Comments on: Google’s Management of Reviews and Q&A During COVID-19 – Updated

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Fri, 15 May 2020 12:02:53 +0000

In reply to Yair.

@Yair
Yes we have seen that the counter is not yet accurate.

The review counter update happens independently of reviews being added or taken away and can sometimes lag reality when the processing load is heavy.

By: Yair

Yair — Fri, 15 May 2020 02:25:00 +0000

Hi Mike, I had found very useful your post.
I noted yesterday and today the arrive of reviews collected during de lock-down.
After responding 13 reviews I noted the review counter isn’t updated from the last 5 weeks.
Have your clients experience as well?
thanks!

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 23:30:08 +0000

In reply to Paige.

Paige
I can confirm that this is what we saw in our logs over the weekend and I have personally tested as well. Google noted that they would soon update their GMB Covid page.

So you can wait for that or it is easy enough to test it yourself to see.

By: Paige

Paige — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 17:12:43 +0000

Hi there! Has Google made a statement that: “Reviews can now be left on shopping and restaurant business categories worldwide. Other categories have not yet been turned on.”? Just wondering how we can verify this is the case and start communicating this to clients.

Thanks!

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 16:35:41 +0000

@jan

Thanks for the update. Keep us posted on your success (or difficulties ) with your approach.

By: Jan Wencel

Jan Wencel — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 15:59:19 +0000

Thanks for your insights, Mike. Before this pause most of our clients were primarily focused on acquiring Google reviews. Now we’ve configured a different request mode to point to internal & Facebook reviews to round out their review profile. Since people who are being serviced by small businesses right now are largely grateful the business is operating, we’re hoping this translates into stars. When things return to normal, then we’ll likely revert to a Google-centric bend by shifting back to the original request mode. Meantime, thanks for your leadership now & always.

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 06:42:23 +0000

In reply to Phil Rozek. Phil Is it visible if you log out?

By: Phil Rozek

Phil Rozek — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 06:41:21 +0000

Thanks for the find, Mike.

As a test, I just left a rating-only review of my own business, and it went up right away and was visible in all the places I expected to see it. So my guess is that either ratings (without text) are an exception, or Google is in the process of rolling this out.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 06:37:40 +0000

Hi Tony

Anything I say would be pure speculation. But I will speculate anyways.

1- at Google’s incredible volume programs do much of the curation

2- their rules are designed to minimize the need for reviews to be taken down but they still need some human curation and support staff to deal with the volume and special cases which is probably still large despite the lack of visible impact

3- Google has a lot riding on getting their health care listings up-to snuff and their temporary closings under control AND accurate. A huge undertaking.

4- For much of their “human review and let’s not take this review down” process they use contractors. In both the US and overseas.

5- thank goodness but those workers have been sent home

6- the full-time employees that they have that they trust to access core systems are probably working from home

7- if we are to believe google and in this case I absolutely do, those few employees are heads down on the covid notifications and the world wide temporary closings of business listings they are trying to affect.

8- those that arn’t working on the notifications & closings are servicing businesses who are critical to the world and are staying open. Like hospitals. In fact they helped me get a hospital listing squared away on Friday.

9- some are also probably working on preventing nefarious actors from exploiting the local listings.

I think we need to think of Google local at the moment as one huge public utility that is trying to keep the “digital grid” going despite having furloughed 90% (?) of their employers.

And in that they are cutting non-essential services.

By: Tony Wang

Tony Wang — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 02:48:07 +0000

Yes, thanks for the update Mike. I agree that rounding out your review profile is a good thing.

I understand the need to limit new listings, etc. However, it doesn’t make sense to me that they would block reviews.

The announcement says that the reduced staff needs to focus on quality and reliability, and critical services. This seems to imply that they normally have lots of staff focused working on reviews. Hah, they’re obviously not doing spam patrol, so what else would require so much manpower?