{"id":12875,"date":"2012-08-08T05:00:06","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T09:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=12875"},"modified":"2012-08-08T08:15:57","modified_gmt":"2012-08-08T12:15:57","slug":"what-should-you-tell-a-client-when-google-loses-their-reviews-a-4-part-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/08\/what-should-you-tell-a-client-when-google-loses-their-reviews-a-4-part-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"What Should You Tell A Client When Google Loses Their Reviews – A 4 Part Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the recent surge<\/a> of complaints about “lost” reviews in the forums, Google acknowledging<\/a> that there were a number of reasons that a review might be tagged as spam and that the car industry<\/a> in particular was being scrutinized, I thought it might make sense to rerun this May article about coping with lost reviews. If you feel that you have suffered unfairly at the hands of Google’s review spam filter, please report your issue to Google in this post<\/a> in the “help” forum.<\/em><\/p>\n

Google continues\u00a0having technical issues with losing reviews (here is\u00a0my first report<\/a>\u00a0from August 2008 of them being lost – the issue goes back quite a ways.)\u00a0particularly when the CID of a listing changes due to a merge. Also they seem to be tightening down what appears to be a relatively unsophisticated spam algo (first confirmed<\/a> in November 2010) \u00a0that is catching a number of good reviews with the bad.<\/p>\n

Don Campbell, amongst many others over the past few days, asked me what to tell rightfully upset clients that lose reviews from their Google Places page.<\/p>\n

Here is what I do when I have a client that has lost reviews:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0Educate the client:<\/strong>\u00a0I refer people to this Google authored article, Having technical issues with the reviews on your listing?<\/a>\u00a0 In it Google outlines most of the issues as to why reviews go missing. The issues range from spam abatement to Google simply losing them in certain situations. Google notes that in most situations there is often little to be done even by The Google themselves until the issues are fixed and appropriate tools are developed on their end. (In fact it really make the most sense to educate your client BEFORE they lose reviews so that they know what to expect and when it does happen you are not the one that they take their frustration out on.)<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0Provide a dose of humor and reality:<\/strong>\u00a0Since there is not much a client or SEO can do, I also provide them with the 6,6,6 rule for lost reviews to guide them as to what to expect in terms of recovery of the reviews. It might offer some small comfort.<\/p>\n

What is the 6,6,6 review rule?\u00a0(any client imagined thoughts about the devil\u00a0suggested by my guideline are actively encouraged)<\/p>\n

If reviews don’t come back to the Google Places page in 6 days, they might return in 6 weeks<\/p>\n

If they don’t return in 6 weeks they might return in 6 months<\/p>\n

If they don’t return in 6 months they have descended to Dante’s 6th Ring of Hell<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0Encourage them<\/strong>\u00a0to stick with the plan<\/strong>: Regardless of what Google is doing (or more likely not doing) in regards to reviews this week, the best tactic is to keep on truckin’… continue to get more reviews ethically<\/strong> at both Google AND 3rd party sites. I know it is hard and discouraging when difficult to obtain reviews are lost but neither the client (nor we) can control what Google does. The client can, in the end, only control what they do. It is better to have some reviews rather than none. A steady stream of reviews at the review sites will guarantee that the business has a solid review base no matter what and no matter whether Google has lost ’em again.<\/p>\n

4)\u00a0Advise the business to take control of their own destiny<\/strong>:\u00a0(Contributed by Jacob Puhl<\/a>) With the realization that some percentage of reviews will likely continue to disappear, the client should take it upon themselves to make copies of the reviews they do recieve at Google. If the reviews do disappear, repurpose those that disappeared as testimonials on the client web site.\u00a0In the same vein,\u00a0implement hReview\/Schema.org formatted testimonials<\/a> on your site to highlight these “lost” reviews so that there is the chance of getting the additional review stars in search. Be sure that the testimonial page has enough prominence that there is a chance that it will be used by Google as a review page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reviews are hard to come by and painful to lose but just because Google doesn’t have their act together doesn’t mean that your client shouldn’t either. The value of reviews in terms of increased credibility & conversions is too high for the SMB to just give up on the process when confronted with adversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the recent surge of complaints about “lost” reviews in the forums, Google acknowledging that there were a number of reasons that a review might be tagged as spam and that the car industry in particular was being scrutinized, I thought it might make sense to rerun this May article about coping with lost reviews. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local","category-reviews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t