Step process, you can provide your clients with a graph showing the position of your searched keywords as a percentage of total visits. This new reporting process could help you explain exactly what it is that you do.

    Google AdWords Adds ZIP Code Targeting, Location Insertion; Updates Location Targeting – Search Engine Watch

    You’ve probably noticed search results are adapting more and more to location targeting, but Google has just announced new ZIP Code targeting in AdWords as well.  This will allow advertisers to hone in on up to 100 specific regions. Another new feature includes Dynamic Location Insertion. It’s DKI for cities!

  • Kony 2012: Viral Marketing & Media for Social Change

    If you haven’t heard of Kony 2012, chances are that you’ve been living under a rock – a rock without Wi-Fi – for the last month. Created by the non-profit organization Invisible Children, the 30-minute documentary about Joseph Kony, an African warlord, became an almost-instant viral video after its debut in March.

    In under a week, it garnered 100 million views, outpacing Susan Boyle’s audition on Britain’s Got Talent and even “David After Dentist.” The difference between this viral video and others is that it has compelled watchers to act in a way that involves more than just forwarding a link.

    According to Invisible Children, the goal of the film is “to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.” To achieve this, the organization took an unconventional approach. Not only does their marketing campaign include the use of a viral documentary, but also it encourages supporters to take action.

    In addition to sharing the video on their own social media networks, viewers were asked to appeal to 20 “culturemakers” like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Lada Gaga, and George Clooney and 12 policymakers like Bill Clinton, John Boehner, and Condoleezza Rice do the same. Celebrities including Oprah, Ryan Seacrest, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, and Kim Kardashian all tweeted about the video to their millions of followers, taking the campaign’s virality to a whole new level. According to research conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, over 5.4 million tweets referencing Kony 2012 were posted in the week after it went live.


    Click through for full image

    Becoming an overnight phenomenon, however, was not without its drawbacks. The increased attention for the cause brought with it an increased scrutiny for the organization. Criticisms came from a variety of sources and included everything from oversimplifying the issue to the more serious charge of presenting misleading information.

    To make matters worse, following a couple of especially high-profile weeks, Invisible Children co-founder and Kony 2012 filmmaker Jason Russell experienced a very public meltdown, drawing even more negative interest to the organization. Even with the critiques of the video and the ensuing PR nightmare, the marketing impact of the campaign can’t be denied.

    The sway of social media influenced millions of people to act, which has not only led to an increased awareness of the situation, but also has resulted in U.S. lawmakers making a political effort. In mid-March, a resolution was introduced in the House that would increase the number of regional forces in Africa to protect civilians and place restrictions on those supporting Kony. Shortly thereafter, another resolution was introduced in the Senate that would support ongoing international efforts to remove Kony and boost U.S. mobility, intelligence, and logistical support of regional forces pursuing Kony.

    In addition to achieving their goal of effecting change, Invisible Children’s utilization of an innovative, viral marketing campaign, also had the added benefit of increased brand recognition. The video directed viewers to their website, where supporters could purchase merchandise and download an “Action Kit,” which includes two posters that can be printed and plastered around the U.S. on April 20, as part of their “Cover the Night” event.

    A mere month ago, most people would not have been able to tell you anything about Joseph Kony, much less Invisible Children. Now, both are practically household names. In an effort to make Kony famous, Invisible Children became famous, too. It was a clever marketing tactic that, despite some extremely damaging PR, continues to benefit both the cause and the organization.

  • Review: Pinterest Users and Marketers Enjoy Redesigned Profiles and Added Features

    Maybe I’m a little late since Pinterest rolled out its redesigned profile pages two weeks ago, but being fashionably late is kind of my ‘thing.’ Users and businesses using Pinterest for marketing can now enjoy the benefit of more beautiful profile pages and an easier-to-use Recent Activity feature.

    Pinterest Profile Redesign
    The redesign of Pinterest Profiles is more social, displaying influencers and a description. The profile page and its boards are more aesthetically pleasing and image-focused.

    Before passing judgment on the latest updates, I wanted to take some time to actually use them first. While the profile page redesign was what dominated the news a couple weeks ago, I honestly think this change is of the least consequence to Pinterest users.

    For starters, it’s a rare occurrence that I find myself actually looking at someone’s Pinterest profile. By its very nature the site can keep a curious browser occupied for hours at a time, thanks to the constantly updating feeds of pins. A user can explore pins by category (Art, Humor, Photography, Food & Drink, etc), or by looking at everything pinned by those they choose to follow. Its on these feeds that it’s easy to get lost and suddenly realize you’ve been flipping through delicious-looking photos of desserts you probably shouldn’t eat for over an hour (guilty).

    But don’t get me wrong — I really like the new profile design.  Borrowing from the social networks we all know and love, Pinterest profile pages are now more informative, displaying who influences you as well as who you influence. The top portion of the profile is reminiscent of Twitter, offering a 200 character description field and the user’s designated profile image.

    Old Pinterest Profile Design
    BEFORE: Before the redesign, Pinterest profiles were blocky and uninspiring.

    The user’s boards are displayed in a much more aesthetically pleasing way, showing the most recent pin on that board with thumbnails of several others below it. Like I said, I like it, I really like it! Much improved over the former profile pages which were very square and uninspired.

    One new feature I haven’t heard much mention of is the added “Friends to Follow” feature above Recent Activity on the home screen.  Improvements to the Recent Activity feed were enough to have me jumping for joy (finally, the stories are clickable!), but the Friends feature put the icing on the cake.  While Pinterest already offered a Find Friends feature, it was not the most user-friendly. Now, I can follow friends without even leaving my homepage.

    Friends to Follow Feature Added to Pinterest Homepage
    Pinterest users can now follow others without ever leaving their homepage.

    According to Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann, who recently spoke at SXSW, the redesigned profile pages are just the beginning of big things in the works for the increasingly-popular social bookmarking site.

    Word is that we will finally get an iPad app, and all I can think is “it’s about time, Ben!” In addition to the upcoming app release, the API will also be made public, much to the delight of developers. In January, Pinterest drove more referral traffic than Google+ and YouTube combined, which is all the more reason marketers should not ignore it as a tool for online promotion.

    I’ll certainly be on the lookout for the iPad App and other new features to be rolled out soon. What would you change about Pinterest if you had the chance?

  • Read This! — April 2012

    As always, our Read This! feature profiles stories and how-to’s you can’t afford to miss for your business, offering direct and practical advice for competing online. Check out this month’s offerings after the jump!

    The Twitter Guide for Small Business

    With the advent of its small business ad products, Twitter has published an official 22-page ebook showing you how to “engage with your customers and put Twitter to work for your business.” Look for the PDF link below the video!

    Measuring Your Company’s Online Success

    While we’ve given you a plethora of tips to increase your online visibility and interaction with your customers, finding hard data as to whether your efforts are working is a whole ‘nother story. Check out this handy guide to the metrics of web success and see if your company is measuring up.

    Your Analytics Tool May Be Lying to You

    Now that you’re familiar with the basics of web metrics, let’s take a slightly more contextualized look. While the analytics data can give a good indication of where you are succeeding or failing, it’s important to look at it within the scope of other numbers in your industry.

    The 375 Million Active Searchers You`re Probably Ignoring

    iTunes is the go-to resource for finding podcasts, videos and other media, and if you’re not making your presence know there you could be missing out on a huge chunk of the action.

    Practical Tips to Make Your Blog More Useful & Interactive

    TopRank’s Lee Odden shares a wide array of effective blogging tidbits from the #smchat and #nptalk social media chats.

    Over Optimizing Your Website, What to Look Out For

    While making your site search engine-friendly is an important part of maintaining an online presence, “keyword stuffing” or other forms of over-optimizing can be the death knell for your rankings. Read up on the best ways to keep up a strong site while avoiding being penalized.

  • Big List Of SEO Blogs … These are Blogs You Should Read!

    cast my net for collecting SEO blogs
    I cast a big net in asking all of our employees for their favorite internet marketing blogs

    We often tell our junior-most employees to read SEO blogs to expand their knowledge. (I have heard this instructed to our freshest faces about 3 times in the last week.) The more experienced staff is humble enough to say in a very matter-of-fact voice, “I don’t have all of the answers.” And in this industry where things change daily, keeping up with the latest has to be an active task by many.

    I was trying to compile a list of SEO related blogs for our newer employees to read and keep up with to help them grow their knowledge and hopefully to stir some entrepreneurial spirit. We love when we hear,

    “Hey, I was reading about this thing, and I was thinking we can try it for that client X.”

    Reading industry blogs and innovative thinking, trying to apply the things you’re reading about are all good things we encourage.

    To compile this all encompassing list o’ blogs, I cast a big net in asking all of our employees for their favorite internet marketing blogs. Wowsa! We have a lot of folks around here truly interested in the industry and in honing their own skills. I got a lot of response by a lot of team members. I have quoted 4 of our contributors because their responses were the most comprehensive.

    Joseph Henson, our resident Local Search Marketing Specialist, kicked off the responses with a fairly comprehensive list.SEO blogs from Joseph

    Doug Thomas loves research and has a real interest in the technical side of things, i.e. he likes to see what makes things tick. SEO bogs from Doug

    He mixed it up with a list of blogs clearly showing what he’s interested in and gotta love his commentary:

    Our fearless leader, Will Scott, added a few more …  SEO blogs from Will

    Julia Ramsey is our go-to for excellent writing, great editing, and extraordinary blogging. SEO blogs from Julia

    She threw in a few more blogs worthy of our list:

    We inspired Will with our list of reading sources, and in that inspiring light, he created a Google Reader bundle which should allow you to grab the whole group. Thanks, Will, for making it easy for the world to keep up with the latest and greatest in SEO!

    If you read one of the above blogs, we are interested in your feedback.  Or if you regularly read an SEO or internet marketing blog that is not listed here, please let us know. We would love to check it out!

     

    (Thanks to Brian http://www.flickr.com/photos/briangratwicke/ for the net casting image – nice pic!)

  • Online Reviews and Reviewers: Using Yelp’s Messaging Features

    I discussed the value of online reviews in my previous blog post — check it out here: The Importance of Online Reviews: What Your Customers Really Think.

    I’d like to delve more deeply into the subject to discuss the ways in which a business owner can use reviews in a proactive manner. Since you’re obviously already following the best practices I described in my last post, I won’t go into depth about them here.

    If you are actively involved in your online presence, it’s likely you have heard of Yelp! If not, see below for an introduction to the variety of tools that are available to business owners. It’s brief and very informative!

    Now that you have been formally introduced to the wonderful world of Yelp! I’d like to talk about using the messaging feature discussed in the video.

    We will dive a bit deeper into the advantages briefly discussed in step 3 & 4 and 7 & 8.

    Take some time to read all of the reviews that are on your Yelp! business page. When reading comments:
    • Be patient and diplomatic
    • Do not take complaints personally
    • Treat each review as a valuable source of feedback and a way to improve your businesses success

    Once you have taken the time to read the comments, decide which Yelpers you wish to reach out to. If there is a trend that you are able to pick up on while reading the reviews, you can bet potential customers will do the same. For example, examining a restaurant’s page with multiple reviews commenting that the ambiance is loud or the service is slow, readers might come to the (quite reasonable) conclusion that your restaurant is, in fact, noisy and badly-staffed. Now you know what you need to address and get to work.

    There are two different types of messaging options; Send a Private Message or Post a Public Comment.

    Yelp Online Reviews

    Yelp! allows Biz.Yelp Accounts to contact up to 5 people per day. Use these to either post public comment responding to reviews or send private messages to individual reviewers. Below are the top 3 things you can do on Yelp!

    1. Respond Publicly to Negative Reviews – For reviews that speak to issues that may have existed and been corrected since the review was placed. Thank the reviewer for their feedback and inform them of the changes that you or your staff took to address and fix the problem mentioned. Invite the guest back to experience the positive changes first hand. Do this publicly so that everyone that reads the reviews sees an active business owner that is concerned about customers’ experience with them.

    2. Respond Privately to Individual Guest Issues – For those reviewers that had issues associated with their individual experience respond via private message. If a guest complained that their meal was cold, send a private message apologizing for the cold food and invite them to come back to have a free sample of your wares. Be mindful that you are not allowed to solicit reviews on Yelp!, though. Obviously you can hope the reviewer has a better second experience and updates their original review; however, you can not directly request that they do so. I recommend that you use the private message feature for this type of complaint. You do not want to give the impression that everyone that goes to your business and makes a complaint will get something for free.

    3. Be active – Offer promotions, sales, or information on your Yelp! business page to encourage people to come back on a regular basis. An active business owner will go a long way to create engagement and interaction with their reviewers.

    These are just some of the main ways to reach out to Yelp! users. The simplest way to think about how to interact with these reviews is how you would respond if they had directed the review in person. How would you respond? What would you say? What would you do? Think about it and respond in the manner you deem appropriate; keep it professional and positive. The tools are free, so why not?

  • 5 For Friday — Links, Stories & Posts For Your Weekend

    SEO Secrets, Tips & Tricks – Why it’s Not Worth Your Your Time — Graywolf’s SEO

    Everyone wants to say they have a surefire array of “secret ingredients” that will launch your website to optimization superstardom — but like most things in life, it’s not that easy. Michael Gray takes on the phenomenon, eschewing the tips-and-tricks way of thinking for old-fashioned discovery of what works, why it works, and how to make it work again when something goes wrong.

    Google Points Out 5 Common SEO Mistakes [VIDEO] — Marketing Pilgrim

    The rumblings of a Google algorithm update are now impossible to ignore, and you should be preparing your site for the shift. The update targets “overly-optimized” sites — however, even if your website is unique, solid and purposeful, this informative video is worth checking out for the detailed explanations and helpful strategies that lead Google developer Maile Ohye offers up.

    Social Media Disconnect: It Matters, But We Have No Strategy — Small Business SEM

    A study carried out on high-ranking business executives shows a serious disconnect between the realization of the importance of social media, and the impetus to carry through with brand-building campaigns. Would the phenomenon be even more pronounced with small business owners?

    5 Interesting Pinterest Marketing Campaigns> — Mashable

    Pinterest is the new hotshot in social media establishments, drawing record-breaking growth numbers and unique visually-focused sharing. Check out some of the most notable campaigns in recent memory — getting any ideas for your own business?

    Netflix and Yahoo Pin Their Hopes on Original Content — Marketing Pilgrim

    Online video giant Netflix and has-been search engine Yahoo don’t seem to have much in common — except for their shared interest in web-only, direct-to-screen video. Find out what these companies are doing to revolutionize ad-free (but not revenue-free) video accessible to anyone with a connection, and pick up some tips for your own use along the way.

  • Where Do We Get Our News — the Source of Social Media or Social Media as Source?

    It’s always up for debate on what’s “newsworthy.” In the time before computers, newspaper and newscasts were the ones that dictated what was important in the world.  What they considered “news” and a “must-know” became what was published and what we did know.

    But now things are different — very different.  With social media sites like Facebook, and Twitter, we are seeing more and more that the applications of social media as news source are quickly growing. 

    Let’s take the recent death of singer Whitney Houston, for example. Within the first hour of her death, over two and a half million people tweeted about the tragic story, averaging about 1,000 tweets per second.  The traditional news outlet will not go live about such a story without proper verification, which takes precious time. By the time those outlets did go public, the story was “old news” to these two and a half million viewers: an entire 42 minutes late, in fact. Twitter was indisputably the first one to the finish line.

    This is a prime example of the growing collective consciousness caused by these sites. Think about how many followers each person may have, then think about how rapidly a story as gripping as a long-beloved singer’s tragic death can spread from person to person. While this system has its advantages in quickly disseminating stories, though, its speed can be a double-edged sword; Twitter rumor-mongering can spread like wildfire, with false reports of celebrity deaths and other incidents gaining legs where traditional journalism’s insistence fact-checking would have prevented the publication of such a story.

    Other “newsworthy” incidents that spread like fire at a gas station include the death of Michael Jackson, which averaged at about 493 tweets per second in 2009.  The announcement of Grammy-winning chanteuse Beyoncé’s pregnancy had one of the highest ever with 8,868 tweets per second. Now let’s take something like the death of Osama Bin Laden, who is obviously not in the entertainment industry. This incident let to an average of about 5,000 tweets per second. The list can go on.

    Can you imagine if another war would to start?  How quickly the world would know.  If Twitter was around in the 60’s, how fast would people Tweet about the death of JFK?  The landing on the moon?  The fall of the Berlin Wall? Single-source outlets and the “gatekeeping” of which stories are publicized are obsolete: all people need is a computer or a cell phone to have the entire web, with its intricacies and viewpoints and thousands upon thousands of stories at their fingertips.

    These sites are not only used for the quick spread of breaking news, but for event gathering as well. For instance, the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to have popped up overnight across America.  How did they do it?  It wasn’t thousands of dollars of advertising: Occupy Wall Street was a completely Internet-based movement.

    Using a great tagline, “We are the 99%,” Occupy Wall Street used tweets, Facebook events, and Youtube videos to get its message across.  The effect of such a movement will definitely go down in future generation’s history books.

    So let’s look at this from a business point of view: with the way that social media is evolving, how can marketers get themselves into the mix?  The answer is that they must find a way to get people to tweet, Facebook share and interact with their product, service, or brand the same way the social media consciousness does for events and topics it finds important.

    This is the future of getting your news heard and many successful businesses are already on top of this.  They’re using these social media networks to get themselves talked about.  Letting the consumer be the advertiser.  The more a business’s product or service is shared and spoken about via these networks, the more brand targeting and awareness they get.

    For example, on October 4th, 2011, millions tweeted and posted about the iPhone 4S.  Over seven thousand people alone posted something about Siri, the new voice assistant application.  Yes, Apple spent millions on advertising its obvious success — but a good chunk of the advertising work was being done for them by the social network community.

    So where can this go?  A stronger bond between companies and customers or celebrities and fans?  A greater union between the citizens of Planet Earth?  Time will tell, but the most important thing is to keep sharing, keep tweeting, keep posting, keep your place in social media — and the social web will evolve on its own.

    Right now, we are in a crucial time in human communications, when the entire world is more connected than ever before and information spreads at the blink of an eye.  Click like, share this post, or leave a comment — you’ll never know who you’ll connect with!

  • The Most Impactful Restaurant Review Directories (According to Google Data)

    Entrance to a restaurant in France

    We all know that online reviews are important because more and more potential customers are consulting them before they make a purchase decision; simultaneously, reviews are all over the place and popping up in web search results. Sometimes, even when someone searches for your business name, a review site is the first result. It makes sense, then, that you would need to manage your presence on these sites — but where to start?

    For those with limited resources who can’t find the time to manage all your listings (or if you’re just curious like me) I gathered a list of the most impactful restaurant review sites based on real data that I stole from Google observed in Google search results, rather than arbitrarily deeming one more important than the other.

    I decided the most impactful sites would be the ones that rank the highest on average, and show up the most often, in restaurant-related searches. To figure this out, I gathered a list of 583 keywords composed of [restaurant + city name] like [antoine’s new orleans] and [del fina san francisco] for restaurants in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New Orleans, New York and San Francisco. Then I used Advanced Web Ranking to run searches of these keywords in Google and record the information.

    In the chart below, the Average Rank column indicates how a particular domain was ranked, on average, for the 583 restaurant searches. (To see the full list of keywords and stats, check out the Google doc here). As you can see, Yelp is far and away the highest ranking, and therefore the most impactful.

    Domain Average Rank
    yelp.com 3.3
    opentable.com 5.3
    urbanspoon.com 7.1
    menupages.com 7.2
    tripadvisor.com 8.1
    citysearch.com 8.3
    zagat 9.7
    chow.com 11.4
    local.yahoo.com 12.4
    allmenus.com 13.3
    yellowpages.com 13.7
    gayot.com 13.9

     

    Yelp’s dominance isn’t only revealed in how high it ranks in the SERPs for these queries, but also in its share of the searches. A Yelp link was present in the top 20 results for 97% of these searches! The closest competitors are Urban Spoon (87%), Trip Advisor (77%), and City Search (73%). After Zagat at 66%, there is a huge drop off. See the chart below.

    Domain % Share of Searches
    yelp.com 97
    urbanspoon.com 87
    tripadvisor.com 77
    cityseearch.com 73
    zagat.com 66
    opentable.com 43
    local.yahoo.com 38
    menupages.com 36
    chow.com 26
    gayot.com 25
    allmenus.com 18
    yellowpages.com 18

     

    What all of this really means is that if you don’t know where to start, you should probably just start with Yelp, Open Table and Urban Spoon. Or, if you have a chain of restaurants that need immediate attention, start with Yelp, Urban Spoon and Trip Advisor, since those sites seem to have a presence on most SERPs.

    How high a review site ranks matters because it has the power to reach your customers before you do. I’ve blogged about this in the past: you need to tell your story in your words so that others don’t end up doing it for you because that can get ugly. Of course, the best way to do this is by having such a great product that no one can complain, but there’s always going to be the guy who gets really, really pissed when you don’t have black napkins.

    About the Data

    Please note that this is an extremely small set of keywords, and these are probably not statistically significant figures, since our sample is extremely small compared to all of the possible local restaurant searches in the United States (although, I still think the findings are meaningful, since the difference between Yelp and most of the other sites is consistently large). Also, as you can see on the Google doc, those aren’t live calculations, I did them in Excel and didn’t have time to convert them to doc formulas. Lastly, know that, of course there can be some bad data in here (perhaps a certain keyword didn’t turn up restaurant results, and therefore skewed the results). Feel free to point out any mistakes with my assumptions, data and calculations. Most of all, please chip in if you have a list of restaurant names and let me know which city they’re in, and I’ll update the information accordingly, as it was a lot more difficult to find a raw list of restaurant names than I thought it would be. Don’t forget to share you comments below!

  • The Yelp Review Filter is Broken

    A few months ago I came upon an EpicFail image that I found amusing. The image was of a supposed Google review. The review was actually a positive review, but it was the content that really grabs one’s attention:

    “Wendy’s SoNnNnNnN This place is BAWLIN’ yo. Chicken nuggitz be crispy like you never SEEN. I tried one and I was like ‘WHAAAAT! Are you serious Wendy?’ Mean girls workin’ the frier tho. This one chick wouldn’t let me holla. I was like ‘please you ugly anyway.’”

    I was intrigued. As the marketing guy for a pest control service, I love positive customer reviews. I love using them in marketing. Makes the job of marketing really easy. So I decided to hunt down this fantastic review and find out if Wendy’s was using it.

    Lo and behold, the review was actually found on Yelp… odd, since the original image was of a Google review. It is possible the reviewer was so ecstatic about his crispy chicken nuggets that he left the review on both Yelp and Google. It happens on rare occasions. Well to my astonishment this Yelper was an ELITE! Yes sir, Mr. Joseph W. is an Elite Yelper. No wonder the review was so fantastic!

    I decided to find where else in the Internet review world Joseph may have dropped this hyped up review. So I went back to the search engine and searched “Wendy’s SoNnNnNnN”. Most of the sites found were sites about this particular review, but were not the review. And then I stumbled upon a 2nd yelp page in the search. This 2nd page was not the same Yelp reviewer. Mr. Joseph? …Digging a little deeper, I found the following:

    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hamburgers-saint-paul-3
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-sunnyvale
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hamburgers-gainesville-5
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-new-york-5
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-waltham
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hamburgers-lawrenceville-2
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashion-hamburgers-oceanside
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-restaurant-la-mirada
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-portland-4
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-sunnyvale
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hambergers-restaurant-joliet (Note the spelling)

    11 duplicate reviews on Yelp. Different users. Different Wendy’s locations. All of these are showing and not being filtered. I was shocked. I was appalled.

    It’s a funny review. What’s the big deal?

    Yelp prides itself on their review filter. “We try to showcase the most helpful and reliable reviews… Not all reviews make the cut, and those that don’t are posted to a separate “Filtered Review” page. Filtered reviews don’t factor into a business’s overall star rating…”

    Why does this bug me? I understand that Yelp wants legit reviews. I do too. I think the world would be a better place if everyone were honest. But at times, this filter is dishonest. It cuts honest reviews. While some of these review filters are easy to spot and the rules easy to understand, there still seems to be this oddity about what reviews actually show up and what reviews don’t. I struggle with this because I’ve got some competing pest control companies with a higher Yelp review count and rating showing than Bulwark because of this review filter. If all reviews were to be counted I’d have both the highest rating and the highest number of reviews. And despite their statement of “Businesses cannot pay for favorable treatment,” the fact that a competing exterminator is a Yelp Advertiser leaves suspicion that the filter favors advertisers. But back to the matter at hand.

    Yelp is publishing all 11 of these fake reviews! Their filter is broken! Further more, they have deemed Joseph an “Elite Reviewer.” In my opinion, Joseph can no longer be trusted. Nor can the rest of these reviewers. It seems to me that if Yelp truly took this higher standard for reviews serious that all of these reviewers would be removed. Is calling for a removal of the users a little extreme? For those of us that must sit back and simply have faith in the Yelp review filter, this is a huge slap in the face.

    Thomas Ballantyne is the Director of Marketing for Bulwark Exterminating, although he prefers the title of “Pest Control Guy.” He frequents Online Marketing Conferences and on occasions speaks at events about small business marketing. His career at Bulwark has put him in the trenches of Local SEO, Reputation Management, Paid Search, Conversion Optimization, and Online Review Strategies. Outside of bug life, he enjoys family time with his lovely wife and five children. And he’s an avid “Board Gamer” ready for a game of Settlers anytime, anywhere. Find him on Twitter: @Thos003