• by Shankar Gupta , April 1, 2005

When choosing a moving company for a recent move from the Village to Harlem, this reporter turned to Google Local, which four weeks ago started incorporating reviews from CitySearch into its listings. One company, Integrity Movers, Inc., based in New York, returned in the results pages had 19 positive reviews. Impressive, but were they genuine? Or was it all part of some underground marketing campaign?

Although the flurry of positive reviews raised suspicion, Integrity Movers also seemed right for the job and the move turned out to be stress-free, as advertised. As the movers drove off, company manager Frank Amelio asked if the experience went well--which it did.

Then, about an hour after the moving men drove off, an e-mail from Amelio arrived. "Would you mind spending a few moments to leave feedback for us at the website: www.newyork.citysearch.com," the e-mail read. "Please write a short blurb about your experience. It would be greatly appreciated."

The direct solicitation of an online testimonial was somewhat surprising. But Amelio, whose family owns the business, said that it's standard operating procedure for him. Whenever a customer comes to the company via the Internet, he asks how the move went--and, if the experience was good, he solicits an online review. "Moving is a bad industry traditionally, like used car sales. Reputation is very important," Amelio said. "We're a family-run business, and we're on every job. And at the end, we want to make sure that everyone's happy."

Still, while it might make perfect sense to Amelio, the move raises the question of whether the growth of local search can survive this type of semi-guerilla marketing. As more and more small businesses begin to advertise on local search engines that link to reviews, the temptation to flood the sites with positive reviews likely will grow, said Greg Sterling, an analyst with The Kelsey Group.

If small business owners with less, well, integrity than Integrity Movers realize that free Internet advertising can be had in bulk by anyone with a lot of friends, a lot of family, or a lot of free time, searchers might see a general decline in the trustworthiness of the ratings systems, said Sterling

"I think there are two trends. First, there's increasing use of the Internet to find local information. Second, product feature reviews will be pretty broadly available," said Sterling. "That naturally tempts someone to try to game that system. As local businesses become more sophisticated, you may see that become a broader potential problem."

Ultimately, said Sterling, the responsibility lies with the search destination sites to make sure that the reviews that they deliver are genuine, be they positive or negative.

"I think that there needs to be some policing by the consumer destination," said Sterling. If a search engine were to discover that local businesses were flooding a review provider with fraudulent reviews, he said, it would be in their interest to find a new source.

At this point, however, small-and-medium business owners haven't yet begun to harness the potential power of local search and user reviews, said Sterling. "I don't think that kind of sophistication is very widespread," he said. "Some small percentage of Internet-savvy small businesses might be doing this, recognizing that consumers are going to be valuing that information. I think that by and large, it's not happening on any kind of scale."