As I’m sure everyone saw, there was an amusing/shocking story in the NY Times over the weekend showing how one merchant, DecorMyEyes, gamed Google rankings by abusing its customers. Google was shamed and embarrassed by the episode and so changed its algorithm to prevent this sort of thing from happening again:
We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodriguez’s dreadful experience. Even though our initial analysis pointed to this being an edge case and not a widespread problem in our search results, we immediately convened a team that looked carefully at the issue. That team developed an initial algorithmic solution, implemented it, and the solution is already live. I am here to tell you that being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results.
It’s reasonable to assume now that reviews are factoring more directly into ranking — although Google won’t confirm this. Reviews have been very important in the past for multiple reasons and the potentially increased use of them by Google as a ranking signal makes them all the more important now.
Things for SMB channels and aggregators to consider:
- Reputation management/monitoring tools become even more essential in helping navigate the space: Vendasta, Marchex, Yellowbot and so on.
- Cultivating positive reviews and rewarding customers becomes the subject of “best practices” material that needs to be conveyed to SMBs by and through their trusted partners
- Review fraud will no doubt rise as more people try to ensure that positive reviews show up for themselves or clients
There’s considerably more to say about this but I just wanted to get some quick thoughts out. Online reviews are a permanent and increasingly important part of the local online landscape and all merchants need to know how to get them ethically and do CRM in a way that minimizes negative reviews.
December 2nd, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Key is to be proactive vs. reactive. Your average SMB still tends to be reactive purely because of ignorance. Reviews have been and will play a huge role for some time and as an SMB one should be treating them the same way they do to SEO’ed content on your website.
Happy to see the tweak.
December 2nd, 2010 at 5:54 pm
This is why I suggest that third parties will need to educate local businesses on how to deal with and cultivate reviews.
December 2nd, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Getting reviews isn’t enough – businesses have to keep getting them. One of the traps that lots of companies fall into is getting a lot of reviews (ethically or not) and then getting bored with it. There are lots of companies that get many reviews over the course of a month or so and then none in subsequent months.
2 bad things happen as a result: 1) decreasing ranking assistance (we have seen a few instances where regularity of reviews seems to be more important in rankings than absolute number); 2) reviews look spammy to potential customers.
December 2nd, 2010 at 6:08 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Greg Sterling, Reputation Advisor. Reputation Advisor said: New Push for Local Business Reviews http://bit.ly/gxOl6b [...]
December 2nd, 2010 at 6:12 pm
The points above are valid only if your reviews based on a weighted average have a greater role in your ranking factors vs. all the other factors, in which case means you are in a very competitive vertical and need to keep up with the competition.
Many so called third party educators do a disservice to SMB’s by steering them toward the incorrect strategy, otherwise to much focus on reviews, vs. straight SEO, or vice versa.
What’s up with the Google/Groupon announcement ?
December 2nd, 2010 at 6:16 pm
No new news re Groupon on my end.
December 2nd, 2010 at 7:58 pm
“Postscript 2: In the comments below, you can see the point raised that Google never actually says it is using merchant reviews. I’ve updated this story to reflect that.” – Danny Sullivan
Since fake reviews aren’t very detectable, I doubt that reviews are a ranking factor now. I think they are probably doing semantic analysis on links from the complaints sites if anything. Or, if they are using reviews, they’ve likely just created an even bigger spam problem.
December 2nd, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Right I was indirectly referring to Danny’s article. At one point there were two algorithms for local and regular search. Now the two algorithms are theoretically one.
December 3rd, 2010 at 2:23 am
Great points, Greg.
Small businesses are beginning to realize their online presence and reputation goes beyond the messaging on their Website. Recently a Bed & Breakfast owner told us their bookings dropped dramatically after receiving a string of bad reviews. We’ve also had a few small business owners tell their customers to stop sending them thank you cards and instead take a moment to write a review online. We’re working on a few Marchex Reputation Management features that will help small businesses get more reviews and prevent a minority of their customers from defining their reputation online.
December 3rd, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Ryan:
I think there’s a bit of a “culture shift” that has to take place among SMBs, which is challenging for them. Any involvement with “social media” takes time and commitment — including reviews. No more “set it and forget it.”
December 5th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Considering the stats, something like 30+% of those with a negative experience with a merchant vs 3% of those with a positive experience will leave a review, smbs must adapt to social media, which is basically the process to creating an online interaction and discussion on products and services purchased from all channels.
My agency consults with smbs on how to adapt to this changing environment.
Those who can’t or wont have work cutout for them, otherwise marketers, manipulators, and liars will hush them until they decide to participate in the discussion. Right?
April 26th, 2011 at 8:58 am
[...] from Danny Sullivan to Jessica Lee to Greg Sterling to Google itself has weighed in on the [...]