August 5, 2010
Google’s recent introduction of the ability for SMBs to respond to reviews is a welcome and surprising turn of events in the Places arena. Reviews have long been a sore point with businesses that often feel wronged by the review procedures at Google. Many SMBs think of the current arrangement as unfair and they rarely understand the why or how of Google’s non response to review issues.
I asked Cathy Hillen Rulloda, a florist from Anaheim active in local marketing, what she percieved as issues with the way that Google handled reviews and she noted that while the ability to respond to reviews was long overdue, other serious issues remained:
- No ‘Amazon-like’ “real name” indication to add credibility to reviews.
- Unlimited sock puppet accounts are being created by malicious folks and spammers.
- No simple/easy way to get malicious reviews (where folks made no purchase and/or are competitors) removed. I realize a reader will likely detect a review like that as ‘inappropriate’ but far more eyes go to the overall star rankings than to the individual reviews.
- Too long an update period from third-party review sites. A malicious/bogus review can get deleted from the original site (CitySearch, Yahoo, etc…) but still display on Google for up to three months. This has happened to me and it was completely frustrating.
Clearly she is not alone in her thoughts on reviews. If you peruse the forums you will find a multitude of complaints about reviews in these areas:
- How to Remove Reviews
- Missing Reviews/ Where have my reviews gone?
- Flagging Reviews
- Fake Reviews
It is amazing how little has changed. What is fascinating about her responses is that they are many of the same issues that I ranted about in September of 2008: (more…)
August 4, 2010
A reader alerted me to a problem with Google Places (aka LBC) where a record is currently unable to be created or edited and the lister receives the message: “Error on Page”. A number of posters (~30) have noted the problem in the forum over the past 36 hours.
Here are a sampling of the posts taken from my RSS feed:
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Google’s Joel Headly has responded to the posters, acknowledged the issue and consolidated the postings here.
Apparently, the problem is IE specific and a switch to Chrome allows the editing to continue:
Thanks for letting us know. This issue may be unique to Internet Explorer. We’re currently looking into a fix now. You can consider it a known issue at this point. It may take us a bit to put a fix into the product. For now, the best work around mentioned is to use another browser (people have reported success with Chrome & Firefox).
I’m going to merge other threads with this one.
We already can reproduce the issue in Internet Explorer 7. If folks see it in other browsers, please let us know.
This issue though brings to light a larger issue: The search function in the forums suck. The reader who asked about the problem was surprised that I was able to identify so many with the same problem so quickly. She noted: “Hmmm I went to the help section and searched on “error on page message” and returned items from 2009. I’ll have to check and see what I’m doing wrong here.” (more…)
Small businesses are engaged (and often enraged) with reviews on their Google Places Pages. Understandably, the SMB posters at the Places Help forums have a great deal invested in their businesses and the reviews about their business. As a result they often respond with great passion about Google’s handling of them. The forums are rife with over the top pleas, cajolings and complaints about reviews on their Places Page.
Many SMBs don’t really like reviews. For many it is the first time they are accountable to outside forces over which they feel that they have no control but wish that they did. Historically they have responded to this tension by lashing out (sometimes justified and others not) at Google with their frustrations.
In my sales days, I was taught that objections were in fact buying signals. Complaints by SMBs about reviews seem to fall into that category and to me indicate that they are ready to actively engage with Google’s new feature allowing them to respond to customer reviews.
It is my sense that they won’t just respond but that they will actively respond. The passion that SMBs have about reviews will lead them to engage their customers in Places for better or worse. This engagement will incent more of them to claim their listings and monitor their reviews in a more active and even compulsive way.
Reviews have always been social in nature. In some respects they may be a business’s best social forum as the (hopefully happy) customers do most of the work. Yelp and before them others like CitySearch created social platforms around the review process and the business response. But because of the visibility of the 7 – Pack, Google Places will capture the attention of SMBs in a way and with a volume that quickly become significant. It will lead to an ongoing, interesting (and possibly often bizarre) interchange between businesses and their customers.
Because of the potential for volume and visibility it may make reviews more “social” than ever and could very well become a primary territory for SMBS to interact with the world around them. Has Google possibly created their first successful foray pushing Maps to become a Social platform?
Reviews have long been a sore spot between SMBs and Google. But Google Places has added a new feature that will go part of the way in providing SMBS salve for some of their “review wounds”. Google is now allowing business owners to respond directly to reviews.
Starting today, if you’re a verified Google Places business owner, you can publicly respond to reviews written by Google Maps users on the Place Page for your business. Engaging with the people who have shared their thoughts about your business is a great way to get to know your customers and find out more. Both positive and negative feedback can be good for your business and help it grow (even though it’s sometimes hard to hear). By responding, you can build stronger relationships with existing and prospective customers. For example, a thoughtful response acknowledging a problem and offering a solution can often turn a customer who had an initially negative experience into a raving supporter. A simple thank you or a personal message can further reinforce a positive experience. Ultimately, business owner responses give you the opportunity to learn what you do well, what you can do better, and show your customers that you’re listening.
Before writing your first response, we recommend reading our handy tips on how to respond to reviewers. Then take a stab at responding by following these instructions. If you have not yet verified ownership for your business on Google, please visit Google Places to claim your listing.
If the business listing is claimed and you are logged in as the same user that claimed the listing you are now presented with an option to respond directly to users reviews.
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Hopefully this is a first step towards providing business owners both more understanding of how reviews work as well as tool for dealing with them in a positive way. It is a feature that will be widely accepted by business owners and moves Google’s Places one step closer to the ideal of a SMB reputation management environment.
Responding to reviews is a double edge sword and can, if not thoroughly thought out, cause many more problems than it solves. A well planned approach to responding to reviews is absolutely critical.
August 3, 2010
Over the past few months a number of clients and readers have emailed me and asked if Google ever called to check on listings. Apparently callers (often from India) would ask the business for information like street address. The callers when queried would claim to be from Google but would refuse to provide call back information to the businesses. The calls struck an odd note with the businesses and when asked I advised them that historically Google had never made such calls and that the calls were likely from scammers.
In May, in an effort to be clean up business listing quality, Google announced that community edits would require verification before they would be integrated into the listing results. Apparently these “consumer calls” looking for location information are in fact from Google and part of this program. Google has confirmed that as part of that additional level of verification, they have been calling businesses to find out business name and address. Google noted the following to me:
In some cases, to verify business information, we’ll make phone calls to find out the business name and address. However, we will never make an unsolicited call asking you to provide specific account information, passwords or other sensitive information over the phone.
If asked, the person will identify themselves as calling with Google Maps.
