Comments on: How Google Uses Reviews To Understand A Business

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 11:31:01 +0000

In reply to Marc Creighton. Absolutely correct. In Google’s world of big data, ml and ai those low quality reviews are just a bit of noise in the data set.

By: Marc Creighton

Marc Creighton — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 09:25:50 +0000

Hey Mike, a great article. It’s my experience and that of my clients that Google doesn’t care about the quality of these reviews and as such, it’s near impossible to get them removed if they are fake. Google somewhat encourages pointless reviews by rewarding people with ‘local guide’ status. The best you can do is to call out fake reviews politely and hope they evaluate the responses as well.

By: Malay Sherasia

Malay Sherasia — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 18:14:15 +0000

Hello Mike, amazing info.
Is it worth asking the customers to use the keywords, product name, hashtags while submitting the review for our business on Google?

Is there a negative effect of using hashtags in google reviews?
We have a unique hashtag for our brand and store, which we are using on almost all social media to stand out in the crowd.

So I feel some times the user also search with the hashtag on Google, and I wonder if the same hashtag is used in the Google Review will help to rank high on SERP or not.

Let me know your views on this.
Thanks and happy Easter Holidays!

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 18:16:51 +0000

In reply to Patrick Leonard. Patrick - I have run experiments previously that have confirmed this behavior. This patent provides the theoretical framework to understand how it works.

By: Patrick Leonard

Patrick Leonard — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 17:54:11 +0000

I’ve seen this theory before but you’ve connected the dots articulately, thanks!

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 22:46:00 +0000

Excellent write-up Mike.

I believe personally myself that reviews are so important, so much I asked my clients whenever they do business with a custom, and they provide top quality service if they can ask their customers to leave a review.

For me, it’s just not the number of reviews, but also the consistency and freshness of reviews coming in on a regular basis.

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 17:35:12 +0000

In reply to Rudy.

@Rudy
Firstly, let me note that I do not know if this patent and its techniques are actively being used.

That being said the “reverse bell curve” that you speak would have the affect of diminishing the effect of the attribute.

Negative reviews about a given characteristic of the business means that the attribute(s) highlighted in the reviews will become less strongly associated with the business thus making it less likely to show up in search for that term.

By: Rudy

Rudy — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 17:28:15 +0000

Hmm… but I see so many companies paying for good reviews to bring up their total averages. However these sites end up having reverse bell curve distributions.

My questions is, do you think Google can parse? For example a digital camera brand with a quality product would have a normal review distribution (few 1-stars, couple 2-stars, many 3-stars and 4-stars, fewer 5-stars) compared to a digital camera brand with a bad product who is paying for positive reviews which would have many 1-star reviews and an equally large and unnatural number of 5-star reviews to compensate.

If search engines just use averages then they’ll forever be gamed by those businesses willing to buy fake reviews en masse to cover up and out-weigh all the authentic 1-star reviews.

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 01:56:49 +0000

In reply to Chris Agro. @Chris You are welcome

By: Chris Agro

Chris Agro — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 11:03:41 +0000

Having been aware of the importance reviews are to a business in the eyes of Google this article digs into the science to illuminate the why. Thanks for bringing this valuable information to us Mike!