As local customer reviews become a more important element of local search result algorithms, how can the search engines, the review sites, and the businesses prevent the spam reviews or otherwise maintain the quality of the content?

That’s a key question from the audience at the #SMX panel on local search engines.

Microsoft Bing Product Manager Mikko Ollila is participating with speakers from Yelp and Google.

An audience member pointed out that businesses start to offer coupons for customers who write reviews. The moderator, Greg Sterling, of Sterling Market Intelligence, pointed out that there is a continuum of behavior that eats at the credibility of reviews. Even businesses who ask customers to write a review if they enjoyed the service.

At Yelp, businesses are advised not to solicit reviews.

There is ongoing, constant machine learning that determines whether the reviews are being seen as valuable by the searchers, Mikko told the audience. “This is an iterative process. We’ have ways of tracking how much utility and how much satisfaction the results drive. If the landscape changes to the point that reviews don’t drive utility and satisfaction, our results will change.”