Sam Schneiderman, broker owner of Greater Boston Home Team is our Monday guy. Today he discusses online the accuracy of online reviews.

If you read this blog, chances are that you also use online reviews to help you decide what products to buy and who to do business with. I do, but since I started receiving emails like the one below every 3-4 weeks, I approach those reviews a bit more skeptically.

Below is an actual email (complete with missing words and misspellings) that I have received at least 3 times over the past few weeks. I have taken out the link to the company to comply with editorial guidelines:

“Google is now using business reviews to determine business ranking. People are trashing companies with reviews, Complaint sites and Blogs. We can help you defend your company by posting positive Reviews, Blogs and creating Websites to take over Search Results and control what people see about your company. How does posting positive reviews help in your businesses Google ranking? 1. Positive reviews increase your business rank by linking important and relevant websites to your website. 2. A constant stream of positive reviews improves your online reputation. 3. Positive reviews drive traffic to your business. 4. Positive reviews restore a tarnished reputation by pushing down negative reviews and links. 5. Helps protect against competitors or anyone else from attempting to run your ranking.” Tired of review sites? Hire us to knock them off the front page of Google under your search term. Our company has been in the business of taking over the first page of google for our clients for 8 years and knocking off complaint sites. We can do the same for your company and review sites. We will create special websites and blogs and link them to the 15 thousand websites we already have. These websites will knock the review sites away and replace them with content you control.”