19 SEO companies fined for creating fake reviews.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Dale Brose: Glad to see this
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  Yasser Mohamed: This is good news, for all us small business owners out there legitimately ; seeking good reviews from real live customers. I have a lot of customers tell me they like my website but it was the testimonials from past customers that sold us to them - they are powerful - but could become meaningless if others are buying fake ones, and customers get wind of it - they will start to distrust reviews.
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  Dale Brose: It's also good news for Digital Advisors like myself that try to teach business owners that there are no short cuts in the new review ecosystem, no matter what people are trying to sell them.  ;I often just end up shaking my head when I hear a business owner trying to take a shortcut or not wanting to put time or effort into building a strategy to engage customers to generate genuine reviews.
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  Dale Brose: Google calls us "Trusted Digital Media Advisors".  ;But it only works when business owners trust us and our words of warning.
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  Justin Y: Fake reviews will never go away. Google has been pretty good catchy them though, especially when all of the reviews are coming from the same IP. Dummies, haven't they heard of proxies? 
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  Arseniy Bolotsko: +Justin Y ;Hey its hard to come by a proxy that hasn't been blacklisted. HideMyAss subscription can only give you so many options
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  Dale Brose: No, fake reviews may never go away. Maybe just that business owners will wise up and stop buying services that sell them.
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  Justin Y: +Arseniy Bolotsko there's a ton of proxies that aren't black listed unfortunately and plenty of other ways to cheat the system. Jailbroken iPhone, fake the location, fake the ip, wireless through multiple proxies. I doubt Google or other engines could catch everything. 
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  Arseniy Bolotsko: +Justin Y ;anyone who goes that far for a fake review, which won't matter much anyways, is an idiot or is very dedicated
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  Justin Y: +Arseniy Bolotsko lol, I agree.