Comments on: Asking for Reviews (Post Google Apocalypse)

By: Google Notes That Recent Review Take Downs Might Be Reversed | Understanding Google Places & Local Search

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 02:50:06 +0000

[...] This was in response to the spate of reports of reviews being taken down last week in what appeared like a reincarnation of the review spam algo from hell. [...]

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:50:00 +0000

It is considered manipulations of the review sites for a business to prompt clients to leave a review because the busniness will filter who they ask a review from; the business will not ask an uphappy client for a review.

Businesses that prompt clients for reviews probably have an obvious more amount of reviews than others in their niche. It is probably easy for the review sites to see what is a normal rate of reviews and what is the rate when businesses are prompting for reviews.

A more personal approach may be needed.

By: Andrew Huskinson

Andrew Huskinson — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:46:04 +0000

At the moment reviews should only be left on a customers own mobile phone using their wireless data provider or at home or a regular IPS they use.

And I would ensure the +Profile has got some Circles in and out, done some Posts and +1s and a few local drinkery and eatery posts.

By: Geordie Romer

Geordie Romer — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 01:40:30 +0000

Mike- I appreciate this in depth post and all the time you have been taking to respond to comments and queries. I sent an email out to a dozen past clients in hopes of getting a handful of Google reviews. My Microsoft clients all refused and clients who tried to look at the link I sent them on their mobile phones or Ipads were thoroughly confused. So far 3 reviews have popped up, 1 from a G+ user and 2 others. Crossing my fingers that they stay around.
I love the letter you created and will likely use something similar crafted for my real estate business. We don’t have Avvo, but Zillow is a great place to host reviews for those in the real estate vertical.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 20:37:28 +0000

Our practice uses a third party called Demandforce to run several aspects including emailing. We posted via df to our patients with a link and an incentive because I wanted some organic reviews. The response was amazing…we had 6 reviews instantly, some from establised G+ users and some registering to claim our offer. Next, we were hearing that folks couldn’t leave reviews, or left a review and it wouldn’t show up, and eventually all reviews were gone.

I couldnt understand this until running across these post.

Those are my facts…I don’t know if I answered your questions thought.

By: Bob Sommers

Bob Sommers — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:17:38 +0000

Chris
Do you believe your issue with Google reviews was based on “providing a link” to your review page or because the people leaving reviews were newbies?

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:58:13 +0000

Thanks for sharing this because I now know what happened when I provided a link for my patients to review our practice on Google plus.

By: Tina

Tina — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:19:01 +0000

Mike,

What can a business do when google is preventing new reviews from being posted as well as removing our response to a negative review? Google informed us that they would not remove a review but we can respond to it. I posted a very professional response and the next day google removed it. They are not allowing us to write any responses to any reviews. I feel like the more I contact google, the more they penalize us. How can a business defend itself if google will not allow them to respond to inaccurate reviews?

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:08:20 +0000

John

You misread Google’s motives and intentions especially around reviews. Yes, they want folks to sign up for a G+ account but not so they can leave reviews but so that Google can understand more about them, make the users life easier the next time they want to use a Google product and suggest to that user the next step.

They, however, DO NOT want reviews from these newbies. That is crystal clear. Asking your users to go to Google is disrespectful of the user and clearly will lead to a high percentage of review take downs. You are the one cause the confusion by asking newbies to go to Google and go through this process.

I always say that a review at CitySearch is worth INFINITELY more than a review that doesn’t show up at Google.

You need to be totally transparent with the user, give them options as to where they leave a review. If you give them several reasonable choices including Google only the ones that are comfortable with the Google review way will make that choice. Their review is very likely to stick.

You will end up with just about as many reviews at Google but many more reviews everywhere else. You win, the client wins and Google gets what they want.

This is not fast but over the next two or three years you WILL have a significant number of reviews EVERYWHERE.

By: John Wilson

John Wilson — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 21:40:06 +0000

We worked hard to get 12 new reviews under the Google Plus – we had two Google User reviews over 3 months.

We have gotten another 6 or 8 having been told by the customer or having seen them appear for a short while.

Now the Google algorithm keeps whittling away at the ones that have existed for a while until we only have Ten.

We have found it difficult to get customers to post comments to Google Plus, I think because they are not into “Social Stuff” and they wonder what they are getting into in the Google signup process. They wonder why they must also get an email account??

A confused mind will not act.

Most of our customers are mature adults.

Businesses should not be punished because their customers are not “into” the online Social Scene. Google, I believe, required a Google Plus account in order to get Google Places businesses to ask for the review, have new people get a Google Plus account to increase their numbers in the race with Facebook.

They get the account signups but deny the benefit of the review to the business which prompted the signup??

An active Google Plus account?? You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.

Surely it will get better with time.

John