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A couple of weeks back I wrote a post outlining a review plan for local businesses. On that post I received a very thoughtful comment from David Mihm, a local SEO in Portland OR.

I was asserting that a business should get reviews from Citysearch and Insider Pages and Google almost as an after thought. David commented that he thought getting reviews on Google should be job #1. We had a friendly back and forth and than I read this post on Understanding Google Maps, which said that many of the reviews from Citysearch had been stripped out of Google’s results. With a resulting loss of “review stars” at the listing level and loss of business. Hmmmm… I thought, score one for David Mihm.

Applying What Was Learned From Links To Reviews? A Search for Quality

The question lingers, however, why would Google discount these reviews from Citysearch? I started thinking… if I were Google, what would I look for in a review? I couldn’t filter bad reviews and just show positive ones, obviously. No, I would want reviews from mavens. People who love to shop and give their well informed opinions. What would these people have in common? They would have a lot of reviews to their credit. So, I would look for reviewers with a large number of reviews to their credit.

Conversely, what if I wanted to game the system? The easiest way to do this would be to create an account, review the business and be done. Leaving in my wake a bunch of accounts with a single review on each, possibly 2 reviews to make it look good (but they were done on the same day). Is Google filtering these reviews? That’s a question worth asking… so I went to the florist that had lost some of it’s reviews and checked the reviewers.

Here are the Stats

Insiderpages shows 4 reviews and citysearch has 15. Google reports only the 4 from Insiderpages.

Of the 15 reviews from Citysearch (that google stripped out) 12 of them had been the sole review of the reviewer. Certainly, not mavens and possibly an attempt to game the system in the eyes of Google??? The other 3 reviewers had only 2 reviews to their credit… hmmm.

The 4 reviewers on Insiderpages had 4, 3, 2 & 5 reviews to their credit, better… but not earth shattering.

To look for more evidence, I went across country and found a florist in NY with only 6 reviews but the stars were given. When I dug into the reviews a little further, I saw that they were provided by reviewers with the following number of reviews to their credit: 83, 31, 69, 19, 55. Much more “mavenesque”

Moving on I came across a restaurant credited with reveiws from superpages.com. I don’t see that very often, as Google usually favors sites that specialize in dining reviews for restaurants, so I checked on the reviewers. The 4 who had reviewed that restaurant on superpages.com had an astonishing 32, 191, 303 & 339 reviews to their credit.

Could reviews be getting like links? Where the number isn’t necessarily more important than the quality? Should the new strategy be to find people with a large of number reviews to their credit and give them a free sample? Are we going to have a paid review debate in the near future?

Some of these things probably aren’t happening yet but they may have just begun or be in the near future. As for Citysearch, most of the reviews on that site are from single reviewers. (Is Citysearch easier to game than others?) And that may have played a role in Google removing those reviews from the local algo.

And as far as the back and forth with David Mihm, I’m going to split the loaf and give David the bigger half: I would revise my advice to the small business owner to focus on getting reviews from Google and Insider pages and put a premium on those reviews from active reviewers.

They found your site and they liked it… you charmed ‘em with that ‘about us’ smile… and they are just about to pick up the phone and call you… but they stop and think… “wonder what others are saying about this business.” Then back to Google and they type in:

Review + Your Business

What comes up? Do you know? Is it important?

A recent survey conducted by Nielsen Netratings found: (as quoted on the Kelsey Group Blog)

Favorable reviews in blogs play a key role in local purchase decisions – but only if the review comes from credible sources.

The use of the term blog here is strange, it makes me wonder if the sample is a little more web savvy than average, but it tells me that the review strategy of Fake
review optimization isn’t the way to go.

Small Businesses Should Have A Good Review Strategy In Place

A good review strategy should start with Search Engines. Begin by doing a couple of simple searches in Google that include the word review: 1 for your business name + review and in the second use the business category. The goal here is to find the review site that Google is most likely to return for your business. The review sites Google returns will likely vary by geography and business category. So, play with the geography a little bit, if necessary.

 If you look at this search in Google, the geography I used was a state plus the category. In this case, Insider Pages was the top 2 results.

When I added Paramus, a city in NJ, the top were CitySearch and Yahoo! Local.

These 3 sites will be the first 3 I target.

I will begin with Yahoo! Local believing that if my name is typed in with the word review, this will be the first place Google looks.

First, I will verify my business with Yahoo! Local by doing a search for my business and then click on the update listing link. If you need to add your business go here. In either case, you will need to set up a Yahoo Account. Then make sure you have a listing on Insider Pages and CitySearch.

Next, is to just encourage your customers to go on and review you. Some business owners I have talked to about this are hesitant to bring it up because they don’t know how to do it. Simply, sign up with these sites and add a review. Go on and review your favorite pizza place. Write down each step you had to take to complete the process including signing up in an email. Copy and past the link into that email and save it. Repeat the process for each site you’re targeting. This pizza place will love you.

Some Will, Some Won’t, So What!

Next, just have a conversation with your customer. Ask them if they were happy with the work you did. If they were you have a good candidate. Ask them if they wouldn’t mind reviewing your business online. If they say yes, thank them and tell them that you will email them to make it easy. Send them the email and your done.

When you’re satisfied with the reviews on these sites, you should try and get some reviews on popular internet yellow pages such as Superpages.com and Yellowpages.com. And don’t forget Google Maps.

You might later create a page on your site including all these reviews. Include the town of the reviewer at the end of each testimonial and you will have a page laden with great keywords.

And that’s it, you now have a solid review plan in place.