Have people lost sight of the power reviews or have they become ignorant? Every time I see a question come about reviews, the person asking the question is completely misguided about online reviews. My challenge and task are to completely change your perspective about online reviews and point out the bad myths about online reviews. If you don’t want to read the entire piece, here’s the TL/DR version.
Aaron Weiche is a friend and mentor. It was one of his sessions at LocalU that completely changed the way that I see and view online reviews. There is a lot of power with online reviews, but far too many people miss it and focus on vanity metrics.
Here are my favorite myths about online reviews:
Myth 1. I have more reviews than my competition, why am I not ranking?
Fact 1. A ranking boost is associated with reviews, but it’s not what you think. Mike Blumenthal said that Google will increase the rankings with a handful of reviews and once you reach that threshold, you are capped. He said it could be 5, 10, 12, or 20 reviews. He has yet to see any increases in rankings by hitting any other number. This means if you get 100, 500, or 1000 reviews, you won’t see any ranking increases.
The below business profiles are lower in the places finder.
Myth 2. Keywords in reviews increase rankings.
Fact 2. The presence of keywords in reviews has zero impact on rankings. I hate to break it to you black hats and review sellers. Please see myth 1 and how I explain how there is a slight ranking boost with reviews. The people will tell me that I am wrong to have exactly matched GBPs and added several fake reviews and then claim that they instantly ranked. Joy Hawkins put out a study where her team added keywords into reviews and they saw no ranking increases.
Myth 3. That one negative review will destroy my business.
Fact 3. Consumers are becoming more skeptical about businesses with perfect 5-star ratings. Aaron Weiche says he has seen better CTR with a 4.2 to 4.5 rating than any other average rating. Consumers will judge you more on your reply than the actual negative review. This is your moment to shine. Please see some examples of how not to respond to negative reviews.
Myth 4. This is not a real customer.
Fact 4. This irks me every time I hear it. You don’t have to be a customer to leave a review. You only needed to want to conduct business with that business. I shopped at a business that was closed during posted open hours. I was able to leave a review. This also applies if a customer calls in and has a bad experience with the person that answers the phone. Google also allows people to use an alias. I can’t tell you how many times people that complained that the negative review wasn’t a real customer had thanked an alias for posting a 5-star review.
Myth 5. I am under a review attack.
Fact 5. Sometimes businesses just have horrible customer service and they get bad reviews. If you see a handful of negative reviews in a month, that may not be indicative of a review attack. Review texts are meant to guide a business on what they need to improve upon.
Myth 6. The review contains false information.
Fact 6. Google rarely takes sides in a review dispute. The only time I have seen Google remove a review is when the review mentioned services that the business didn’t provide.
Myth 7. This review is a personal attack.
Fact 7. The reviewer can call somebody lazy or a slob. They can’t use racial slurs or vulgarity.
Myth 8. Google is not removing the review I flagged.
Fact 8. Google looks at the text of the review and if any words violate the TOS, the review will be removed. Google is not looking to see if the review is real or fake. You need to use this new tool to file a rebuttal.
Missing Google Reviews
I will now segway into everyone’s favorite topic missing reviews. I have seen an increase in Google tackling fake reviews. I am seeing Google removing chunks of reviews daily. I have been monitoring several businesses that have either purchased reviews or are using a review solicitation service. Every day they lost anywhere from 1 to 149 reviews a day. This new takedown effort started around October 10th/ 11th. I have yet to see an example where a business was incorrectly targeted. I was able to isolate what reviews Google targeted.
In March 2022 Google started preventing new reviews from being published. Google was able to reinstate 60 to 70% of the filtered reviews. This is unrelated to the issue where Google prevented all new reviews from being posted. That was fixed and all of the reviews were published. Google also released reviews that were originally filtered out.
The review filter is not 100% accurate. One person left a review for a business and Google filtered it out. They used a different email address and posted the same review and Google published it. If your review does get filtered out, you should edit it until you can see it live on the business profile.
I hope this helps you to understand the true power of Google reviews. While I agree that online reviews can be a blessing and a curse, sometimes we just need to take a step back and relax. Don’t let online reviews drive you crazy but let them drive your business. If you still want to learn more about online reviews, you need to check out the Brightlocal Review Study.
