Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Category Archive For "Reviews"
Google Places Reviews Being Lost – Houston We have a Problem!
Google Places seems to have again misplaced reviews in significant quanties. The forums are loaded with complaints particularly during the past 24 hours with 5 of the last 10 postings in the forums being about missing reviews (here, here, here, here, and here). Reviews for a small business are a very sensitive area. Initially most SMBs …
Pew Research: 24% of American Adults Have Posted Reviews
The Pew Internet and American Life Project has just published their recent results of Online Product Research by American adults. The hghlights: *58% of Americans now reporting that they perform online research concerning the products and services that they are considering purchasing. *The number of those who do research about products on any given day has …
Review Spam Under Attack by the FTC
I somehow missed this FTC enforcement action when it was released at the end of August. The FTC used the blogging disclosure guidelines that it released at the end of 2009 to slap the hands of an advertising firm that had it’s employee post reviews on iTunes without full disclosure. From the NY Times article: …
Reviews Are Dead! Long Live Reviews – Will Facebook Places Change the Review Landscape?
It is early in the game and folks are just digesting what Facebook Places is all about but I was struck by a Twitter comment by Seb Provencher (@sebprovencher): With the FB Places launch, we can officially say it: merchant/place reviews are dead. Status updates are the new merchant reviews. So I asked several folks …
Responding to Negative Reviews – Your Prospects are the Real Audience
Things though can go wrong with the response process if your business does not have a good response plan in place. To get a sense of how far wrong things can go when an SMB decides to respond to negative reviews see Inc’s You’ve Been Yelped detailing how bookshop owner Diane Goodman, was “booked for battery …
How Google Has Handled Reviews Reflects a Long History of a Tin Ear and Little Action
Google’s recent introduction of the ability for SMBs to respond to reviews is a welcome and surprising turn of events in the Places arena. Reviews have long been a sore point with businesses that often feel wronged by the review procedures at Google. Many SMBs think of the current arrangement as unfair and they rarely …
Will Reviews Become Google’s First Successful Foray into Social?
Small businesses are engaged (and often enraged) with reviews on their Google Places Pages. Understandably, the SMB posters at the Places Help forums have a great deal invested in their businesses and the reviews about their business. As a result they often respond with great passion about Google’s handling of them. The forums are rife …
Yelp Reviews Back in Google Maps as their .COM Growth Stops
Yelp’s relationship with Google Maps has been off and on again. Their reviews have disappeared and reappeared on Google Maps over the past 3 years as Google’s and Yelp’s relationship has waxed and waned. But the relationship now seems to be on once again. About 10 days ago Yelp’s reviews again started showing up on …
Google Maps & Reviews – Where Social & Rank Meet
Here is a copy of my presentation given at the SES Local Search Summit in NYC in late March: I have not annotated nor otherwise provided commentary, but if you have questions feel free to ask away.
Review Solicitation – Dumb and Dumber
Yesterday I highlighted a review service that was managing the review process for SMBs and posting the good ones into Google, Yahoo etc… an idea that is sure to have a short shelf life and one that is not a good long term strategy. Well here is another. Aggressive marketers often engage their mouth long …
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