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I may be a little too close to the review world, but each time I hear a radio ad come on that talks about how many five-star reviews they have, it makes me cringe. For one thing, there is no mention of how many 1-star reviews they have or even 2 stars. There is no [...]
On the heels of a recent Semrush study on the importance of reviews for local rankings, I wanted to update this post on local ranking factors. It is now more important than ever to bake reviews into your process. I recommend digging into the study but it shows that the median top-ranking business had 16% [...]
This is a quick post because it has come up a few times in the past week talking with business owners and even the example image letter I recently got after making a purchase. Please don't risk getting yourself in trouble by offering prizes or rewards for 5-star reviews. Both Google and Amazon have strong [...]
I have talked in the past about Entity Search and how Google views your business as an entity with other entities associated with it. In some areas, you can see what entities Google associates with your business. It is never as clear as what has been popping up recently in local search reviews. Google will [...]
GatherUp recently released 120+ amazing statistics on the importance of reviews for business success. This just underlines what I have been shouting for years... or maybe puts it in bold with an exclamation point. As we move into the future with better algorithms and artificial intelligence, and with Google getting smarter at weeding out fake [...]
As Google gets more nuanced with its algorithm over time, we are seeing reviews move up in importance and offer a lot more information than simply the overall score. Sergey Alakov recently found Google showing thumbs up and thumbs down to specific features within hotel reviews. This is the canary in the coal mine for [...]
Just last week I talked to someone who explained how they did "Review Gating" for their company. This is a practice that was banned by Google back in the spring of 2018. This means you can get in trouble and in many cases lose all of your reviews if found to be "gating". What is [...]
I suggested almost exactly five years ago that reviews would be the links of the future. By that, I mean that their weight in the Google algorithm would increase to the point that they became the most important individual factor. Much like links have many individual factors beyond just total count, such as frequency, site [...]
After a conversation about a panel I will be participating on around review management, I thought it would be a good idea to go in more depth about review management, and also how and when to appropriately respond to reviews. While I had a busy day or two, the folks at GatherUp beat me to [...]
Online reviews have been growing in importance in recent years. Just looking back at some of my recent posts about review management and the importance or reviews show how they are growing in importance and popularity. Aside from that, business owners are now getting inundated with offers for review management tools. I have always been [...]
