When your business responds to reviews, it’s important to get the message and the tone right. Ninety-one percent of 18 to 34-year-olds trust reviews as much as personal recommendations, and almost 50% of local consumers feel the same — that’s how much weight reviews carry. The right response can help dissatisfied customers come away feeling heard and confident in a solution, and it can help satisfied customers stay loyal to your business. And don’t forget: the right response can also inspire potential customers to give your business a try.

In that spirit, we will discuss why review responses matter so much. We also cover a list of common mistakes businesses make when replying to reviews and what to do instead — including how to respond to a negative review — so you can have more productive interactions.

Why you should respond to customer reviews

Online reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp, and industry-specific sites like Zillow or Healthgrades give customers an opportunity to share the real-life experiences they had with your business — which helps potential customers searching for a local business in your category know whether to choose you. 

Reviews are important enough on their own. But when you reply to reviews, you have an opportunity to affect the impressions of both past and future customers and help shape your brand’s present image. For example, by simply knowing how to respond to a bad review, you can transform that reviewer’s perception of your brand. Or, by acknowledging and celebrating positive comments, you can secure a customer’s loyalty and turn them into a customer for life.  

Effective engagement with reviews — no matter the sentiment — builds credibility with your audience because it shows them you’re paying attention, listening to, and taking seriously what they have to say. 

But we recognize that responses can also be tricky and sometimes it’s easy to mess them up, which is what we’ll focus on next. 

10 common review response mistakes and how to avoid them 

Now that you know why replying to reviews is essential, let’s take a look at some common mistakes when responding and what to do instead. You’ll learn how to respond to a negative review and other review scenarios more effectively.

1. Ignoring negative reviews

Sometimes businesses don’t reply to negative reviews because they don’t want to draw attention to them. It can be tempting to just focus on the positive reviews where customers are thanking your business, praising your offerings, or just generally being positive. Who wouldn’t want that? We all love to be praised and feel appreciated.

But this strategy can have the opposite effect of what’s intended: it can make the negative reviews stand out even more since they’re the only ones without responses. This can make your business seem like it only cares about the happy customers, and that any complaints or concerns don’t really matter.

What to do instead:

Make it a priority to monitor for and respond to negative reviews. Prospective customers need to see that when something didn’t go well with another customer, your business was proactive in addressing the problem and willing to make it right.

This review doesn’t have a response from the business owner or manager. Anyone reading the review may assume the issue hasn’t been fixed in the last four months:

One way to respond to negative review — at the time it’s posted — could be: 

“I sincerely apologize for your negative experience. I plan to review inventory and customer service practices with my team to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

2. Using your response as a chance to boast or advertise

Review responses are supposed to show that you value your customers’ honest feedback and want to understand more about their needs and preferences. 

However, if you’re using review replies as a billboard for promoting your latest offer or a place to expound about your company’s mission or values, you’ll risk coming across as insincere. Customers prefer to engage with businesses that aren’t putting themselves first or only seem like they’re in it for the profit.  

What to do instead:

Rather than jumping to promote your brand or quote your mission statement, analyze the specifics of the complaint or feedback and either identify a solution or show appreciation for what was positively expressed — and then leave it at that.

While this review response does the right thing by suggesting an offline discussion, the business takes it too far by pushing its ethos:

One way to respond instead could be: 

“I’m sorry you had this experience. Please call me at [phone number] so I can hear the details of your situation and provide further assistance.”

3. Arguing with the customer over the details

This one can be difficult not to do, especially when a review seems confusing or totally off base. When customers complain, they’re not always going to get the details exactly right, and it can make the problem seem worse than it is. But it doesn’t mean they don’t have a legitimate complaint — and your response is not the place to argue over the specifics of their experience.

Remember, everyone can see your review response — not just the review author. And how you come across can impact the way potential customers think about you. Do you seem petty and aggressive, or grounded and neutral? Ultimately, how you respond to a bad review isn’t about winning an argument but finding suitable solutions that encourage detractors to give your business a second chance.

What to do instead:

First and foremost, remain solution-oriented — i.e., pinpoint the exact problem and how it can be fixed. If you need to ask the customer for additional details to fully understand the issue, then offer to take the conversation offline. You can provide contact info in your review reply and ask them to get in touch with you to explain further.

Here, the restaurant tried to rectify the mistake at the time by bringing another bowl of soup, but the customer was still annoyed. Using the review response to argue about the original attempt to make it right won’t help:

One way to respond could simply be: 

“We sincerely apologize for the soup mix-up. We’d love the chance to serve you again and give you a much better experience.”

4. Replying late

Better late than never is true in the world of review responses. That’s because it’s so easy for businesses to get busy and for staff to get overwhelmed. Before you know it, review management falls through the cracks and suddenly you’re catching up on old reviews. But if you’re consistently weeks or even months behind in replying to customer reviews, it can give the impression that you can’t be bothered. 

And here’s the thing: You may think customers won’t notice when you reply to their reviews. But Google sends customers an email notification alerting them to a new business reply, so there’s no getting around the date that appears. Bottom line: review response times matter — especially when you’re learning how to respond to negative reviews with greater success.

What to do instead:

If you’re just now starting a review response campaign, don’t panic. You can start by being selective about which older reviews you reply to, such as choosing ones that are more detailed or mention specific issues which your business later fixed. You can say that although it’s been a while since the review was written, you still care about the customer’s feedback. Also note any changes you’ve made in your business and encourage the customer to revisit your business.

Then, going forward, prioritize customer reviews and respond to all of them as quickly as possible. And don’t underestimate the value of a good review management platform. It’s a great way to automate your review processes and customize review notifications so you can stay on top of it while saving precious time.

Even though this hair salon review is two years old, the business manager or owner could still follow up with an apology and a solution to encourage the dissatisfied customer to give them another chance. A late reply is better than ignoring the review:

One way to respond to the negative review could be:

“I’m sorry you had a bad experience with your blowout and that we’re just now reading this. We’re making sure our entire team is up-to-date on training and techniques to avoid problems like this. If you’re interested in trying us again, please accept a 15% discount on your next haircut. You can call me directly at [phone number] and I’ll make sure the front desk applies the discount when you book.”

5. Not engaging with the actual problem

When there are a lot of reviews to reply to, it’s easy to miss key details. In a sincere attempt to keep up with review responses, thoroughness can fall by the wayside.

But customers can sniff out a vague or canned response right away. “If there’s anything we can do to help, let us know” doesn’t add any real value. 

What to do instead: 

Take the time to read each review carefully to pick up on all the details before responding. Always address the customer’s specific problem(s) and engage with any suggestions they may make. Being able to truly hone in on what’s being said can make a real difference with your current and future customers. 
In this review, the salon owner’s response to the bad review doesn’t actually engage with the problem: the client was in pain during treatment and received subpar service. Sure, the client might have been late, but the owner doesn’t address the real issues in the review:

One way to respond could be:

“Thank you for taking the time to leave a review. I’m so sorry your wife had a painful experience and received poor treatment by our staff. Please accept a full refund or your wife can book the same service again free of charge. You can call me directly at [phone number] to let me know what you prefer.”

6. Only caring about serious complaints

Don’t get us wrong: as we’ve already discussed, replying to complaints and negative feedback should be a top priority for your business. But you can go too far in that direction by only addressing the most urgent scenarios and not engaging with the neutral and positive reviews too.

There’s a good reason to respond to a negative review that outlines a major problem, and to do it ASAP, but not at the expense of every other review. Each review response provides an invaluable opportunity to strengthen customer relationships — making the customer feel like a valued part of your business and that their opinions matter.

What to do instead:

Reply promptly to all types of reviews to assure customers that you value any and all feedback — not just the disasters or unusual situations — and that you welcome their suggestions. 

This positive review is a great moment for the business to strengthen their relationship with the happy customer:

One way to respond could be: 

“Thank you for taking the time to leave this review! We love that you love our organic produce and bakery, and that our delivery service is meeting your needs. Let us know if you have any  suggestions for what else we can offer to best serve our customers.”

7. Leaving the customer without a solution

Reviewers need a clear idea of what the next steps are when they’ve shared a negative experience. Though finding the right solution sometimes means taking the conversation offline, you never want to just leave the customer hanging. A key part of learning how to respond to a negative review appropriately is to focus on the solution itself.

Also, once your business leaves a response, customers can’t reply again. So if there’s no obvious solution or next steps offered on the first go-round, they’ll have a hard time knowing if their problem will actually be fixed. The result? An already-angry customer gets angrier.

What to do instead:

Always propose a solution or two that you or the customer can put into action right away. And if you need more information before you can do that, make it super easy for the customer to get in touch with you — whether by phone, email, or a physical address. Being straightforward about solutions makes it more likely the customer will forgive the mistake and come back.

Here’s how an HVAC business offered a solution to a delay in communication that affected a customer:

One way to respond could be: 

Wait a minute. This is already a great response and a reasonable solution the customer can put into action right away. Clearly this business has figured out how to respond to a bad review. No need to improve on it.

8. Making it generic

Generic-ness deserves its own item here. And that’s because customers are individuals. They have their own worries, preferences, and needs. When communicating with a business, they want to be seen and understood, and don’t want to feel like they’re talking to a robot.

If you say the same thing in every review response, it looks like your business deals with customers by rote and doesn’t do anything to tailor experiences or interactions. Even though some reviews may be near identical themselves, it’s still important to personalize each response as much as you can.

What to do instead:

Even if you’re acknowledging positive feedback, try to write original responses. Simple touches like using the reviewer’s name and including the exact product or service they mentioned ensures your responses are authentic and unique to the individual.

Here’s a short response to some positive feedback that could go even further:

Another way to respond could be:

“Thank you, [customer name]. We’re glad that our team was on time and acted in a professional manner. This is what we like to hear. We appreciate any recommendations and look forward to serving you again.”

9. Thinking that a “thank you” is enough 

Review overwhelm can make it tempting to say a quick thanks in response to a positive review — and then move on to the next. But as we’ve been discussing, if you’re not fully engaging with the sentiment and content of each review, you’re losing an opportunity to authentically connect with your customer. 

“Thank you” is nice. “Thank you” is appreciated. “Thank you for your feedback” is a good way to start a response to a negative review and can take some of the edge out of an unhappy customer. But it shouldn’t stop there. 

What to do instead:

If you want to wow your customer in a review response and increase your chances of turning them into customers for life, don’t hold back. In addition to expressing genuine gratitude, aim for clever, funny, warm, delighted, humble — whatever closely reflects the voice of your brand or business and appropriately matches the sentiment of the review. 

Here’s a simple review that nevertheless deserves a personalized response:

One way to respond could be:

“Thank you for your review, from our family to yours. We’re happy to give customers like you a great dining experience without breaking the bank. Hope to see you again soon.”

10. Being defensive in your response to a negative review

This one goes hand-in-hand with not arguing over the details. It’s really hard not to take a negative review personally. When someone is criticizing your business — fairly or unfairly — it feels natural to want to defend yourself.

But online reviews are not a court of law where defending yourself is imperative to prevent or correct a wrong. As a business owner, your job is to maintain a cool head. Taking the bait and getting defensive will only aggravate the customer and put you farther away from a solution that works for both of you. 

What to do instead:

Try to understand the situation from the customer’s perspective. Were they ticked off by slow service? Were they disappointed that a specialty item on the menu sold out? Was it their second appointment and they were expecting more? Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes gets you into an empathetic mindset — which is what you need to truly make it right with the customer.

Although this response tries to find out more about the issue, it comes off as slightly defensive, as if the owner is questioning the customer’s experience:

One way to respond instead could be:

“I’m sorry we disappointed you. It sounds like you prefer your cold brew extra strong, and we didn’t deliver. We’re happy to adjust orders to suit our customers’ taste, and would like the chance to do that for you on your next visit.”

Final thoughts

Making these mistakes when replying to reviews is common. But once you know how to think about reviews, how to respond to a bad review — and all reviews for that matter — gets easier. You’ll find an approach that encourages both fans and detractors to continue doing business with you.

The key is to treat reviews individually and reply promptly and authentically. Approach customer feedback with an open mind and lean into both positive and negative comments. That way you’ll be able to be more empathetic and provide better solutions when issues arise.
Want to make sure you never miss another customer review again? Enjoy a free 14-day trial of GatherUp and see how easy it is to monitor for, request, gather, and quickly respond to reviews.

It’s like these businesses are collecting books for their bookshelf where, after the first month or so, they literally collect dust. We need to get past this “hoarding” of reviews and look at how you can use your reviews over and over again in macro and micro ways to fuel your marketing and win more customers.

Your reviews are incredible building blocks that can be assembled in a multitude of ways.

Whether you are a GatherUp customer or not, we believe that you can take advantage of getting 5X the value of the reviews you gather from your customers.

This multiplier is part of our core vision of reputation management. We’ve built a complete feature set to automate getting 5X marketing value from your reviews, but these ideas can be leveraged by any business.

Maximize Your Reviews 5 Times Over

Great reviews don’t come easy, you earn them. Don’t waste that hard work, squeeze every ounce of benefit from each one. Let’s look at how you can do this with the reviews your business has and will be getting.

1- Summarize Your Reputation

While a great deal of power in reviews lies in the details, let’s not skip the high-level summary of how many customers are willing to support your rating.

In fact, the volume of reviews and the overall star rating are two of the most important considerations for consumers. Keep it simple and display your overall rating and review count.

Your home page is already a summary of your services, product, experience, etc. so why not summarize your reputation?

GatherUp Feature:

The importance of this review summary is why we created our Review Badge. The badge is a simple, clean and visual display of your review overview with a call to action to view all of your reviews.

Here is a great example of how Bell Camper Sales uses content about their “Excellence in Customer Service” highlighted by the Review Badge on their home page. Really well done.

2- Showcase Your Most Recent Reviews

Your website is the best place to showcase your latest reviews. The main review sites all use different methods of displaying your reviews, but to view just the newest reviews you have to choose a filter to do so.

Google’s default review display is “most relevant” with a filter to see “newest”. Yelp uses its own “Yelp sort” as the default with “Newest first” as a filter option. Facebook’s default is “Most helpful”.

Compiling and displaying your reviews on your website to show your most recent reviews is very helpful to your potential customers in our “what have you done for me lately” world.

Surveys have shown that review recency is the number one consumer desire in reviews. Review recency placed 1st in the consumer view of importance. With star rating and quantity following on closely in second and third place.

If you’re a brand, showing all of your brand’s recent reviews in one place (not just per location) is a great tactic. If you are a single location, teasing your latest ratings and reviews brings your latest customer experiences to the forefront.

GatherUp Feature:

Based on your number of locations, we have two options for displaying your most recent reviews.

If you are a single location business, our Conversion Pop-up is an awesome way to display your most recent reviews. This pop-up can display on any page or site-wide on your website and rotates through your last 30 reviews.

For a multi-location business we can create a Brand Widget that will compile all of your reviews. This displays all of your locations in one view ordered by your latest reviews first.

Showcase your recent reviews from across your entire brand. PODS does a great job of this with a focused page of their thousands of brand reviews from their 250+ locations.

3- Display All Your Reviews By Location

While the first three elements of the 5X strategy focus on great ways to summarize your reputation and rating, let’s look at some options to give greater visibility to review details and display all of your reviews together by location.

Displaying your location reviews in full allows your website visitors to see both your overall rating and to dig into every review for what matters to them. When done right, it also allows them to see your replies and communication with your past customers too.

Showing all of your reviews, great, good or bad shows the authenticity of your brand. Responding to those reviews shows that you care.

Authenticity is the long game of reviews and one you should be starting to play if you haven’t yet.

GatherUp Feature:

Based on your number of locations, we have two options for displaying all of your reviews.

For a single location business using our Review Widget, you have a few different options for display on your website. Creating a dedicated “Reviews” page is a great way to drive website visitors to the page with all of your reviews. Having this page appear on your main navigation ensures they will notice it and visit it to seek the social proof and past customer experiences to help them decide.

Caluda’s King Cake bakery uses the review widget as outlined on its own dedicated Reviews page.

For multi-location businesses, the Review Widget should be used on each location page of your website. This is a big content and SEO win for these location pages as they are often thin with content.

Bringing reviews per location to each page provides fresh, keyword-rich, highly relevant content for search engines and website visitor’s benefit.

For Clean Juice, a growing juice franchise, reviews per location using our Horizontal Review Widget are present on every one of their 80 location pages like Aptos, CA below.

4- Reviews Grouped By Theme or Keyword

Bringing social proof to any page on a focused topic, service or product is a great addition to help your prospects in multiple ways. Consumers and prospects are often seeking reviews related to just a specific service, product or aspect of your business. Make it easy for them by bringing those reviews together on the same page.

The navigation menu below highlights all of the topical service pages that Firestone Auto Care could group reviews by and better those pages.

Example ideas for themed reviews:

• Reviews about brake repair on a Brake Service page for an auto shop
• Reviews about airport shuttle service on a Airport page for a limo service
• Reviews about a fitness boot camp on a Class page for a health club
• Reviews about business meetings on a Meetings page for an event center
• Reviews for donuts on a Donuts page for a Bakery
• Review for a specific hairstylist on their stylist profile pages

Grouping and displaying your reviews by a theme or keyword is a big opportunity and one massively underused. It gives you a fantastic combination of keywords, content and conversion.

This approach can extend beyond displaying reviews too. For example, Will Reynolds of Seer Interactive talks about how to use N-Gram analysis of your review corpus to write better ads. And Phil Rozek of Localvisibility shows how to use your review corpus to create more targeted keyword content.

GatherUp Feature:

Our Tag Widget is the only solution that makes grouping and displaying reviews by a theme or keyword possible. Better yet, when paired with our Auto-tagging feature this can happen automatically.

Once grouped by tags these reviews in our system can then be used for operational insight by themes or for display using our Tag widget.

Here is Clean Juice as an example that auto-tags reviews with variations of their “cleanse” mentioned in the review.

This allows us to then display all of their reviews mentioning a juice cleanse on their page dedicated to cleanses.

5- Post Your Reviews on Social Media

For many local businesses and local branches, creating social content is hard. Taking reviews and repurposing them as posts on Facebook, Google Posts and Instagram provides a valuable source of that social content.

Taking a review from 6 months or even 6 years ago and repurposing on social media channels is a great way to reuse your reviews.

Bring your reviews into the storytelling you use social media for, it’s a great way to humblebrag about your business, engage prospects and even remind your customers/followers that reviews matter to you.

GatherUp Feature:

We launched social sharing to rave reviews. With just a few clicks in GatherUp you can take a review and create a customized graphic to showcase your review on Facebook, Instagram and Google Posts.

Our social sharing editor lets you grab a review and customize the design background using colors, images and photo overlays. It’s really easy to create an amazing piece of visual content in seconds.

Get Going and Make It Happen

There you have it, my 5x Review Strategy to get the most from your reviews. As you can see this strategy illustrates how we view review and reputation marketing at GatherUp. Stop just collecting reviews and put them to work over and over again to gain your next customer… who will write you a review.

Here is the final 5x Strategy along with the GatherUp features you will use to make it happen.

Increasingly, consumers are getting in touch with your business directly from the Google search results and not clicking any of the links and local resources. A recent study by MOZ on Google searches revealed that 34% of searches result in no click at all.

They are visiting your website less. Yet more “low funnel” consumers actions to reach out to your business are occurring directly on Google than ever before.

In a recent case study of local key performance indicators, 70% of calls and driving directions were coming directly from Google while 25% were coming from the business website. Many of the website conversions originated at Google as well but most people were stopping at Google and making the call or requesting the driving directions right there.

Google Is Your New Home Page

I like to say that Google is your new home page. For many businesses, it has become the single most important internet presence in terms of attracting new customers.

The page where Google summarizes all it knows about you, and one that is crucial in terms of informing your customers and potential customers, is your branded search result with the Knowledge Panel.

It is not just pictures and data that Google is showing there but social proof as well. Word of mouth (WOM), a key sales driver, also appears to be rapidly moving online in the form of reviews. Your digital word of mouth (eWom) has become a key element in your sales funnel. And now much of that takes place directly on Google and in your branded search result as well.

It’s time for you to take control of this critical piece of digital real estate.

How Much Control Do You Have?

It’s Google’s page, not yours. Often a business’s first thought is “how much control do I really have?”.

My answer is: much more than you think. With some thought, planning, time and a well run business, the story that is told there can be very compelling. And you can broadly influence it.

Branded Search Results – Your Story At Google

It’s time to start treating your branded search result just like you do the home page on your site; it needs to look as good as it can, it needs to contain compelling social proof, and, within the constraints that Google imposes, it needs to tell the story of your business.

Google understands that user generated content is compelling for readers, more compelling than any content that a business owner might add. And the results that Google will show for your business include an ever increasing amount of reviews, photos and other information.

There are a number of ways that you can maximize your presence there, you just need to know what they are and how to do it. While you can’t completely control what Google shows you can do a number of things to optimize the story you tell there. Given the fragmenting nature of local search queries due to mobility and the increasing use of voice search, you will get your share of search results. Your job is to increase conversions when you do.

What Users Do

How users interact with the branded search results and Google results in general has been studied over the years. Although we will never know what Google knows, the most recent work in this arena was an eye tracking study done on hotel brand searches that showed that users spent significant time in the upper left quadrant of the page.

They then moved over to the Knowledge Panel and down it until finally coming back down to the mid page organic search results. The researchers referred to this behavior as a reverse C behavior and it’s shown in the example eye tracking map below.

Obviously the users, while focusing on the important top of the page, eventually scan much of the page content. The presence of rich snippet stars mid way through the page is likely to increase mid and bottom page viewing even more.

As businesses, we need to worry about the whole page as even results at the bottom of page one with a low rich snippet star rating can disrupt the story you are telling and make a conversion that much more difficult. One of the goals is to create a consistent and compelling brand results that avoids pre-purchase cognitive dissonance (conflicting beliefs) amongst those that are ready to make a decision.

Deconstructing the Page Elements

Being in local search, I, like others, tend to focus on the locally generated Knowledge Panel that shows but the reality is, as noted in the eye tracking study, that the whole page including ads and the organic links are part and parcel of what a consumer looks at. And what they act on.

Google, being Google, often will show many variations of your branded result as you modify the search. Slight search variations could very well return different results. For example including the state or not can vary the results.

That is most definitely the case with Barbara Oliver Jewelry. If you search Barbara Oliver Jewelry Williamsville NY you might see one result and with a slightly different search, Barbara Oliver Jewelry, you might see something else. Its important when going down this path that you consider your appearance in all search variants.

On the desktop page components that you can effectively influence or control can be broken up into the following segments:

• Ads
• Your Website Organic Results
• Knowledge Panel Images
• Google Reviews
• GMB information
• Google Posts
• Sites that also show in the Reviews from the Web
• Organic Review sites
• Other Google properties and directory sites
• The Wild Card – Future Knowledge Panel Features

While this analysis focuses on a desktop view of your branded search, it is also important that you do the same analysis on mobile.

Ads

Given that Google is showing ads more and more frequently in local and that the top result is often an ad, it makes sense that you protect your branded space with your own ad. While it won’t completely protect you against brand poaching, it’s a start and a way to increase control over critical, first viewed, screen real estate. Where ever the customers are, is where you want to be.

Your Website Story

This is an area of the page where you can personally control both the message and the social proof. On the desktop, it is high on the page and if there are no ads, will be the first thing a searcher sees when investigating or recovering your brand.  It creates the critical first impression that a searcher forms. It is the basis of your story.

Obviously you need thoughtfully constructed title and meta tags. But perhaps more importantly you need social proof from your clients showing on the critical product and service pages.

As a note, Google seems to rarely, if ever show, rich snippets for your home page. So don’t press your luck. Also we would suggest that you target your 3-5 top performing product and service pages and not use rich snippets on every page.

Knowledge Panel Images

Once the user moves off of your web content on the branded result, their first stop is the Google My Business profile image. This image is arguably your single most important image on the internet and may be the single image that is most frequently seen.

The profile image should be a great image, closely cropped and compelling. In local, consumers don’t buy from a logo. They are buying a product, are attracted to a person or like the ambiance. Your profile image should reinforce this behavior.

Realize that every image, not just your profile image, should be equally compelling. Perhaps the user will dig into your gallery or perhaps Google will decide to pick another to highlight on your behalf. And the image needs to look good on the desktop, in mobile, in search and any place else that Google chooses to show it.

If you have any questions take a few minutes to read this guide to your images at Google.

Google Review Totals

High and very obvious and just under the photos is your Google review summary. Google reviews are a long term play. A sustained effort that generates one or two reviews a month, over time, reflects the heart beat of your business and is usually enough to help you stand out against your competitors.

Barbara Oliver has been asking clients for reviews since the fall of 2009, almost eight years now. For her, and most businesses, slow and steady wins this race when it comes to Google reviews.

Google review snippet summaries, which algorithmically pick statements that reflect the overall sentiment of the users, are powerful. This content needs to be watched closely as a negative comment can carry an undue amount of weight. However, with the addition of Posts and Popular times, these comments are being pushed lower and lower on the page.

Google My Business Data

Even simple oversights in data provided can have profound impacts. Google estimates that just being sure to show your hours increases your requests for driving directions by 13% and the clicks to your website by 42%.

Google provides restaurants and many bricks and mortar businesses the opportunity to add a link to your service pages or your menu. Recently Google added the ability for professionals to add an appointment link as well. This is one more opportunity for the client to click through to your site if they have any doubt.

And don’t forget attributes. Google has become one of the best repositories for business related accessibility information and you, if you are accessible to those differently abled, certainly want Google to know. If someone is searching for a business that has wheelchair access, the Google result should have you as the answer.

Google Posts – Another Call to Action

Next to be seen in the hot spot of the searcher’s eye is either Reviews from the web or the newly rolled out Google posts. If you have this in your dashboard and want to use it, there are three things that will make it more compelling; a great photo, a compelling 100 character intro and a call to action.

Google allows a post to be 300 words long but only the first 100 characters show in the Knowledge Panel. Be sure that these first 100 characters are compelling. This product is new and we don’t really know how users are going to respond to it. I do recommend that you use a campaign tracking code on the call to action (as well as on your main URL and Product/Service URL as well) to get a sense of the impact over the next few months.

Reviews From Around The Web

If you are not using the new Google Posts then “Reviews from the web” will be right below your address information. There can be up to three review sites shown in that space. Make the most of it and work, over time, to get three review sites to show.

Google will show your own site as well as Facebook so they are both obvious choices to add to your review plan. Your own site can be included by creating a consumer facing feedback program and posting the content in rich snippets on your site.

Interestingly neither Yelp nor TripAdvisor reviews will show in the “Reviews from the web” space. However Yp.com and 4Square do often show there as do many vertical industry sites. In Barbara’s case that would be a wedding site like The Knot but it will vary by industry. And it varies widely by the specific branded search term.

Since this feature rolled out last year, Google has consistently boosted sites with review snippets higher in the rankings. Most sites with review snippets that show in the top 10 organic results will also show in your Knowledge Panel.

Take the time to see which sites do well on your brand search  and which review sites are doing well in your industry and then occasionally switch them into your review plan so as to fill out what is visible in the Knowledge Panel. Because different directories do better on different variations of your brand search, you might need to identify two or three of these sites to work on. Remember, there is no rush.

A good review strategy should be viewed over a 3 or 4 year (or even longer) timeframe.

Organic Brand Results & Rich Snippets

As you saw earlier in the eye tracking image, from the Knowledge Panel, the user’s eye weakly wander back to the organic results for your business. The sites at the very top of this list are likely to be seen in the first, intense pass by the user but as you move further down the page they are likely to be seen less.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Well known branded local sites like Yelp & BBB always attract user’s attention. And with the exception of Yelp, Tripadvisor & the BBB, these sites inform the Reviews from the web that show so prominently in the Knowledge Panel. We know from previous Google comments that any site with rich snippets is likely to get a 20% boost in traffic over what would be normal for its given position in the results.

Not only will you see the reviews from Facebook, Yelp  but from many other sites as well. Google seems to have elevated sites like YP.com, Foursquare and vertical sites with reviews to front page prominence on brand searches .

Something funny happened on the way to “Reviews from the web”. Yelp is getting ever less visibility on branded searches. Facebook has been doing well on branded searches often out ranking them and Google seems to be highlighting lesser known sites in an increasing way.

Google can never get enough of itself and you will frequently find other Google sites in these results if you are active at them. While a site like YouTube isn’t going to show stars, it does have a strong visual impact on the page and is worth pursuing.

Don’t stop your research with page one of your branded results. Occasionally the first few results from the top of page two can inform Reviews from the web. Also if you only have one or two Reviews from the web sites showing, page two might include some prospects where it would be worth considering getting reviews.

Coming Soon To A Google Knowledge Panel Near You

Or leaving. Google is in a constant state of flux. It’s how they roll. The new Posts feature could be gone in a few months and the beta “Chat with customer” feature might be ascendant. The search results are constantly changing and as Google tests things they will both continue to change.

This project is not a set it and forget it process. You should check your branded results regularly to see, not if it has changed, but how it has changed. It surely will.

In fact one of the struggles I had writing this article was the fact that these results were changing so rapidly and new features were being rolled out so often that the tactics kept evolving. Thus you need to be on the look out for features like the new Questions & Answers and get out in front of them to maintain the integrity and compelling story of your branded results.

Mobile

Many of the same elements and attributes affect your mobile local branded search result as they do the desktop. That being said the layout is different as are the priorities of what Google has chosen to display.

Google highlights their Knowledge Panel information and reviews from the web before your web information. As you can see the profile photo is top left and there is an obvious review tab that shows reviews from the web as well as Google reviews. Photos auto enlarge and become more obvious as does Posts, with the call to action being very visible.

Reviews and particularly “Reviews from the web” though are everywhere; at the top, in a tab and at the bottom of the panel.  “Reviews from the web” also display near the bottom of the screen. Making use of review rich snippets on your website and leveraging other review sites that do show in the reviews around the web that much more important. If Google is your home page, then reviews from the web is your word of mouth and tell your story more convincingly than you could.

Be sure to do all of the same analysis and research of your Google mobile branded results. If your business is now one of those that is getting more than 50% of its traffic from mobile, then It very well might change the priority  in which you execute these tactics.

Think About It: Google Is Your New Home Page

If Google is your new home page and if it is where consumers take action then your Google branded search results with the Knowledge Panel are your About Us, Contact Us, Testimonial, 3rd Party Review snippets, micro blog and Gallery pages all rolled into one. And if some of the features that Google is testing go live then it might become your make a reservations CTA and SMS/client Chat interaction as well.

It is time to take control of your new home page. Doing so takes time and a regular commitment to setting up an on-going review program, continually assessing your branded search result, updating your website, taking great photographs and generating feedback and reviews at a broad range of sites beyond the typical top three.

Impacting every part of the page won’t happen tomorrow but with a focus on running a great business that exceeds your client’s expectations and a plan to share that news with Google, the world is more likely to hear your story and be convinced by it.

Good luck!

Our line-up won’t disappoint as our Mike Blumenthal hosts Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky, Darren Shaw of Whitespark and Aaron Weiche of GatherUp for an hour-long webinar covering local search and digital marketing with an AMA (ask me anything) format.

Local Search Topics

We’ll work to cover as much ground as possible in the webinar with information for SEO professionals, agency owners and in-house teams. Each speaker will bring you 3 of their top moves right now as well as the AMA format. We’ll cover:

• Google My Business and listings
• COVID-19 adaptation and local digital marketing
• Reputation Management
• Agency tips and ideas

Ask Your Questions Now

Use the form below to ask your question for the webinar now.  We will be taking both submitted questions (below) and LIVE questions via Zoom during the webinar.

The line-up will be rock solid with our Mike Blumenthal hosting Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky, Krystal Taing of Rio SEO and Aaron Weiche of GatherUp for an hour-long webinar covering local SEO, Google My Business and digital marketing.

Local Search Tips & More

You can count on a lot of great strategy and tactical tips in the webinar with information for SEO professionals, agency owners and in-house teams. Each speaker will bring you 3 of their top local digital marketing moves right now as well as the AMA format to ask your questions. We’ll cover:

• Google My Business and listings
• Local SEO and digital marketing (search and social)
• Reputation management
• Agency tips and ideas

Ask Your Questions Now

Use the form below to ask your question for the webinar now.  We will be taking both submitted questions (below) and LIVE questions via Zoom during the webinar.

Mike and Aaron shared some industry updates about real-time reputation management, Facebook Reviews, Google highlighting businesses with better reviews, and KPIs for local. We also answered a ton of great questions from the attendees.

Watch The Webinar Video Recording To See The New Reports

New Reports

In the recording, you’ll see that we’ve completely redesigned our reports, and added a bunch of new reports too. Here’s a list of the reporting changes:

1. Redesigned Business Report
2. Redesigned Performance Report
3. New NPS Report
4. New NPS Comparison Report
5. Redesigned Reviews Report
6. New Reviews Comparison Report

These new reports are more visually striking, easier to use, feature custom date ranges, export options and more.

Reputation, Reviews and Local Search Industry Updates

If you’ve been with us for very long, you know we follow the local digital marketing industry very closely and love to share our thoughts and research on our blog in our webinars too. This month, Aaron talked about how being proactive with customer feedback and online reviews could have saved Chipotle millions of dollars, He also shared some details on how Facebook Reviews are bolstering Facebook recommendations.

Mike shared a case study and discussed some key performance indicators (KPIs) that are relevant for local, and also word of mouth makes a huge difference in local attribution.

The complete list of articles, research and blog posts they drew from is below:

• Could Chipotle Have Saved Millions of Dollars By Taking Online Reviews More Seriously?
• Facebook Reviews Bolster Facebook Recommendations
• Case Study: Key Performance Indicators in Local Digital Marketing
• Case Study Part 2: In Local Attribution Word of Mouth Dominates
• Google Highlighting Businesses with Better Reviews in the search results

View The Webinar Slides

Thanks for catching up with us on the April webinar!  We have these webinars monthly – you can watch past ones and join the next on our Webinar page.

p.s. We just need a few more subscribers to get our own URL on our YouTube Channel. Would you subscribe and help us get there! Thank you! Subscribe to our new YouTube Channel. We will be posting new feature updates, pro tips, and webinar recordings there.

If you missed our first two amazing sessions you can find the recordings here and here.

Local Search Tips & More

You can count on a lot of great strategy and tactical tips in the webinar with information for SEO professionals, digital agency and in-house teams. Each speaker will bring you 3 of their top local digital marketing moves right now as well as the AMA format to ask your questions. We’ll cover:

• Google My Business
• Local SEO and digital marketing (search and social)
• Reputation management
• Agency tips and ideas

Wouldn’t it be better to ask questions based on data from actual customer experiences and what they care about? 

Using Your Review History To Guide Future Success

Good news, you can build out a set of survey questions that hit upon the most impactful elements of your business by using your past online reviews. First, we monitor and ingest your entire history of reviews from every channel you monitor with us.  Google reviews, Facebook, the BBB, Trip Advisor and your industry review sites are all brought into our platform. 

Next our Insights Report that uses artificial intelligence from IBM Watson to give sentiment and reputation impact analysis to the most important keywords used within your reviews. 

The Insights Report identifies keywords being mentioned most often within your reviews along with their impact, meaning “do these terms elevate your reputation or bring it down?”. Terms mentioned most are areas of importance or concern to your customers combined with seeing how these keywords impact your ratings. 

Don’t Take Too Long With Highly Rated Tacos

Let’s look at an example of a Mexican restaurant. The Impact chart from our Insights report highlights that the keyword “time” is appearing frequently in low rated reviews with a negative impact on our reputation.

When we view the sentiment section, we see that “time” and “minute” appear frequently with over 270 mentions, usually with poor sentiment. If you are taking too long to prepare those highly loved tacos, you are delivering a poor experience.

This guides us in creating a survey question on the “Speed of Service”  so we can benchmark how they are doing and work to improve it. 

Another scenario that comes up often is “order.” This guides us that a question around the accuracy of their order is key to a great experience. The Impact chart shows us that when “order” is in a review, that review averages just a 2.5-star rating, well below our brand average of a 4.2-star rating.

Keep in mind, if you are seeing many similar words mentioned it might make sense to create two survey questions around that topic to hone in on what is driving the experience.

We can also see that our exceptional experiences include reviews with “margaritas” and “great tacos” both appearing in reviews above our brand average of 4.2 stars. Reviews that contain these terms are averaging 4.4 stars and 4.6 stars, positively impacting our reputation and rating.

Asking a survey question on our food quality, even though it seems to be a strong point, is valuable as these items are key to a 5-star experience.  We want to make sure that our strengths stay strong as this shows it’s important to exceeding our customer’s expectations.

Survey Questions Based On What Matters To Customers

Thanks to our learnings and insight above, here is the survey built out. A quick five questions that will capture Net Promoter Score, speed, quality, order accuracy and their 1st-party review.

It can also be helpful to incorporate any changes into your survey questions. Asking survey questions about a change in product or service offerings can provide valuable insight about specific changes. This allows you to quickly adapt and report customer sentiment about these changes and ultimately decide if these are permanent or temporary changes.

Our Success Report is just one report that helps you track your performance across our customer experience metrics including your survey questions.

Data-based Decisions Over Guesses 

Lastly, if there are particular parts of the business that you are not finding in the Insights Report customers may not be thinking about this as part of their experience. It’s certainly not influencing them enought to write a review and that can be telling in itself.

As a bonus in the review request process, putting topic at the top of their minds using the survey questions might increase it’s mentions. These mentions can provide you with valuable marketing opportunities in Google search results and on your site if you’re utilizing our review widgets.

Turning Insights To Survey Questions

This process is incredibly helpful for bigger brands with many locations and a large number of reviews already. While even dozens of reviews for a small business can point you in the right direction, hundreds and thousands of reviews will produce very clear results.  To get started on this process:

1. Add all of your possible review sites to GatherUp for monitoring
2. Access the Insights Report (allow 48 hours after new review sites have been added)
3. Identify your important terms using the Impact chart and sentiment section of the Insights Report
4. Build your survey questions

You now have built a smarter survey based on what your customers have already informed you they care about.