Most business owners I know HATE Yelp because of their strong review filter and their own listing is loaded with complaints from business owners – http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco. I think Yelp has made a mistake by not listening to the business owners and I think Google is much smarter and won’t repeat their mistake (I hope…)

Given Google’s less than stellar handling of reviews, it would make sense to archive them off line and use them for testimonials if there were to disappear from Google and the client is in need of additional testimonials.

Idea / question: would you say there’s anything to be said *against* Barbara’s putting all the reviews and reviewers’ names into a spreadsheet (or Word doc, or whatever), so that she/you can mark them up as hReview testimonials in case Google taketh the reviews for good?

Obviously it’s unlikely the reviews will vanish for good (usually only temporarily), and obviously you’d never turn the reviews into testimonials on the website as long as the reviews are safe & sound on the Places page.

But just in case the reviews do get beamed up by Scotty some day, it seems prudent to shell them away, so that you could at least mark them up on the testimonials page and get the benefit of those nice stars showing up on the SERPs. It would be a partial loss, rather than a complete one.

The top part of your blog piece is true for our smb’s in general: Google delivers the business. And frankly as in the case of your client, Google sends lots more business than the other search engines or IYP’s and most other entities.

Google Giveth

In fact as an smb I worry about the over dependence on Google as a marketing/advertising source for business. I do it in a general sense. I never want to be too dependent on one source.

If our visibility and rankings on Google tanked most of our smb’s would be in serious trouble. OTOH, try as we do, and as much as we do…in this day and age….it is frankly difficult to generate extensive lead sources as effectively as Google. Our businesses are very different than the jewelry store…but search and google are very dominant for many many different types of businesses.

Google Taketh

Oh my…reviews up…and reviews missing. Correct info–then incorrect info. Places….what a detailed oriented difficult world. Google doesn’t make it easy…as its explanations and guides as to how to get things done are not written for the normal lay person, let alone people with a lot of SEO experience or even Places Experience.

There is no single source to easily get information. Frankly, if I claim a listing in places..why can’t they send me information on how to work through the idiosincracies with regard to Places. That would make sense.

All in all….they do send more business than they have created problems…but when the problems occur they are the most confounded non responsive big black box you could find. UGH!!!!

But all in all a very well rounded review of the pluses and minuses associated with Google.

You all make my point. Christ if Barbara is upset over one or two imagine the rage that she would feel if she lost as many as Mike’s clients.

Google handles reviews as data points that in aggregate provide context to the listing. Each business owner views each and everyone of them as personal validation. Until google fixes that SMBs will have the negative experience at the forefront of their thoughts.

I always explain google’s approach to reviews and encourage folks to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep getting more.

I am though continually surprised that SMBs haven’t yet figure out that the game isn’t review count but the credibility that real reviews bring.

It is fascinating that google has yet to shake the SMB review blues while Yelp, that went thru an equally bad review fiasco, has managed to put it behind them.

You have to believe that google is both aware And working on a solution. We can only hope that it includes significantly more transparency AND the right for an SMB to file grievances and have them listened to.

So the moral of the story is…. when you want the reviews, google removes them. When you don’t want them… you can’t get rid of them!

@mike B – Thanks for that FAQ link. Just what I was hoping for.

And then the comments come like this one.. “If they are going to lose our real reviews we should just make a bunch of fake ones to replace them.”

and my place by google’s rules advice starts going in one ear and out the other form them.