Before you begin your Google review journey, it's critical that you understand the needs and wants of all of the entities involved in the review process: These entities include: Google, your customers, your employees, and yourself. Once you understand what everyone needs and wants from the process, you will be in a much better place to make the magic happen. Let's start with Google.
Google
Most of the business owners I work with have absolutely no idea what Google wants and needs in the form of a review. They think that if they have more reviews and a higher star rating than their competitors, Google will move their business listing up in the search results ... and to some extent, that's true. But there are many more things Google wants, and just as importantly does not want when it comes to customer reviews that will impact your ranking and engagement. You must pay very close attention to these factors if you want to attract new customers on Google.
Google is pretty clear as to what they want in a customer review. They want the review to be helpful, relevant, and trustworthy. They want to see customers writing reviews for your business on a consistent basis, and they want to see reviews written on sites other than Google.
These five factors are important to Google, and will they have a big impact on your ranking and trust levels, because Google wants to provide their customers with the best possible results when they do a Google search about the products and services you offer.
Google wants to show up-to-date reviews that searchers want to read in order to get unbiased answers to their questions about your company. In many cases the best people to answer those questions are your customers, the people who took the time to share their experience in the form of a review.
Google does not want to send searchers to a different review site to get the answer to their question unless they need too. Google wants to be THE source of great content which includes customer reviews that are helpful, relevant, trustworthy and current. In doing so they will attract and keep searchers (just like your customers) on their platform. That's how they earn their money.
Google also pays very close attention to what they consider to be “normal” behavior. Believe it or not there are business people who try to game Google with their reviews in order to get their business listing to the top of the first page of results. They buy reviews, pay customers to write reviews, have their employees write reviews, write bad reviews for their competitors and more.
As Google gets older, they get wiser. When it comes to customer reviews, one of the things Google looks for normalacy. When Google sees that a businesses has all of it’s reviews on Google, and no customer reviews on any other review site, that does not look normal. This is one of the main reasons you do not want to use what we call a “Google or Bust” review strategy where Google is the only place you ask your customers to write a review for you business. One of the things we will show you how to do in the Review Integrity Method is to encourage every customer to try to write a review for you on Google first, but always have additional choices if they can not leave a review due to not having a Google account or not remembering their password.
When we get to the Perfect Google Review Request Script in Chapter 5, I will show you how you and your team can easily get your customers to write reviews that are helpful, relevant and trustworthy without you having to tell them what to do. It’s a simple technique that will completely transform the quality of your reviews and it’s something all of your customers will appreciate. In the meantime, let’s look at what Google does not want and the consequences of not paying attention to their review guidelines and their Terms of Service.
Google does not want inferior reviews. They do not want reviews with a star rating without written comments nor do they want reviews with very short comments that are not helpful, relevant, or trustworthy.
Here’s an example of a review I just read that was written for a carpet cleaning company. “Thank you so much.” That’s it. That’s the extent of the entire review and unfortunately the majority of their reviews read just like this.
This is the kind of review that attracts Googles’ attention, and not in a good way. More importantly, it’s the kind of review that is meaningless to people who are looking for a carpet cleaner. There’s nothing about this review that someone looking for a carpet cleaner would cause someone to say to themselves, “Boy oh boy, I want to hire THAT carpet cleaner.”
This is the kind of review that Google is likely to filter from public view. That's right, Google filters reviews, but unlike Yelp, Google does not show you the reviews they filter nor do they inform you that they filtered one of your customers reviews. Reviews like this will either disappear or they’ll never get posted. The only way you will know if Google filtered one of your reviews is if your customer tells you that they wrote a review and you don't see it in your business listing.
There are other reasons Google filters reviews which has more to do with how a business goes about gathering them than it has to do with the person writing them. Again, many business owners are not aware that their review strategy triggers Google to filter legitame customer reviews. Here are a few of those reasons.
Google filters reviews if they see that multiple reviews have been written from the same IP address. This is not an issue if your customer writes a review from your office using their mobile service on their phone. If they have access to your WiFi when they write a review, there is a very good chance that their review will be filtered.
The same thing happens when you have a husband and a wife or a child and a parent who are both your customers writing reviews from their home. If they are hooked into their WiFi when they write a review, Google will filter one or both of them. And yes I agree. That’s not fair.
Over the years I’ve read that Google will filter reviews if they come in too fast. I’ve never seen that happen. We’ve taught many local business how to implement the Review Integrity Method and they quickly started getting reviews at a much faster pace, and their review were not removed. This could be due to the fact that the quality of their reviews are better than what Google is used to seeing, or this may not be an issue any longer, but that is no reason to send review requests to your customers in bulk. Doing so is against Google’s TOS and it will generate very few reviews and the quality of your reviews will be poor. I’ll explain more about the consequences of this strategy in the next chapter.
Google will also filter reviews from people who are no longer using their Google account. You might have 542 reviews today and all of a sudden the number drops to 521. This drop in the number of your reviews could easily be due to inactivity on the part of your customer. If this happens to you, and it will, know that it’s happening to your competitors too. Google is just doing some house cleaning.
If Google feels that the review is SPAM or they think that you paid for the review from a dishonorable review selling company, they will also remove those reviews. I find it comical and sad that there are companies who are willing to spend hundreds and even thousand of dollars on fake reviews only to have all of there reviews removed and their listing lowered or removed completely from the the search results.
In some cases you can see all of the other review written by your customers. Each customers has the option of either showing all of their reviews or hiding them. This does not affect they review they wrote for you, it only affects your ability to see the reviews they’ve written for other companies.
When Google sees an account where the reviewer only writes 5-star reviews or only 1-star reviews and the reviews are written for businesses all over the world, they might find that a little fishy and tend to discount (hide) those reviews too.
I’m sure there are many other reasons why Google filters reviews that they’re not telling us about, and that’s OK. As long as you’re gathering reviews the right way from real customers in a timely manner, having legitimate reviews filtered by Google is not something you’ll ever have to worry about. Your competitors who are not following the Review Integrity Method will always be looking over their shoulder.
Customers
If you want the highest percentage of your happy customers writing well-written, 5-star Google reviews for your business, they really only need two things from you and your team: respect and gratitude. In the end, these are the only two things that matter. From this point forward, we will be looking at every customer encounter through the lens of respect and gratitude, especially as it applies to the review process.
Here are the four primary touch points that will have the biggest impact on whether a customers writes a quality review for your business or not. These are the areas where you need to focus your attention.
They want you to provide service worthy of a 5-star review.
When your team provides outstanding customer service it give your customer a reason to want to write a 5-star review. It also makes it much easier for them to know what to write about. Providing great service is the single most important thing you can do to create the desire for writing a review. Anything short of 5-star service will make it difficult or impossible to persuade a customers to write a good review.
If your staff is not currently providing outstanding, memorable service, this is not the time to ask for reviews. Focus your attention of the quality of service you provide today so you can generate unlimited wonderful reviews tomorrow.
They need to know that you want them to write a review and why their review matters.
There are many different ways to let your customers know that you want them to write a review. It’s only when you verbally ask them that you show the highest level of respect. Every other method of asking for a review falls short and reduces the likelihood of a customer responding to your request. I’ll explain why in Chapter 2.
You customer also wants to know that their review matters. And here’s something that you’ve probably not considered before. They are way more interested in how their review will impact the people in your company than they are with how it will impact your business. If you ask them to write a review without telling them why it matters and how their review will impact the people who work with you, they will lack the motivation act on your request.
They want you to make it as easy as possible for them to write their review.
I see business people do this everyday. They ask their happy customers if they will write a review and then they’re surprised when they don’t do it. It’s not that they don’t want to write a review, it’s that the process is too hard.
In order to write a Google review for your business they have to remember what you asked them to do and view that as more important than what they are currently doing. If they get past step one, they then need to pick up their phone or go to their computer and find your Google business listing. What do you think the odds are that your customers can do that on their own? Then, if they have a Google account, they will have to remember their password before Google allows them to rate their experience and write their review for your business. There are too many points of failure.
I’m going to show you all the creative ways businesses try to help their customers get to their Google page in the next chapter. I’m also going to show you why there is one best way to get them there and why you do not want to do what most businesses are doing to solve that problem.
They want to know that you genuinely appreciate them
I want you to imagine how you would feel if I asked you to write a review for me and you were happy to do it. You liked me and you wanted to write a public review on Google sharing your feelings about how I provided awesome service, knowing that youre comments would have a big impact on me and maybe my career. It might even attract other potential customers to want to work with me directly.
You go home and you write a really nice 5-star review calling me out by name and talking about how wonderful your experience was with everyone at our company and that you recommend our service to anyone reading your review. You hit the submit button hoping that I will see your review in the next day or so.
How do you feel at that moment? How do you feel about yourself and what you did for me and our company in that moment? We’ll if you’re like me, and I know I am, you probably feel pretty darn good about yourself for doing me a favor, a really BIG favor. And you should.
Now imagine that two or three days have gone by and you’ve not heard from me. You might be giving me the benefit of the doubt thinking that I’ve not seen your review yet. Or maybe you’re thinking that I did see you’re review and I think that you’re not important enough to me to say, “Thank You.”
It’s true that you probably did not expect to hear from me because no one has ever responded to a review you’ve written in the past. You never expected I would respond, but what if I did. How would you feel about me and my company if I did get back to you within 24 hours with a great big genuine “thank you?” You don’t have to answer that question. I already know how you would feel, and it’s pretty darn good!
As we get deepgin into the Review Integrity Method, I’ll help you identify potential contact points with your customers where you can youre appreciation. Appreciation is one of the keystones of this review method.
Employees
If you want your employees to provide blow-your-sox-off service and consitantaly ask your happy customers if they will write a review (and ask with clarity and confidence) they’re going to need a little somethin’, somethin’ from you. That somethin’, somethin’ is not what you think it is and it’s non-negotiable if you want them asking for reviews every single day. You don’t need to reward your staff with money or prizes to persuade them to ask for reviews. You can if you want to, but money is nowhere near the biggest motivator. Here’s what your employees need from you.
They need to know why customer reviews are important?
Most business owners never take the time to tell them employees why getting review are important. They typically start the conversation by saying, “I want you to start asking our customers to write reviews for us on Google.” That never works. Your staff wants to know why they’re asking. What’s in it for the business? What’s in it for you? What’s in it for them to ask a customer to write a review? They want and need the answer to these questions before they’ll be comfortable asking. Where there’s understanding, there’s action.
They want to feel comfortable asking for a review and they want to be able to address every possible response with confidence?
Asking your employee to ask a customer if the will write a review might sound like a simple request, but it’s not. Even the most self-confident person in your office will struggle with asking for a review until they get comfortable. They don’t know how to ask for a review. They don’t know what to say if a customers does not want to write a review. They don’t want a bad review. They don’t want to take advantage of someone by asking them to do something they wouldn’t do themselves. I’ll show you how to address that concern in Chapter 4.
When we present our 30-day review program to our clients, the first thing we do is ask them to verbally ask our instructors if they will write a review for their business. In every case our instructors are very amenable to writing a review making their request very easy. We also record the conversation so that our students can see and hear how much they’ve improved over the 30 days. The results are nothing short of staggering.
The Perfect Google Review Request script in Chapter 5 will show you how to teach your staff how to ask for a review with clarity and confidence. I will also show you all the different exercices we take our clients through so that they are comfortable not only asking for reviews, but professionally dealing with every possible response from their customers.
They need to know that you appreciate them asking for reviews.
This is the number reason review strategies fail. You can start with the best intentions, the best training, the best review software, the most wonderful reward system ever designed by man, but if you do not show your appreciation every single day, your staff will stop asking for reviews. This is not true some of the time, it is true all of the time.
Your ability to create and sustain a successful review strategy breaks down like this. 10% of your success has to do with your review software or your ability to send your customers a link to your review pages in a timely manner. 30% of your success has to do with the people asking for reviews and 60% of your success has to do with you or your managers telling your employees that you appreciation them for asking for reviews. The moment you stop verbally showing your appreciate, that’s the moment your staff will stop asking for reviews, and all the money in the world won’t fix this.
Here’s the good news. Every time your customer writes a review on Google or any other review site, you have a reason to say, “Thank You” to the employee who was responsible for getting that review and letting them know how much that means to you. I will go into more detail on this in Chapter 4.
You. The Owner / Manager
When you implement the Review Integrity Method for getting reviews the right way and make it a part of your daily business activities, you can expect a lot more than just becoming the highest rated, most reviewed busines in your community. Here are 12 other perks you will enjoy starting on day one.
Happier more confident employees: There’s something to be said for a job well done. When your employees are providing exceptional service and they have an opportunity to hear or read the 5-star reviews written by those customers every day, it’s the motivation they need to keep the ball rolling.
Happier customers: Are you familiar with the Ben Franklin effect? It states that doing a favor for someone can develop positive feelings for that person (or business.) When a customers writes a 5-star review about your employees and your business, the will like you better. You can’t go wrong with customers liking you better.
More referrals: Happy customers are more likely to refer your business to their family and friends. When you apply step 7 of the Review Integrity Method, you will open the door for referral opportunities.
Higher customer loyalty: It costs way more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep a happy customer. When your customers experience the quality of servic you provide and feel your appreciation for their business, they will come back time and time again.
Higher level of customer service: Your staff can’t help but provide better service when they read and understand what makes their customers happy, and not so happy. Fortunately when you follow the Review Integrity Method you will be able to read what makes them happy on line in their review, and hear what makes them unhappy before they write a review so you can make things right.
Better problem solving skills: One of the keys to your success is being able to entrust your employees to do the right thing under every circumstance. When they apply step one in the Perfect Google Review Reqeust script and do it consistently, they will be able to quickly identify unhappy customers and fix the problem quickly. If they don’t know what’s concerning your customers, they will never be in a place to address their needs. Motivated employees
Added valuable to your business: This is something most business owners don’t think about until it’s too late. When you can demonstrate to a potential buyer that your marketing and advertising costs are a fraction of the industry standard based on your ability to attract new customers from your outstanding online reputation, they will pay a premium for your business. Contrast that to a business with a poor or mediocre reputation. Building a strong customer base and a stunning online reputation takes time. It’s never too early to start adding value to your business.
Cheaper advertising costs: If you chose to advertise your business using Google Ads, your ad cost will be much lower if you have a high star rating with lots of high-quality reviews. The reason for this is because it will increase your trust which in turn will increase your click through rate. The higher your click through rate relative to your competitors the lower your ad costs. Having a stunning reputation will help on all of the other review and advertising sites too.
More effective marketing programs: You can’t go wrong by stocking up on positive customer reviews and testimonials. These are diamonds marketing companies look for when trying to sell your product or service, and they are one of the most compelling things potential customers look for before contacting your business for service. When you follow the Review Integrity Method, not only will you get more customer reviews and testimonials but all of your reviews will be amazing. The kind of reviews that compel people to want to work with you.
Compelling website content: If your website isn’t loaded with social proof in the form of customer reviews and testimonials yet, it will be in a few days after following our review strategy. You don’t want to give people easy access to write a review from your website, which I will explain in the next chapter, but you do want to show off what your happy customer have to say about you there. Think about his for a moment, wouldn’t you want to have reviews and testimonials that address the concerns of potential customers when they visit your site? And wouldn’t you want to be able to select which reviews you want to show from a list of a thousand reviews rather than from just a few dozen?
Peace of mind: The thing I hear most often from the owners and managers who participate in our 30-day review coaching program is the sound of relief. For the first time they have been able to prove to themselves that they staff is not only capable, but willing to provide 5-star service and verbally ask for a review with clarity and confidence. Not on one of them was able to fully perceive the transformation that their people went through when the probram began, and you will feel the same way when you take your staff through the progam. This I think is the greatest reward of all.
Analyze
Let’s take a look at where your business stands today with respect to reviews and compare your results with your two biggest competitors. This will give you a clear understanding of where your business is relative to your competition on a much deeper level than just looking at the obvious data Google shows to the general public. It will give you the insite you need in order to make smart review decisions along with motivating your staff to participate in your review strategy moving forward.
In this exercise we’re only evaluating customer reviews. We are not going to look at how your reviews impact your ranking, quality of service provided by your employees, the number of potential customers calling your business for service, employee motivation, customer loyalty, referrals, business valuation, skill development or any other benefits you will derive from the Review Integrity Method. All of these things will improve as you follow the Review Integrity Method of getting reviews the right way.
Below is a spreadsheet that shows an example of what I want you to do along with simple instructions as to how to find the data. Once you understand the exercise, please fill out the spreadsheet for your business and that of your competition. Once you’ve completed that task, I will explain why each of these factors are important to your success and what you need to do to improve your standing with Google.
The example I used below is for a ficticious dental office. These numbers are typical in the dental industry. The numbers you will see for your business and your industry will be completely different. For example, if you’re in the long term care business your total number of reviews will be much lower as will your star rating. If you’re a plumber or automobile dealership, you might see reviews in the thousands. If you’re a chiropractor you will see average star ratings at or near 5.0 and if you’re in the apartment rental business you will see star rating closer to 2.0. Every industry is different. The only thing that matters is how your business compares to other businesses in your industry. So don’t freak out if you don’t have 2,000 reviews with a 5-star rating … at least not yet :-)
| Your Business | Competitor 1 | Competitor 2 |
Business Name | Aloha Dental | Maui Dental | Kihei Dental |
Google star rating | 4.7 | 4.6 | 5.0 |
Number of Google reviews | 127 | 534 | 99 |
Reviews last 2 months | 18 | 10 | 20 |
Star rating last 2 months | 4.3 | 4.8 | 5.0 |
Star rating last 20 reviews | 4.4 | 4.7 | 5.0 |
% with written comments last 20 reviews | 85% | 75% | 55% |
Owner responses rate last 20 reviews | 15% | 10% | 100% |
3 most often used words in reviews | Cleaning/ Crown/ X-Ray | Cleaning/ Smile/ Dental Health | Filling/ Crown/ Emergency |
Reviews on site 1 (Facebook) | 13 | 43 | 11 |
Star rating on site 1 (Facebook) | 4.0 | 4.0 | 4.9 |
Reviews on site 2 (Yelp) | 12 | 61 | 22 |
Star rating on site 2 (Yelp) | 4.3 | 4.3 | 4.8 |
Reviews on site 3 (Other) | 0 | 7 | 1 |
Star rating on site 3 (Other) | 0 | 3.5 | 3.0 |
1) Current Google Star Rating: You will find this and your total reviews at the top of your Google business listing. It will look like this.
2) Total Number of Google Reviews: to the right of your star rating.
3) Number of Google Reviews last 2 months: Go to your reviews page and sort by “Newest.” You will see this sorting option at the top of your review page that looks like this. The default setting is “Most relevant.”
Count the number of reviews you see including all of your reviews that show up to “2 months ago.” Stop counting when you see “3 months old” or older. How many reviews did you accumulate in the last 2 months?
Star Rating over time
If you have 20 or more reviews in the last two months, please find your average star rating for all of the reviews you’ve acquired over the last two months.
If you have fewer that 20 reviews over the last two months, find your star rating for your last 20 reviews no matter how far back your reviews go.
You only need to do one or the other, not both.
4a) Star rating over last 2 months: Sort your reviews by “Newest” and count all of the reviews you’ve acquired over the last two months. Then count the number of 5-star reviews you have and multiply that number by 5. Count the number of 4-star reviews you have and multiply that number by 4. Do the same for your 3, 2 and 1-star reviews. Add those numbers together and divide by the total number of reviews you’ve acquired over the last two months. This will give you your average star rating over the last 2 months.
Number or reviews | # | Times | Equal |
5-star reviews | 17 x | 5 | 85 |
4-star reviews | 5 x | 4 | 20 |
3-star reviews | 0 x | 3 | 0 |
2-star reviews | 1 x | 2 | 2 |
1-star reviews | 0 x | 1 | 0 |
Total # of reviews | 23 |
| 85+20+0+2+0=107 |
Star rating |
|
| 107/23 = 4.65 |
4b) Star rating last 20 reviews: Sort your reviews by “Newest” and look at your last 20 reviews. Count the number of 5-star reviews you have and multiply that number by 5. Count the number of 4-star reviews you have and multiply that number by 4. Do the same for your 3, 2 and 1-star reviews. Add those numbers together and divide by 20. This will give you your average star rating for your last 20 reviews.
Number or reviews | 20 | Times | Equal |
5-star reviews | 16 x | 5 | 80 |
4-star reviews | 3 x | 4 | 12 |
3-star reviews | 0 x | 3 | 0 |
2-star reviews | 1 x | 2 | 2 |
1-star reviews | 0 x | 1 | 0 |
Total # of reviews | 20 |
| 80+12+0+0+1=93 |
Star rating |
|
| 92/20 = 4.6 |
5) # of reviews with written comments last 20 reviews: Sort your reviews by “Newest” and look at your last 20 reviews. Count the number of reviews with written comments? Then multiply that number by 5 to get the percentage of review with written comments. For example if you had 16 review with written comments and you multiplied that number by 5 you would have 80% of your reviews with written comments.
6) % owner response to last 20 reviews: Sort your reviews by “Newest” and look at your last 20 reviews. Count the number or review with a written “response by the owner” and multiply that number by 5. For example, if you responded to 3 of the last 20 reviews, your Owner Response Rate would be 15%.
7) Words most often used in reviews: If you have more than 10 reviews, Google will show the words that your customers use in their reviews. Here’s an example of what that looks like. List the top three most common words your customers use in their reviews. If you do not see this for your business listing, note that Google absolutely has access to this information and uses it as a part of your ranking.
8) Alternative review site reviews and star rating: Your customers write reviews for you business on sites other than Google. Some of those sites include Facebook, Yelp, Tripadvisor, Angie, nextdoor, BBB, Yellowpages and many others. The sites where your customers write reviews will differ based on your industry and your location.
Do a Google search for “your industry + your location.” For example “Appliance repair Ft. Myers Fl.” Look at the review sites that show up with stars next to their listing. For this example I see Yelp, Angi and Facebook. Then find how many review you have on each site along with your star rating.
Now it’s your turn. Please fill out the review form for your business and your top two competitors. If two competitor do not come immediately to mind, pick the two businesses in your community with the most reviews and highest ratings.
The way to find your competitors is to do a Google search for your industry + your location, unless you’re doing the search from your office. Google knows where you’re searching from so you will not need to add a location.
At this point Google shows three business listings on the first page of results, that may change in the future. Click on the “more businesses” button below the last listing to see all of your competitors and pick the two with the most reviews and highest rating. These are the businesses you will be competing with for reviews … and new customers. If you’re going to compete, compete with the best!
| Your Business | Competitor 1 | Competitor 2 |
Business Name |
|
|
|
Google star rating |
|
|
|
Number of Google reviews |
|
|
|
Reviews last 2 months |
|
|
|
Star rating last 2 months |
|
|
|
Star rating last 20 reviews |
|
|
|
% with written comments last 20 reviews |
|
|
|
Owner responses rate last 20 reviews |
|
|
|
3 most often used words in reviews |
|
|
|
Reviews on site 1 ( ) |
|
|
|
Star rating on site 1 ( ) |
|
|
|
Reviews on site 2 ( ) |
|
|
|
Star rating on site 2 ( ) |
|
|
|
Reviews on site 3 ( ) | 0 | 7 | 1 |
Star rating on site 3 ( ) | 0 | 3.5 | 3.0 |
Why These Numbers Matter
Google Star Rating
Your current star rating is your staring point. This is Google’s numerical reputation of your online reputation today based on all customer feedback in the form of a star rating from your customers. This is the big number that you and your team will work on improving over the long run. If you have a perfect 5.0 star rating today, your goal will be to protect that rating with more and better 5-star reviews from this point forward.
Your star rating is also an important ranking fractor and probably the most important customer attraction factor. Google wants to show the best results when someone does a search for the products and service you offer, and a high star rating is a good indicator that they are showing one of the better choices.
It’s no surprise that potential customers want to work with businesses with a high customer rating. You do too. It’s important to remember that your star rating is relative to your industry, so again, don’t freak out if it’s not at a 5.0. You want to have a star rating as high or higher than your closest competitors so that potential customers will consider you their number one choice.
Number of Google reviews
The number of reviews your business has, has more to do with how long you’ve been in business and how aggressively you’ve pursued getting review. Once you have more reviews than the average business in your industry, the number of reviews don’t seem to matter as much to potential customers. It is true that most of people are attracted to businesses with a lot of reviews, so you can’t go wrong increasing this number.
There are lots of reasons you want to get more reviews, even if you are the most reviewed business in your industry with a perfect 5.0 star rating. According to many SEO experts, the quality of your review and the recency of your reviews are more important than the number of your reviews. When you focus on what matters, the number of your reviews will naturally increase … but this is not a factor that I would pay too much attent too. It is not high on the list of why potential customers will want to work with you and it seems like it’s a less and less important ranking factor with Google.
Reviews in the last 2 months
This piece of information is important. Google wants to see that you’re in the game. The longer your business goes without getting customer reviews, the more Google starts to wonder if you’re still in business. The longer it’s been since a customer wrote a review for your business, the greater the impact it will have on your ranking and visability … and not is a good way. Google looks for normalicy. When Google sees a business with a lot of reviews and very few of those reviews were written recently, they start to second guess whether it’s a good idea to show that business to searchers.
More importantly according to a 2023 study by Bright Local, 46% of the population indicated that they would feel positive about using a business if they have review posted in the last month. Search Engine Land also discover that 85% of consumers disregard reviews that are more than 3 months old. Please stop and reread that last sentence and let it sink in. Recency of reviews matters and it matters a lot.
How did you compare to your two biggest competitors when it came to the number or reviews you’ve acquired in the last two months? This is one of the factors that will show you which of your competitors is serious about getting reviews today. This does not mean that they’re getting high quality reviews from the highest percentage of their happy customers, nor does it mean that their customers feel appreciated for writing reviews or are any nore likely to do business with the company again in the future or refer them to their family or friends. It is however one of the factors that Google considers when deciding if they want to move that business higher in the search results and show their business listing to more potential customers.
Getting reviews on a consistent basis is really important. It’s important to Google and it’s important to your potential customers. When you consider how many total reviews your competitors have, it’s not where near as important has how many reviews they’ve acquired over the last 60 days. So, no matter how many total reviews your competitors have, you can “and will” generate more and better reviews over the next 2 months following this system, and that’s what really matters.
Star rating over the last two months
It’s not just getting more reviews, it’s getting better reviews that matters. One simple indicator of a “better review” is the star rating that accompanies each review. I don’t know about you, but as a business owner I consider 5-star reviews better than 3-star reviews.
If you have a hundreds of review, it is going to be difficult to change your star rating over time. When Google calculates your star rating they use simple math. If your average score is 4.43 they will round down to 4.4. If your average score is 4.45, they will average up to 4.5. If you have a lot of review with a 4.something rating, it can take dozens of 5-star reviews to move your average up just one tenth of a point. On the other hand …
If you start today and focus on getting reviews from your happy customers following the Review Integrity Method, in 60 days you will have an outstanding star rating along with a lot of wonder 5-star reviews. You have much greater control over your average star rating over a 60 day period than you do from all the reviews you’re received in the past. The past is behind you and there is nothing you can do about it. On the otherhand you have almost complete control over what you do over the next 60 days.
Your customers don’t care about the quality of service you provided a year ago, they care about the quality of service you provide today. Knowing your average star rating over the last 60 days is a wonderful metric to know and to share with your team so they can see for themselves how the quality of their service is impacting their customers. Don’t fret over your overall star rating. Fret about what you’re going to do today and tomorrow and your overall star rating will improve on its own.
Star rating last 20 reviews
If you only had a handful of reviews over the last 60 days, then you will want to look at your star rating over the last 20 reviews. This is another metric you can use if you get reviews either much faster or much slower rate than 10 reviews a month. What is your star rating over the last 20 reviews? How does that number compare to your total star rating and how does it compare to your competition?
Percent reviews with owner response
The fact that Google and the other review sites provide you the owner with an opportunity to respond to your customer reviews is great. It allows you to thank your customers for their comments and defend yourself from a false accusations if necessary. But like any tool, you must know how to use it properly or it could backfire.
I’ll be going to into detail on how to use the owner response or “reply” feature in Chapter 7, but for now please know that responding to reviews, both positive and negative is important.
When you reply to a Google review, using Google’s reply feature, Google will immediately send your customer an email notifying them of your response and it will post your response below the review for everyone to see. Knowing what to say is both an art and a science. Way more people get this wrong than get it right. Doing it correctly will attract customers who would otherwise ignore you. Doing it wrong will repeal customers who would otherwise want to work with you. Either way, responding to reviews is something you want to get into the habit of doing, and doing well.
How does your review reply rate compare to that of your competition? Ideally you want your response rate to be at 100% and you want each response to be unique to each customer review.
Percent reviews with written comments
Google wants reviews that are helpful, relevant and trustworthy. When customers leave star ratings without written comments, those reviews do not meet Google’s criteria for a quality review, and because of that they are more likely to be filtered.
Ideally you want 100% of your reviews with well-written comments, not short inane comments, but comments the reader will find helpful, relevant and trustworthy. I’m going to show you how to get those kind of reviews in Chapter 5 when we cover the Perfect Google Review Request script. I’m also going to show you the three biggest reasons why customers don’t leave written comments with their star rating and what you can do about it.
So, what percent of your reviews have written comments? How does that compare to your competition? If you have at least 90% of your reviews with comments, you’re going to be OK. If fewer than 90% of your reviews have written comments, I’m going to show you why that’s happening in the next chapter on review strategies.
Three most often used words in your reviews
Did you know that Google allows readers to sort your reviews by the words your customers used in their review? That’s a great feature for your potential customers if they want to learn more about how previous customers felt about a specific product or service you offer.
Not only does Google allow readers to sort by review words, but Google is more likely to show a business when a searcher uses one or more of those words in their search terms.
For example, when I did search for “dentist near me” Google showed three dental offices. When I looked at the words their patients used in their reviews, none of the three had the word “emergency” as a word commonly used in their reviews. Then I did a search for “Emergency dentist near me” and low and behold the first result was for a dental office that I did not see in my previous search. When I looked to see if their patients used the word “emegency” in there reviews, there it was. Google rearranged the dental offices they showed me, and I have to believe that they took into account the word “emergency” which showed up in customer reviews when showing their results.
There are hundreds of ranking factors that Google uses to determine if they are going to show your business based on what the searcher is looking for and the location and device they are using when they do the search. The words your customers use in their reviews seems to have an impact on what Google shows some of the time. This is only one small factor that can influence your ability to attract new customers, so why not take advantage of it when it is so easy to do?
When you look at the words your customers are using in their reviews to describe your business and the services you offer, are you happy with what they’re writing about? Are they writing about the products and services you offer or are their review more generic? I’m going to show you how to get them to write about the service you offer when we look at the Perfect Google Review Request script in Chapter 5. This is just one more tool you will have in your review tool box to attract new customers, and who does not want to attract new customers?
Reviews and ratings on other review sites
Google wants to see reviews for your business on sites other than Google. When they do, they are more likely to move your listing up in the search results according to the SEO experts around the world.
One of the biggest mistakes I see businesses make is using what we call the “Google or Bust” review strategy. This is not a good idea for multiple reasons.
Eventhough Google is the biggest and most trusted review site, Google is not the only place people go to research your business. They go to other review sites including Yelp, YP, Angi, Nextdoor, TripAdvisor, BBB, Apple Maps and more. They also go to social networking sites like YouTube, Instagram, TicTok, X, Reddit, local blogs and more. You want your happy customers to talk about your business on multiple sites for this reason
Not all of your customers can leave you a review on Google. Google requires that your customer has their own Google account before they will allow them to write a review. If they don’t have an account or if they can’t remember their Google password, they can not give you feedback or tell the world how wonderful you are. You want to give your customers who can not write a review on Google for this reason.
If Google sees that all of your customer reviews are on Google, they are less likely to promote your business to the masses. Having all of your reviews on one website is not normal … and Google loves normal. According to SEO experts, having customer review on other popular, and not so popular sites will impact your ranking on Google in a positive way.
Chapter 1 Analysis: In this chapter you learned exactly what Google, employees, customers and you need and want from the review process if you’re going to succeed.
