ReviewBiz – Making Reviews Friction Free

I am a big fan of an ethical review solicitation process that smooths the path between customers and creating reviews. If reviews are going to reflect the overall impression of your business accurately, a broad sampling of your customers needs to participate and it needs to be easy. I think that the opportunity to easily …

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Google Places Upgrades Owner Review Response Feature

Owners responding to reviews is a volatile arena where most anything can happen. Despite discretion being the better part of valor, silence rarely is the option chosen. When the Google Places owner response feature was not functioning this week, this owner responded to a negative review with a review of his own: It appears that …

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Google Places: Google Confirms New Review Removal Practices

Google Employee Stephan S has just posted this in the Places Forum post to report “missing” reviews confirming that Google has started to remove reviews (bold is mine): As mentioned in this forum previously, we’re currently experiencing an issue that is preventing us from showing some reviews on Place pages. We’re working to correct this …

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Google Places: Selective Reviews Now Being Removed

Update: Google Confirms New Review Removal Practices Google appears to be actively removing some reviews from Places listings. Some of the recent problems of reviews being lost are clearly algo based and reports of lost reviews continue to pile up in the forums. But my poking around in Places indicates that there is more intentionality than bug …

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Google Places – Are Reviews Now Being Filtered?

Last week I wrote an article, Google Places – Reviewer Names No Longer Showing. Feature or Bug?, where I highlighted the fact that reviewer names were not showing on reviews on a business’s Places listing. I and a number of readers noticed that some names were showing and some were not. I received two reviews …

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Reviews: Lipstick on a Pig Leads to User Backlash

Reviews have become important. Having them helps with rank, the good reviews bury any negative comments and create higher averages. Good reviews and good rank lead to sales. I am a big believer in actively managing a review solicitation process. It is a winning combination if done correctly and respectfully of customer needs. The pressure …

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Google Places Upgrades Review Display, Yelp Reviews Back

Yesterday afternoon, Google upgraded the display of reviews on the Places Page. The new display aggregates reviews from third parties with an icon and a  link to the the review site and continues to show individual Google reviews below that display. The aggregate display shows the third party site with the most reviews at the …

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