I have some clients that have 8 or 9 mentions of “other” sites with reviews on them including the clients own site in the “Reviews from around the web section” of their plus listing.

I just takes a system and a consistent way of asking each customer to leave a review for the business. Time works to the greatest advantage; not the, how many reviews can I get on my clients plus page in the shortest period of time.

Yes everyone is having trouble but just because its hard doesn’t mean its not worth doing.

@Marie
Glad you enjoyed… stop here first next time.

All of your questions are certainly good indicators but not the folks that seem to be frequenting this blog. I recognize that it is bad form to make fun of my own readers, but all too many of them had actually posted or emailed the questions that I ended up using.

If you look at the last three reviews in this review corpus you will see that the average review length is 162 words (878 characters) on average with the longest coming in at 291 words (it runs 1569 characters). So much for the need for brevity. In one (mine), I mention the city of Buffalo twice. And Barbara and her assistant’s names are each mentioned in one of the other reviews…

Clearly points 1,3,4 and 6 are out the window. I have no disproof of #2 or #5 but they seem suspect. As to #7 it is likely that reputable, reliable reviewers can share an IP address in certain circumstance. But the circumstances are very limited and likely to a lead to take downs for other reasons. Thus it doesn’t usually make a lot of sense to do.

Need evidence that there is still plenty of ignorance surrounding this topic? I copied this directly from a popular industry forum posted 2 hours ago by a vendor:

“Yes, Google is filtering the heck out of reviews. It’s hard to get them to stick these days. I agree many people looking for cars trust Google, but there are other ways to get reviews in front of car buyers.

Here’s a few tips we give our clients when submitting reviews for and in behalf of customers:

Here are some tips to improve chances for sticking at Google+

1. Only make it one sentence long, keeping it between 60-200 characters.
2. Don’t mention the company name.
3. Don’t mention any names period; e.g. “Dr.Smith was great”.
4. Don’t mention the city or state..basically, don’t say anything of value.
5. Here is an example of a review that is sticking almost every time ” I love this dentist and when I bring my kids here they really like the staff”
6. Anything more than that seems to be wasting keystrokes.

7. Never submit a review from the same computer or IP address

Google’s filters are on high awareness. If you’re interested in a collection process that will automatically stream them to your website, visit (url removed to protect the guilty from themselves)”

If you decide to launch Blumenthal’s Wall of Shame, please, let me know.

A couple more to add to the list:

1) Are you convinced that one negative review will be catastrophic for your business?
2) Do you write your own reviews?
3) Have you hired a company to post Google reviews on your behalf?

I checked the review status of Blumenthals in google.com

Currently when I searched on Blumenthals Olean, NY there was no accompanying map. So I went to Google Maps.

Blumenthal’s has 34 reviews, and a PERFECT rating of 30 on the Zagat scale.

When I searched for other “computer repair” businesses in Olean, NONE of them had reviews.

You don’t have more than TWICE as many…you have an infinite more of them…than all combined!!!!

Even a shnook like me under my real name gave you an EXCELLENT rating.

Okay: The above observation is somewhat facetious and an anomaly. From scanning the reviews it appears that most (maybe all) addressed your “local services” rather than computer repair so its not really relevant to your comments vis a vis “stressing about reviews and having more than twice as many as any competitors.

Still, suppose Google’s algorithmic review of reviews included smacking down all sites with a ranking of 30

Hey those engineers are far from perfect!!!