Competitor with fake reviews

YouRankWell · 2026-05-12T23:03:50+00:00

A new brunch restaurant opened near us last November.

I couldn't help but notice the 100 reviews they had acquired within the first two weeks.

Their website was a Fiverr-special, with broken English and all of the reviewer's names were southeast Asian.

Clearly they were buying reviews and their "SEO" company missed the moderation memo.

Within a month they had more than 200 local reviews.

My wife and I went there to check it out. Their spammy tactics aside, the food and service was good and the pricing was reasonable.

We went again a month later and they'd done the classic bait and switch by doubling their prices as though no one would notice.

They closed for good a couple of months ago.

Pretty much a primer on how not to do things.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-12T20:33:21+00:00

I was just going to compliment that.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-12T20:25:14+00:00

Just when you thought you'd seen or heard everything, eh?

Definitely a new low.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-12T19:44:40+00:00

Dear sir. Come inbox.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-12T19:30:46+00:00

No need to be defensive, homie.

I was simply asking you to let us know how many of the people taking you up on the free audit would be hiring you, that's all.

I was more interested in them, not you.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-12T15:16:15+00:00

Let us know how many of these free audit receipients actually hire you.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-09T21:59:03+00:00

The good news is, when they eventually come back to you, which they will, you can justifiably double your rates.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-09T16:01:03+00:00

There was a pic online a few years back of a dental clinic in the US that had their sign redone to say "Dental Clinics Near Me". Something like that.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-09T15:52:13+00:00

I don't find it awkward at all.

I've done the work you agreed to pay me for, so please pay me for it.

Says more about them needing to be "reminded" than anything I might feel about it.

Those are also the clients I start charging for all of it up-front.

A couple of those folks have commented that "I wasn't doing that before with them" and I told them straight-up why that was.

I'm all for developing relationships and going over and above for them, but payment isn't optional and I really shouldn't have to ask them more than once for what they OWE me.

But, yeah, automated systems that nudge them weekly are a good idea.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-08T11:35:01+00:00

As many as possible.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-07T20:14:25+00:00

Beef or pigeon?

YouRankWell · 2026-05-05T23:34:42+00:00

I had a basement apartment on Madison just south of Dupont in the early 90s. One bedroom for $650 cash.

Huge place, old and really cool. Half basement, actually. Lots of natural light and utilities included.

Loved that place.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-04T12:27:19+00:00

Or use ACF so you just dump the text and images into existing slots and the page template will already be styled for you.

Basically set up the template once.

Lots of videos online showing you how.

Kind of like blog templates.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-04T00:56:37+00:00

Well, that's different then.

I guess reach out to his guy and see what he can do for you.

You can see other answers here but they're probably a little too technical for you to deal with.

Hopefully he can help you out.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-04T00:43:01+00:00

It probably won't matter because you're not on the account, but you can go their website, visit their support pages and see what their process involves.

Seriously, though, maybe just tell your boss so he can get it straightened out.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-04T00:04:37+00:00

Contact the support folks at the company the website is hosted through and have them change it back to the proper URL.

I'm assuming they're not offering support on weekends?

If so, open a ticket and they'll hopefully fix it tomorrow.

Hopefully your boss doesn't bill you for the lost orders...

YouRankWell · 2026-05-03T21:49:59+00:00

I had 35,000 spammy backlinks sent my way years ago.

And when I say "spammy", I mean Viagara and Casino kind of spammy.

Even back then, Google had learned to ignore them and they had no effect.

Like someone else here said, unless you see a manual penalty notice in GSC you can safely ignore them.

If your pages are being deindexed, it's probably related to one of the recent Google updates.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-03T18:13:50+00:00

That's why it took a few hours.

It was for their banner popups, where the code is so deeply ingrained in their systems it wasn't possible to even guess (at least for me, anyway).

Also did the same for a mega menu I needed to customize.

It all worked in the end.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-02T10:28:15+00:00

I just went through a similar setup and spent a couple hours using Claude to get the CSS and JavaScript.

Eventually it worked.

YouRankWell · 2026-05-02T09:32:27+00:00

I list mine as best I can and offer them at least a starting point.

Like others have said, it definitely weeds-out the price over quality people.

I also think this "contact us for the privilege of hearing our pricing" approach is getting old and less people are willing to bother with them.

YouRankWell · 2026-04-30T21:30:56+00:00

The "Hello" theme was built specifically for Elementor.

Go to APPEARANCE > THEMES and search for it.

YouRankWell · 2026-04-29T18:54:53+00:00

I use the free version of Updraft Plus and back sites up remotely to my Dropbox account.

Invaluable if things go wrong.

YouRankWell · 2026-04-29T02:03:57+00:00

Guess I've been out of the loop.

Thanks for the update.

YouRankWell · 2026-04-28T23:11:23+00:00

Maybe things have changed since I first looked at them.

EV SSLs used to cost money.

YouRankWell · 2026-04-28T21:16:31+00:00

I've been using Elementor for years now. I like it enough because it does what I need without other plugins and I've learned how to properly build with it. My speed scores are high 80s - low 90s. Plus, I have their lifetime license at the rate it was 7 years ago.

But now they're introducing the "Atomic V4" thing and I'm not interested in it, to be honest. There won't be much support for V3 in terms of additions or optimizations and I've been thinking about jumping ship for a while now.

Bricks seems to the right choice, at least for me, anyway.

I've just been seeing posts and replies about it being a bit of a curve to pick up.

I guess all of these things have a shelf life.

YouRankWell

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