Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Which Restaurant Review sites are used by Google Maps?
Several weeks ago I did some research on which directories Google Maps referenced to provide details for their local search.
Matt McGee of Small Business SEM suggested looking at which review sites were used as well. I took the same approach and analyzed which sites were used to provide review/rating detail to Google Maps. Here is the summary of the list in alphabetic order:
| Review Site | Total Reviews |
| ChefMoz.org | 10 |
| Dine.com | 4 |
| Dine.com | 39 |
| Frommers.com | 3 |
| Insiderpages.com | 17 |
| Judysbook.com | 36 |
| MobilTravelGuide.com | 1 |
| Mytravelguide.com | 43 |
| Travelocity.com | 22 |
| Travelpost.com | 98 |
| Tripadvisor.com | 93 |
| Yahoo.com | 78 |
| Yelp.com | 2 |
Several observations and some additional details:
-The oldest review dated to the year 2000
-The newest review was dated October 7, 2006
-The hotels that have restaurants have significantly more reviews although not necessarily of their restaurants
-Some review sites like travelpost.com and tripadvisor.com are exclusively hotel review sites and probably should be ignored by anybody in the restaurant business
-CitySearch does not show up in the Buffalo results but I have seen it elsewhere and I think that Yahoo kick started their reviews site with CitySearch results.
Here is the summary by total reviews provided (which gives some indication of which sites are the most significant players):
| Review Site | Total Reviews |
| Travelpost.com | 98 |
| Tripadvisor.com | 93 |
| Yahoo.com | 78 |
| Mytravelguide.com | 43 |
| Dine.com | 39 |
| Judysbook.com | 36 |
| Travelocity.com | 22 |
| Insiderpages.com | 17 |
| ChefMoz.org | 10 |
| Dine.com | 4 |
| Frommers.com | 3 |
| Yelp.com | 2 |
| MobilTravelGuide.com | 1 |
Clearly reviews hang around for a long time. It’s a good reason to not have a bad one, or even a mediocre one.
By the same token, reviews are not updated all that frequently. There were only a few reviews from this fall and most were from 2005 and early 2006. I am running another experiment on Yelp & Citysearch to see how long it takes Google to pick up newly minted reviews. In the case of CitySearch, reviews were added last May (7 months ago) and have still not shown up in the Google results. I started the Yelp experiment 4 weeks ago with still no appearance in the Google results.
This long delay in updating reviews should reinforce the importance of getting good reviews ALL the time.
This first chart plots total reviews against rankings. As you can see there is a pretty good correlation between the two.
The second chart plots total reviews and total stars on the same axis against ranking. It is interesting to note (a disclaimer: I am not statistician) that there seems to be a higher correlation between rank and volume than rank and quality.
I have done some aggregate analysis that I will post later in the week.
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
Comments
12 Comments
Hi Mike,
A quick list of some of the review sites I saw locally, and then in NYC:
ChefMoz.org
Dine.com
Judysbook.com
Yelp.com
Citysearch.com
Yahoo.com
Citysearch.com
Travelpost.com
Travelocity.com
RestaurantRow.com
Insiderpages.com
MobilTravelGuide.com
Mytravelguide.com
Nymetro.com
Frommers.com
Gayot.com
Menupages.com
NewYorkCity.com
New York restaurants had a lot more reviews – not surprisingly. Toronto and Montreal and London had significantly less reviews showing for sites near the top of search results.
There has to be a better way to collect information about what review sites are being used. It looks like regional sites are included whenever availabe.
Just from my little survey of sites, it does look like Yelp and Citysearch are two of the top places that Google includes reviews from, though.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, Dec. 13, 2006
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:…
[…] In Part 1 of this series I review which directories Google is using in creating their Local Listing for Restaurants, in Part 2 I looked at their sources for reviews and ratings and its impact on ranking. In this third installment I will review the aggregate results of all data Google uses in providing information for the Local Listing in the restaurant industry Google Map’s ranking algorithim is complicated. This summary reviews its sources and from that one can glean some ideas about what influences ranking. Clearly though the underlying rules rely different weighting and factors that have yet to be determined. In fact it is clear that Google Maps and Google Organic weight the data differently. My simplified analysis does not (and can not) establish definitively what these relative weights are. It can however point us to the data sources that Google is using and perhaps allow us to develop models for improving rankings. Here is a summary all the details that Google Maps captured for the search Restaurant Buffalo, NY on each listing that I analyzed: […]
Bill-
Thanks for you data.
This list is by no means exhaustive. It represents that which is used on a small sample and in one market only. This needs to be expanded and if time allows I will do so next week. If anyone wants to help on this project let me know and we can parcel out the work.
Mike
[…] Some good data from Mike Blumenthal, who did some digging through Google Maps to see where they get their restaurant reviews and where they get the restaurant listing data. […]
WOW – this is great data – my company specializes in SEM for hospitality websites and this information is a great backup for our position that the more reviews you have, the better off you are.
Thanks for the compilation and I know I’ll be referring a few clients here!
~Carrie
Carrie
Thanks for stopping by.
Mike
[…] The first is Google My Reviews whereby a logged in Google user can find all of his or her reviews made on Google properties. Given the role that reviews currently play in Google Maps this will (at some point) will obviously affect local ranking. […]
[…] rating on local rankings. In research done last year, it seemed that the quantity of reviews had significantly more impact on ranking than the quality of […]
I’m not sure what the bloggers purpose for this site is… so pardon me if I am OT, but I appreciate these lists of review sites provided above. I am a casual traveler and I like to do a lot (read: LOT) of research before visiting a new locale. Planning a trip to Alaska in June 09, I discovered that there are really not many good reviews of restaurants online – regardless of the volume of sites and reviews. I’ve made it my purpose, when not traveling, to write reviews about restaurants in my area (Greater KC MO) so that hopefully other travelers will be better informed. Your list of which review sites pick up on Google is my target now. I’m writing a review once and then posting it on several sites. So, thanks for the nerd-work, thanks for the the list, and if you ever get to my area look up Smokehouse BBQ and do your mouth a favor.
We launched a restaurant website for Ireland in 2009. Several reviews have been added. The reviews are not being picked up by google. Anyone know if there are criteria to be met for the reviews to be picked up.?
@Paddy
Sorry, did not read your post carefully. Historically Google has only taken reviews from sites with whom that had some sort of data sharing agreement and required fairly large volumes of reviews. They have recently announced support for hReview formatted reviews but still apparently are requiring some screening before scraping the reviews. See my recent post: Google Announces Full Support for Microformats in Local for more details.
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