Respond to Google Review as Business or Individual?
-
Hello Moz World!
My agency has never had a great strategy for reputation management, but have begun acquiring some Google reviews. We know it's best practice to respond – but I've never considered whether I should respond as an individual or with our company's GMB? The owner of our GMB is "Engenius" – a general admin account for our agency. I'm also a user on the account, as the "owner," but I'm technically not the owner of our company.
Should the owner be added as a user and respond directly? Or is it okay to respond as "Engenius" (the brand)? Or can I respond as the "owner," though I'm not technically?
I know ultimately it's probably not a huge deal, but any thoughts would be awesome! Thanks!
-
You're welcome, Brooks!
-
Thanks for this, Miriam! I love that take on thinking big.
-
I think it's best to respond as a company rather than as an individual. Company responses seem more legitimate and help to build trust especially when responding to a negative review. Personally, when I see these responses, I don't really think it's the actual owner but are representatives of the company.
-
This is a good question, Brooks!
My take: When scaling rep management for companies with 100s or 1,000s of locations, there's no way the owner is going to be personally responding to each review. Rather, he/she will be designating staff to act in his/her name. So, basically, you can think of this scenario this way. You're being empowered by the owner to act on his/her behalf, and putting the name "owner" on the review is an indication that the reply represents company policy, rather than the owner sitting at a laptop late into the night writing responses. I can't imagine John Mackey was logging hours replying to Whole Foods reviews.
So, this is one of those scenarios in which I say, "Think big." If the "big guys" have staff who respond in their names, then smaller businesses can follow suit. I think we're pretty safe in assuming that Google's generic language of "response from the owner" isn't convincing Whole Foods shoppers that they've just receive a personal reply from John Mackey
That being said, it would certainly behoove owners and C-suites to craft very clear policy governing how employees should respond to the public while representing the brand. This is a step that should not be overlooked in organizations large or small.
I hope others will weigh in on this, as this is just my opinion.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can I use two feeds for Products Reviews Stars
My client has two sources of reviews - productsreview.com.au and judgeme.com - both have about 30 reviews each and we would like to combine these to get to the required 50 (so that they both show on the product ratings feed). I cannot find any information on this so would be grateful for some guidance - thank you!
Reviews and Ratings | | E2E0 -
Paying for Reviews Penalty?
Hello, recently came across a company that has been paying people directly for reviews. I of course do not recommend this and realized the ethical implications and even the lawsuits that can come from this, but does Google have a manual penalty for fake reviews or do they just algorithmically discount ones that raise red flags? I have never really had to worry about this in the past. I know you can flag fake reviews to them on an individual basis, but does anyone have history of knowing specific situations where a company was manually punished for doing this? Just curious and I kind of wanted to give them strong documentation to knock it off. Thanks in advance.
Reviews and Ratings | | jeremyskillings0 -
How to get the most reviews for in home service providers?
Most of my clients go to the clients home to provide their service. For example a plumber or a bed bug extermination. Most of my clients find it hard to ask for and get reviews even though they do a great job. Is there an app or anything else out there that makes the process easier and gets better results than just asking? Are there any review aggregator applications? Maybe an application that a client can write a review in one location and the review is pushed out to multiple sites like Google My Business or YP?
Reviews and Ratings | | PSLab0 -
Schema markup for employees and local business on same page - Possible?
Hello, We have some local business sites where we have user submitted reviews. We then post those reviews on that business' page and use the schema aggregate markup. Works like a charm in getting stars in SERPs on branded searches for these location. We already have information about the persons who work at these locations and are about to work out a process where we can get even better data on these persons. Right now they are marked up as employees on the local business pages. Right now the ratings are for the business as a whole, but we are looking at expanding where you can not only submit a location review, but designate which employee you worked with. We work in the health care industry and so you can see why this would make sense. Right now we mark up a local clinic and employees in the following way Local Business > Employee > Person > Name of Person Person Bio > Person info etc We are going back and forth on if this would be worth marking up reviews at the employee level as well. So, on a page each employee would have an aggregate rating and then the location would have an aggregate rating that consists of all of the reviews for that location - a combination of all employees. As I looked through the schema standard for person https://schema.org/Person there is nothing there that shows a markup for the aggregate rating of a person. Also when I look at other more specific business types https://health-lifesci.schema.org/MedicalBusiness same thing. It looks like schema has rating tied to a business vs a person. Right now - the markup validates. It shows up in the SERPs. People are happy. So, I am inclined to say, if it aint broke ... but we are always looking for better ways to present our data to user and to Google. My gut right now, based on how Google is reading things, to just keep the aggregate rating on the location, but start to track reviews on a per employee basis for potential future use. Lemme know what you all think!
Reviews and Ratings | | HeaHea0 -
Rich snippets not showing up in Google
Would anyone know why after adding schema.org markup to a websites products, reviews and ratings why it still isn't showing up in Google SERPs? Does Google pick and choose who's rich snippets get displayed on a random basis or some other criteria?
Reviews and Ratings | | znotes0 -
How can a business turn off the Google+ review feature?
Is there a way to disable the review feature on our Google+ page whilst still retaining the rest of the Google+ features?
Reviews and Ratings | | CostumeD0 -
Reviews Duplicate Issue
Hi, I have one query, Can we use the reviews displayed in one website to other website. I mean I have one product and has different websites for that. Can i use the reviews that i got in one of my website in my other website. Will it bring any duplicate content issue? Also one more question for example, consider i am running a review website, can i list the reviews that has been displayed in different websites to my review websites . Whether it will bring any copyright issue?
Reviews and Ratings | | WebOps-SEO0 -
Too many reviews too quickly?
Is there any sort of guideline on this? Right now, we have very few google reviews. However, I've cross referenced a list of our happiest clients with people who have g+ accounts. There are at least 12 clients, I feel strongly would write us g+ reviews if I asked them to. I want to just get the word out today, but I'm worried if 8-12 reviews in a week would red flag us. I've heard that getting too many reviews to quickly can be a problem, but I'm thinking that more like 100 than 10, but I have no idea. Most of my competitors don't have any reviews, and the most any of them have is 10. I don't know if that matters at all either in terms of triggering a red flag. I'd appreciate whatever insight you all could give. Thanks, Ruben
Reviews and Ratings | | KempRugeLawGroup0