Why Has My Google Review Not Posted Yet
Google reviews can help your business for obvious reasons: They're mighty visible in the Google Maps search results, and searchers pay attention to the reviews (and sometimes believe them). The large problem is just as obvious: Google does an atrocious task of policing reviews, causing all sorts of mischief and mayhem.
You'd similar more and better reviews than your competitors accept. But you lot'll have a harder fourth dimension accomplishing that if you lot know equally fiddling about Google reviews as they know. It helps to know some "inside baseball."
Here are some difficult truths of Google reviews. Some volition be erstwhile news to you. Others will exist news. Those volition help you approach Google reviews with fewer blind spots.
1. Google exercises little oversight. The sheriff is out of boondocks.
2. Google doesn't care whether a reviewer is a existent client, or about what happens to your business organisation equally a issue of bogus reviews. Y'all, customers, and Google all intendance about Google reviews for different reasons. For Google, reviews are a mode to crowdsource info about local businesses and to proceed searchers' attending on Google'due south local search results equally they get larded with ads.
3. Reporting a bogus review just once doesn't work. Sometimes flagging it downwards multiple times over a menstruation of weeks or months volition piece of work. More often, yous'll need to become to greater lengths (and Google still may not remove the review).
iv. Ratings-only reviews stick more than they should. Ratings left by Google users who've only rated 1 business organisation are especially stubborn, considering Google can't discover fishy patterns of beliefs (similar that a "client" hired ten moving companies in 6 unlike states in the span of a month).
v. Google filters policy-violating reviews rarely, and they're tough to get removed manually (if yous tin can become them removed at all).
6. You lot do not own and cannot control the Google Maps reviews of your business. Google owns them, and Google controls them – for better or for worse.
7. Google fixates on quantity. "Local Guides" are minted and promoted on the basis of how many reviews they've written. Fifty-fifty if those reviews are bogus, unfair, unhelpful, or paid-for (or some combination thereof).
8. In that location'southward a black market of people who want to buy Google reviews. I way I know that is because probably twice a week some idiot emails me to ask how many reviews I tin can write for him. (Yes, it's most always a he.)
nine. You can't control what's in the review snippets – the ones you run across in the right-mitt sidebar (the noesis panel), or the ones in the Google Maps 3-pack. The all-time you can do is encourage happy customers to speak up, often and in large numbers.
ten. Photos accompanying Google reviews are just as badly policed as the reviews are. Photos never seem to get filtered automatically. Often they're non removed even once you report them.
xi. Reviews don't seem to drive rankings in the way you might retrieve. A pile of great Google reviews doesn't mean you lot'll rank well. You lot may get a little bump from getting a few reviews on the board, but afterward that it seems to be a question of how your reviews encourage more than searchers to click on your listing and evidence other signs that advise you lot're a more-relevant search result than the next business is. The rankings benefits of Google reviews seem to be indirect.
12. Pseudonyms and initials are OK, evidently. Google suggests reviewers utilize their real names, only does nil to enforce that.
13. Reviews can become filtered, unfiltered, and re-filtered multiple times. A skillful review is never "safe." A review doesn't go abroad if y'all close down your Google My Business page.
14. Unethical reviewers can proceed coming back with new reviews, peradventure under different names or in different Google accounts. The worst Google will do – all they can practice – is remove the reviews, and even that rarely happens without your prodding.
15. There's no elementary fashion to embed Google reviews on your site. Only I suspect Google will eventually offer a mode, similar to Yelp's.
16. Reviewers must use their own Google accounts. Fifty-fifty it'due south a hassle for them and for you. They can't log into an account you ain and use a "pen name," nor tin can yous post reviews on their behalf.
17. Your "star rating" may non brand sense. If you take nine 5-star reviews and ane 4-star review, your average rating may non be four.9 stars.
xviii. Local Guides are not held to higher standards than are less-active Google reviewers. Their reviews don't have to be whatever truer or more than helpful.
nineteen. There's no guarantee you lot tin can keep your reviews if your address changes much. Google's pretty adept near letting y'all keep your reviews if you rebrand, or if you move to a new accost that'south inside the same town or within a few miles of the sometime address. But Google reserves the right to nuke your reviews after a further-away move.
twenty. There'south no penalty on businesses that buy reviews or engage in similar crookedness. Yelp does it all incorrect, and I don't claim that for Google to do it fairly would be an easy matter. The trouble is Google's lack of oversight adds to a "why not?" outlook in some business concern owners. Though that usually comes dorsum to bite those business owners when plenty customers discover the skillful reviews were fake, outset too many customers detect out the hard way that those businesses are no adept.
21. The rules change, and the strictness of Google'southward filter changes. Google plays with the dials often.
22. Google reviews are near-impossible to avoid, and but become more visible over time. That's great if you're dialed-in on Google reviews, but not if you've taken a drubbing.
23. Google reviews live in the search results. No longer can people see your reviews on your Google My Business folio, which itself is a Ocean-Monkey floating in the fragile little tank nosotros call Google Maps.
24. Yous can't find much information about reviewers. You (and would-be customers) tin't get any or many facts to determine which reviews are more credible. You can't even see where the reviewers are from.
25. Businesses in the three-pack are non ranked strictly by their average ratings. A 2-star business may outrank a five-star. Generally the college-rated businesses outrank the lower-rated ones, but exceptions abound. It'southward complicated.
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Tin can you think of whatsoever other "hard truths" of Google reviews?
Whatsoever practiced war stories?
Any silver linings?
Leave a comment!
Source: https://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2018/02/14/25-hard-truths-of-google-reviews/