Mike, I think this is a fascinating thread & thank you for contributing your considerable expertise to the discussion. It seems to me that too little attention has been paid to the G Local algo in the SEO community as a whole, despite its incredible importance since the advent of Universal search, and I am pleased that there is finally some discussion brewing around it.

Mike –
I’m glad you mentioned Tim’s post here. On a related, but slightly different subject, have you written specifically about Google reviews? I’d like to read more about them, whether from a tutorial or more abstract viewpoint. Or, perhaps you might know of someone who has written comprehensively about them? Yesterday was the first time I’d heard of Tim and I get excited whenever I see someone else covering local issues.

I love Local SEO…it’s so new and neat and can mean so much at the small business level. I’m really thrilled to hear you are finding business opportunities to use your skill at this, Mike. That’s super news!
Miriam

Hi Mike,
I’d like to learn more about eliciting Google reviews from users, I think. Though so many people have Google accounts, others don’t, and inspiring people not only to create a Google account and also write a review for a business seems like a tall order.

My gut feeling would be that Google is going to give the most credit to their own system (just as you are saying), so this seems a very important thing to become educated about. The first step I can think of is simply to write some reviews of local businesses, just to become familiar with the system as I’ve yet to actually leave a Google review for a business. But after that, I’d like to learn more. I wonder if there are any statistics about how many people are actually going to maps and leaving these review. I’d like to see data on that.

Sorry if I’m being too broad, Mike. I’m just eager to learn more about this subject in general!
Miriam

Well my theory is that the seeds of the answer exist in the question. That seems to be true for you!

The review is showing up for me and I just marked it as helpful. Was this the first or the second review that you did?

Mike

Thanks to both Mike & Cathy for looking at those! Thanks for the kind remarks and ‘helpful’, too.

Mike, the fabric store was the second place I reviewed. I did the pizza place first. That’s funny that they were sort of popping in and out of existence.

I need to think of some local businesses I have NICE things to say about…I don’t want my reviewer profile to look grouchy, but sometimes I remember bad experiences more readily than good ones. I’d even go so far as to say I’d be quicker to write a review that serves as a warning to others if I’ve had a bad experience, than to take the time to write a review of praise, unless I was really, really impressed with a business. The three reviews of hotels I’ve done on tripadvisor in the past have been due to horrific experiences.

On the other hand, if a business I liked went out of their way to ask me to write a review of them, I’d be likely to do that. The psychology of all of this is pretty fascinating, isn’t it?

Thanks, both!
Miriam