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Category: Reviews and Ratings

Dive into how to manage reviews and ratings for your local marketing strategy.

  • YNWA


    Hi. Exactly as the title says. Is Moz Local any good? Any better Alternatives? Thanks

    | YNWA
    0
  • Bryan_Loconto


    Hey Mozzers!! I just received a sales call from ReviewInc.com. They offer a review management software to help monitor, collect and share online reviews from customers. Does anyone have experience using their system? Any feedback is greatly appreciated! Thanks guys and gals!

    | Bryan_Loconto
    0
  • RobertFisher


    Since we all work with Yelp on a local basis, I believe many are aware that if a review is placed by a non customer about a company, Yelp will typically remove them if you show that it isn't valid, etc. We all know they made a show of outing those who posted fake reviews as well. Here is a question I have though: Have any of you been aware of Yelp taking down valid negative reviews for companies? I have just run into this and find it somewhat perplexing. If you know of this, I would love to hear how it happens? Thanks,

    | RobertFisher
    2
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    One of our offices is in Trinity, Florida. However, "Trinity" isn't a real city. It is essentially the nicer part of New Port Richey. Organically, we rank for new port richey terms, but i have a suspicion, our lack of maps/local presence is hurting us. Should we do a massive citation overhaul and change everything to New Port Richey for that office? Will doing that somehow hurt our site overall? Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0
  • RobertFisher


    I realize this is not a highly technical question, but I just read over the post by Trevor Klein on the new Beginners Guide to Link Building by Paddy Moogan at Distilled. I cracked up when I saw the post had 31 Thumbs Up and 1 Thumb down. I see this regularly on very good posts where someone just had to thumb it down. I wish there was a way that person could anonymously post why they did so just so we could discover their wisdom that we are obviously missing. It kills me that I cannot find the time to produce such quality work and post it to Moz. I start a ton of posts, but am just too busy with client work to finish them. I finally finished one around ugly directory sites blocking link tracking tools and patted myself on the back for days (Thank you Keri Morgret for your editorial assistance). But, really, is it just that there is someone who woke up from a really rough night and thought, "Why the ___ are all you people so ____ happy?! Arrrrrgggghhhh!!!" Obviously, there is no correct answer and you are more than welcome to thumb this into hell if things are that bad. Peace.

    | RobertFisher
    10
  • sarahbeth219


    Hi there, Is there any value to responding to negative reviews that are older than this year? I have some that span from 2009 until now, as well as negative message board posts. Another question, to mitigate this, should I have the client respond to just reviews or actually get on the message boards as well and address some issues that have been brought up with the company? Some are specific customer complains, some are just talking about the company in general. Thanks!

    | sarahbeth219
    1
  • prsntsnh


    What would be a good Q & A Plugin to use? We are an independent portal that is custom developed on the LAMP stack and now want to integrate a Q & A section to our site. Any recommendations on plugins that we should look to use would be of great help! TIA Asif

    | prsntsnh
    0
  • MXRSEO


    Hello everyone, I'm looking to display testimonials with star ratings in SERP's for a RV repair shop. The testimonials will be unique and manually added to the site. Is this achieved through Rich Snippets/Schema markup or is there a specific way to implement it to influence Google to display the ratings? Thanks in advance. webmasters_99170_rsreview.png

    | MXRSEO
    0
  • dsinger


    Hello Moz Friends, I am investigating some online reputation management tools to help boost testimonials across the web for my various business locations.  One thing I am finding is that many tools offer syndicated and aggregated content that can be displayed within our website for that location from various review sites across the web. My question is, will this type of aggregated content have a negative impact on our site, considering Google Panda is aggressively going after sites with thin content, aggregated content, etc.?  I like the idea of showcasing positive testimonial from across the web on that business location's website testimonials page, but do not want to do it if it will ultimately lead to a penalty and site devaluing. Does anyone have any insight into whether or not aggregated testimonials on one page of our site will have a negative impact overall, a negative impact on just that one page's ranking ability, or should have no affect?

    | dsinger
    1
  • SmoothSkin


    I am thinking about offering my products on Bzzagent. This is a social media system where I would send out free products and coupons to a large number of people who would in turn review my products on the Internet.  This sounds like it might violate the "pay for reviews" rules. Looking for opinions.

    | SmoothSkin
    0
  • Leadhub


    Hey Mozzers, I'm noticing that several sites of mine are triggering rich snippets for REVIEWS when I do site:search, however when I remove the site:search their results are stripped of rich snippets. Any thoughts on this/others seeing similarities?

    | Leadhub
    0
  • Ophelia619


    Hi, A customer of mine told me she created a yelp account just to give me a review.  She's a good customer and wanted to show me her appreciation.  I thanked her for taking the trouble.  About a week later, I see that her review was marked as "not recommended."  This was a legitimate review made by a real customer.  I'm angry that it was removed for no reason.  I noticed a competitor of mine has 18 yelp reviews and all of them show up just fine.  I also noticed that this same competitor is paying for ads from Yelp. A couple of years ago, another customer reviewed me on yelp and it was also labeled as "not recommended."  So I now have 2 "not recommended" reviews on Yelp that, if you ask me, imply that my reviews are fake.  After Yelp and Yahoo merged, I lost the 14 Yahoo reviews I had obtained from customers over the last six years.  I have also noticed over the years, that whenever I need to sign into my Yelp business account to update the data, it's locked until some pushy sales person calls and asks to speak to me in order to try to sell me ads on Yelp.  Anyone else hate Yelp?  They're obviously not really interested in making sure reviews are "real," they're just interested in selling expensive ads.

    | Ophelia619
    1
  • OhYeahSteve


    Is Signpost a good service for a small business?

    | OhYeahSteve
    0
  • Mark_Ch


    Hi All, Over time we have provided our services to many clients big and small.
    As part of my new website I'm looking to create a simple icon thumbnail slide show on the home page. The slide show will show new customers a icon image of the companies we have helped. My Question
    Naturally, we have a full email audit of communication and works being completed for each client. Can I simply place the client icon my slide show without their permission? Regards Mark

    | Mark_Ch
    0
  • MBASydney


    Hi Guys, Looking for some advice on improving the visibility of my Google Local Page for non-brand local keyword terms. I want my listing to rank for local keyword terms “sydney cars” “cars in sydney” and related terms. I know reviews play a key role and citations. We have created many citations in multiple different directories (yelp, truelocal, etc) but still have not yet seen much movement or results. In this case should I be building links to the actual website BMW Sydney with various/high diversified anchor text around “sydney cars” “cars in sydney” "luxury cars" and variations and continue building authority to this website. Image of the search results:
    --> http://s17.postimg.org/u33sgl87j/screenshot_1482.jpg Is there anything further I can do to it’s Google Plus Profile to improve its local visibility for these keywords? (Besides Reviews) Google Plus Profile Is Here:
    https://plus.google.com/104004861293...ut?hl=en&gl=au Any advice would be highly appreciated. Thanks,
    Matt

    | MBASydney
    0
  • kirmeliux


    Hi, I have a few questions about our SCHEMA for user-submitted business reviews. Here's what I have so far: User Review Reviewer Name Business Name
    05/14/2014 5 1. Am I missing anything? 2. Is the itemReviewed tag necessary? 3. If a category/results page has multiple businesses listed and shows their ratings, is marking the businesses up as you would on their individual page okay? What about the ratings? I have a feeling marking the ratings would confuse Google, but the businesses themselves (NAP) should be alright, correct? 4. General Q: Is it alright to have multiple reviewBody tags within one review? For instance, if the review is split into 2 parts and additional code/content is between them that isn't part of the review, can we just add multiple reviewBody tags within the same main div tag? Thanks!

    | kirmeliux
    0
  • Chris661


    We recently changed our Website to Word Press and I would like to move the old reviews to the new site. I am concerned Google might not understand the reviews showing up all of a sudden. The old reviews were on a sub-domain (store.domain.com). I will be able to match the dates and text as well as names. Any advice or Best Practice on this? Thanks!

    | Chris661
    0
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    Two quick questions: 1. google reviews only show up in local results right? 2. If you're 100% e-commerce business with no office location, can you even get a google review? Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0
  • TP_Marketing


    Hello, We are looking at the possibility of renting or leasing a small office but we're not quite at that point yet. We would like to take add Google Places/G+ by adding an address & phone number giving us more real estate for the small Brand we are trying to build. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what we could add? Thanks in Advance!

    | TP_Marketing
    0
  • eddiejsd


    I would like to re post a couple short client reviews on the home page of my site.  The reviews are from avvo.com.  What is the best way to accomplish this without getting flagged for duplicate content?  Should I make an image containing the review text and then link it to the original review on avvo?

    | eddiejsd
    0
  • atstickel


    Is there a good way to display reviews that people have left on sites like Yelp, City Search, Google, etc on your own website without triggering duplicate content issues? It's hard to get reviews, so I'd like to make the most out of the ones that I get.

    | atstickel
    0
  • dsinger


    When it comes to local directory sites such as Google+ Local for business, Yelp, Bing places for business, etc., what is everyone's opinion on the type of images that should be used? I am trying to decide if I want to use 10 professionally produced images (the same 10 will be used across hundreds of locations under the same brand across the country) or if each location should use their own unique 10 images that show localized images from that exact location. When it comes to profile completeness, I think each site does not care, as long as they represent your company well.  However, I am curious if there are any case studies or the like that show that one image type is better to use over the other in terms of helping customers make decisions to contact your business or not. really appreciate any comments you have to share.

    | dsinger
    0
  • Wesley-Barras


    Hello Moz Community, I manage an online wallpaper store. The site is totalwallovering.com  We already have a 5 star review form in place on all product pages with rich snippets. I want to set up my own system for e-mailing customers two weeks after they purchase wallpaper from us, in effect asking them leave us a review of the product. Most people are generally willing to do so if they get a reminder. So far in the past 6 months since we have added the review form we have gotten eight reviews. I got a call from Trustpilot last week and I really liked their system ALOT but I am unwilling to pay $600/month. I would rather have all of my reviews on my own website. I literally have thousands of past customers and would like to bulk upload them into the system so that I can generate hundreds of reviews quickly but if that is not possible I can just start with the customers I get today. I am open to any suggestions. Thanks

    | Wesley-Barras
    0
  • Mark_Ch


    I currently have a Google places location.
    Years of hard work, sweat and tears have resulted in a high number of user reviews. I'm looking to rebrand and therefore change the website url. Will changing the url in Google places reset my profile or remove my user reviews. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks Mark

    | Mark_Ch
    0
  • ogdcorp


    Hello, I have a client that sells only 1 item. What will be the best way to start getting reviews? I thought about opening a placess account, so the reviews will also start showing on his Adwords campaign. Or can I get products reviews on google+ ? Thanks

    | ogdcorp
    0
  • higherimages


    I'm wondering if there is any strategy to optimize a client to show up in the local listings. I assume a lot of this is tied to Google + / Google Places for Business. Is it possible to have a company show up in the local listings over a certain geographic area even if they are not technically addressed in that area? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks, Dan H.

    | higherimages
    0
  • cansado


    Hi Moz Fans! Its the first time I try to ask the community something, usually I find the solution somewhere in this incredible place. But today I need some orientation with a complex problem. We have just launched a spanish Car Dealer Rating and Reviews website. Lets say there is a multibrand Car Dealer called "Autogira" so we need to aim two typical keywords query: "Autogira", "Autogira reviews". "Autogira" is the most important one because it means more than the 90%. Using On-Page Grader I found that the listing page for Autogira: "Autogira" = Grade A "Autogira reviews" = Grade C However I found my website well ranked for "Autogira reviews" (1 page) and not for "Autogira" (2-3 page). Competition is low for the two kind of keywords. Autogira and this examples have reviews and good photos so its good content, however there are lots of listings without reviews yet. Chronology: Nov 20 = Sitemap.xml sent through GWT Dic 26 = Domain Authority up to 10 Jan 16 = Google snippets installed Jan 17 = Domain Authority up to 12 Jan 30 = Domain Authority up to 18 Feb 3 = Growth trend changes and starts going down, coincide with a problem of duplication of urls that was fixed 2 days later. Keywords like "Autogira" starts fluctuating positions between 20-50 but "Autogira reviews" stay on 1-10. Feb 5 - Feb 26 = SEO improvements (more on page optimization, deduplication, canonalication...) How could I lost positions for "Autogira" and not for "Autogira reviews" when everything is better optimized for the first one? Is it normal to fluctuate weekly rank positions for the same keyword? Thank you all!

    | cansado
    0
  • CyberAlien


    I've seen a lot of business owners mention that their website is on Google+ Local but they say they never added it. Does anyone know which companies Google buys databases from and lists the businesses and unclaimed?  And how often do they do this?

    | CyberAlien
    0
  • FireflowJ


    I run a yoga studio in Toronto, Canada.  I googled "Fireflow Yoga".    The Google Places listing shows up on the right, and underneath it there is a listing for 5 competitors under the title "people also search for".  Is there any way to turn it off that that "People also search for" does not appear as part of the listing?   I also did a reciprocal search of the 5 competitors connected to our listing.    They also have 5 "people also search for" on their places pages but we are not listed on their pages.   What can I do to work towards Google showing our listing under "People also search for" when they look up similar businesses nearby?  thanks. blBFSKU

    | FireflowJ
    0
  • DCochrane


    Has anyone heard anything about this Google warning that was supposedly sent to some Google Place owners recently. The message says: We are making some changes to Google Places for Business and Google Maps so we can continue providing people with the best experience when they're looking for local businesses. As part of this process, we're asking business owners to review and confirm some of the information in their Google Places accounts so we can keep showing it to Google users. We know this will be a few extra steps for merchants, and we apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your time. We have sent business owners affected by these changes an email entitled "Action Required: You have 3 weeks to save your Google Places Listing". Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2327744/Google-Warns-Local-Businesses-You-Have-3-Weeks-to-Save-Your-Places-Listing I haven't found much other information in the SEO community but I just wanted to see if anyone has actually received this notice or not? Someone suggested it may just be a test in Australia/Austria. (Not sure which one it is as the comment in the above list references both countries) Thanks for any information you have on this topic.

    | DCochrane
    1
  • In-House-SEO-Team


    Hi Everyone, When you search our company name we dominate the first page with site links and our social links. Recently a Warriorforum.com review jumped to the third position from a post back in Oct. Thankfully it's a good review, but I would prefer if the site wasn't #3. We recently published a Wikipedia article that was approved with the intent to get it ranked in the first page. Do you have any other thoughts on how to outrank those review sites? Right now the SERP looks like: 1. Company Website with 6 sitelinks
    2. Company Twitter link
    3. Warriorforum.com Review
    4. News about our Company
    5. Company Youtube
    6. Company Facebook
    7. Company LinkedIn
    8. Third party review Thank you!

    | In-House-SEO-Team
    0
  • RobertFisher


    Just curious and obviously not a highly technical or highly SEO question, but I keep getting inundated with people who do not know me, don't know anyone I know, etc. but on the largest professional networking site that you can Link to others on, I am ready to end my membership. The vast majority are staffing, recruiting, and outsourcing firms. The settings are such that when pointing out how you know someone you are wanting to connect to, there is one that does not require you to have worked with them, gone to school with them, or done business with them, and that is "Friend." On the others if you don't meet one of the requirements above you must put that party's email address, but on "Friend" if the person wanting to contact you says they are your friend, magically they are. Do you think that for things like this, most people don't mind the spam and say "Ignore" the request, or just "accept" because having 500+ on their profile is so cool? Also, when you look at the endorsements others have given, do you care? do you believe they add validity? Do you believe most people fail to look beyond and consider who is endorsing them and whether or not that person works in a field that has been endorsed? I am really curious as to what Mozzers (the coolest group of people on the planet) think. Best,

    | RobertFisher
    3
  • RedAntSolutions


    Hi I'm in need of some advice, one of our clients has had a very sudden and dramatic decline in rankings. On the week commencing 20th Jan, 23 of our keywords declined from pages 1, 2 and 3 of Google out of the top 50. We haven't been carrying out any bad practice SEO, just some on page optimisation so that we achieve A grades with the Moz tool. We have also built 4-5 links in the past 3 months with quality and relevant sites such as biz crowd and industry relevant blogs so I don't see why this would be a problem. I noticed on the Moz Cast that there was some increased algorithm activity on 23rd and 26th Jan which would correlate with this decline in rankings, but our other SEO clients seem to be unaffected - I'd be interested to see if anyone else has been affected by this? I welcome any advice or further insight on this. Thanks in advance.

    | RedAntSolutions
    0
  • echo1


    I found a way (finally!) to find out which of my customers who have a gmail account have also a Google plus account. That helps a lot. We use to send handout reviews or video instructions about how to create a Google plus account...and it didn't go to well. Now that we know they have a G+ account , all we have to do is ask for a review; how to do this?
    What are the latest strategies so that the review will stay there? have them log in, search for the business name and write the review? give them the direct link? is the searcher's path important? should we look for users who are engaged more in their circles? Thanks!

    | echo1
    0
  • WayneRooney


    Hello guys,
    lately we think how we can improve all the reviews on our site from the clients.
    We notice that there are all these option regarding to reviews : Google Reviews/Local/Places/+
    Yelp
    Facebook
    www.feefo.com
    www.trustpilot.co.uk
    www.ekomi.co.uk/uk And much more... Now, the problem here with a lot of these sites, the person that write the review need to register to the site.
    Most of our clients, not interesting in register or to open account.
    They need something fast that they can write the review and move on. What do you think is the right approach to manage all this ?
    We getting a lot of traffic but its seems that we don't advantage all of him regarding to the review part. Any tips here from the expert ? Thank you

    | WayneRooney
    0
  • DavidOriol86


    I would like to know how to increase blog visibility because i have this new blog in the make money online niche i want to get out there as fast possible so any good tips or tricks will help Thanks

    | DavidOriol86
    1
  • PlanetDISH


    Question about using Schema reviews. I believe I've set everything up correctly, and the Google Rich Snippets tool displays that I have...however in the SERP and on the page instead of displaying a graphic of four stars, it displays "4/5 stars" text. The Rich Snippet tool says that it should be displaying the graphic though. Anyone have experience with Schema and know if there's an extra step to take to display the graphic? Thank you!

    | PlanetDISH
    0

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