What Every Business Owner Needs to Know About Google Reviews
Recently, Google announced they were integrating Google Places pages with Google+ Business pages. If you follow our blog, then you know we wrote about our concerns with this previously. It seems that not only is Google catching some flack about integrating Google Places with Google+, but also receiving negative feedback in regards to Google Reviews.
We have noted issues with our own Google Reviews, as well as issues with our clients. Numerous problems have been reported, most notably deletion of reviews or failure to show recent reviews. If you have noticed similar problems with your business reviews, then you are all too aware of the frustrations felt by business owners. Below are some tips to help you assist Google to get it right and get your reviews out of the abyss and where they belong - on your business page!
Reviewer has chosen not to share
In order for someone to leave you a review on your Google+ Business page, they must be logged into their Google, or Gmail account. When Google integrated Places and Google+ Business listings, it gave account owners the option of publishing their reviews or marking them as private. If an account holder chose to mark their reviews as private, Google will not publish their reviews.
Customer’s Say They Can’t Leave a Review
How frustrating is this? You have someone wanting to write you a review, and they are unable to do so, or worse yet, they say that they have tried and Google is not posting it (happened just this week to a client of ours). Sadly, there is not much you can do here, but you can troubleshoot with the reviewer and see if they have done the following:
- Make sure that their Google account allows them to show reviews (not marked as private)
- Try using a different web browser (probably Google Chrome is your best bet) and see if it works
- Make sure that they have not listed your website or any URL in the review. Google will automatically mark this as spam
Negative Reviews or Spam Reviews
This is another problem that Google is facing, and offers challenges to business owners trying to provide the best business listing possible. Google is working hard to combat spammy reviews (maybe too hard, hence the need for this article) but there are some things you can do to try and get negative or Spammy reviews removed. Visit the Google Help forum here and follow the steps listed to make a claim and report spam. With negative reviews, Google insists that you, as the business listing owner, take it upon yourself to rectify the issue. Follow this link here to read their recommendations for dealing with negative reviews. If all else fails, and you cannot get a resolution to the negative review, visit this link and follow the steps to get a review removed.
A couple other reasons why reviews are not being shown:
- You might have duplicate Google Places pages or, if you have one of your Google+ Business pages tied to your personal Google+ account (which is standard), then Google does not replicate each review for each business listing. Visit this link to find the form to submit a claim to get your reviews merged. Select I have verified>yes>submit claim. Google advises to wait a couple days, as there are a lot of claims to go through.
- You’ve moved locations. Google does not carry over reviews from one business listing to a new listing. However, you can try to submit a claim using this form
- Reviews might have a URL included in the review. This will automatically be flagged as spam in Google’s algorithms and will not be visible, ever.
Key Takeaways
Obviously, there are several issues in regards to reviews on your Google Business listing. Whether you are dealing with negative reviews, spammy reviews, reviews that are being deleted or new reviews not being displayed, there are courses of action that you can take. Read this Google Group forum for more information (note: much of this information was used from this thread). If you are still experiencing issues, and one of our team members would be glad to assist you.
What other issues have you encountered with Google Places or reviews? Leave us a comment below, we would love to hear from you!