Google has recently taken a step to help people get more information about businesses.
This change will allow Google even more data about the businesses using its platform, opening up future ranking possibilities and solving the problem of ratings-only reviews.
Google Reviews has been around for years and is one of the most recognized platforms to leave reviews. The interface was constantly being updated with new features, but now Google Review Attributes are available. This allows consumers to review their experience in a few short clicks instead of typing out long text responses in an online form that may not necessarily be read by others.
Not only does this make it easy on both customers and business owners alike, there’s also no need to register or create accounts beforehand because it’s all within your Gmail account which makes sharing easier too.
With this expansion, customers can now choose from new categories for their review attributes such as cleanliness or staff friendliness that may be important in deciding where they want to go next time they need something done – whether it’s booking travel plans or finding food delivery services while on vacation.
Place Topics
Place Topics are a way to highlight your most popular products, services or amenities in mobile listings. They’re automatically created by Google and can’t be managed or modified, but they appear at the top of reviews on Android devices (so far) – so if you have lots of positive feedback for certain areas make sure customers know about them!
Place topics exist as tags that help consumers quickly navigate through all their ratings when using an app. Google uses data from your reviews to provide concise information and keywords on what customers highlight about your business. Topics are only created when you have a sufficient amount of customer reviews for your business, so it’s important that the first few words always describe why people should review!
How Google review attributes are defined
Google Review attributes are defined by the Primary Category. For example, they’re not available to car dealers and jewelry stores but showing up for categories like car repair businesses, lawyers, dry cleaners, plumbers and heating/air companies.
You might not know which categories your business falls under, but Google can help you figure it out. Try giving a review and see what pops up on the screen.
Google’s review attribute categories are a moving target, and customer feedback is even harder to keep up with. This is why you can’t achieve 100% accuracy checking yourself as well. Please consider that:
1) There may be reviews that we don’t see or know about.
2) Google is always changing the way they associate relationships between their 5 star reviews, negative attributes etc etc. This will not only affect how we see them in search results but also what Google does with this information to decide which listings deserve more visibility.
3) The Google platform expands its list through testing different attributes to offer more related options for users when reviewing on google maps.
4) To counter the power of Google reviews, it is important that you monitor and audit your negative/fake ones. You can request for negative reviews removal if they contain inaccurate information about yourself or product offerings because this could be costing you sales!
There are many variations of attribute choices available for specific industries. The combinations will probably always include:
- Quality
- Professional
- Value
- Responsive
- On Time
- Reliable
- Clean
- Communication
The importance of reviews attributes for local search
Google is getting more and more focused on customer experience, as they prioritize reviews that contain multiple attributes or thorough valuable comments. That’s why, if two businesses in the same category hold the same star rating, Google may rank higher those with more rich reviews. After all, Google wants to present users with relevant results for their search term as quickly as possible.
When you are looking for a new restaurant, what is the first thing that occurs to you?
The quality of the food. Perhaps it’s because this information is so important; however, there are other factors at play when deciding where to go out for dinner or lunch.
Consumers want to know more about the experiences of customers and what you do in response. They also care how others have responded before making a decision on whether or not they should buy your product or service because it can make them feel safe with their purchase.
According to Dixa, the following 3 ways show how reviews influence purchasing decisions:
1) Customers put so much weight on online reviews from other customers that 88% of them find the same value in these as they would with personal recommendations.
2) Customer reviews are a key determinant of what people buy. On average, these reviews produce an 18% uplift in sales and customers are more likely to purchase from the website that has customer-created content on it than one without any user generated posts at all.
3) 86% of people would hesitate to do business with a company if it has negative online reviews, but this can be bad for your bottom line. When consumers see that many other customers have similar feelings about the product or service offered by one company, they are much more likely to not only refuse doing any type of transaction with them in general but also discourage others from dealing with them as well.
How do reviews attributes affect Local SEO
Mike Blumenthal in the video below shares why review attributes can be helpful.
1) Google my business review attributes can be used to understand your competitors.
2) These review attributes will provide content-driven keyword concepts that you can use to drive additional content and expand your website’s authority!
3) Google’s review attributes can help you look at your business in a structured way and compare it to the competitors. When you place 3 star, four or five star ratings, Google will showcase for you four to five attributes that make up what would be worthy of either 4-5 star reviews 3-4 stars and so on.
4) The review attributes will show more about the general sentiment (positive and negative ) of your top competitors and help consumers make better-informed decisions.
How to audit your GMB competitor’s review attributes
As shown in the GMB audit template it is crucial to have a full understanding of your Google my business competitor. It’s important for you to run an intelligence audit and spot gaps so that you can be on top of them before they happen, or even better when it does!
Thanks to the free GMB Crush Chrome extension, you can now reverse engineering your competitor’s review attributes.
You’ll be able to discover which websites they’re getting reviews from and that way see what kinds of strategies are being used against yours.
Once the audit is complete you can additionally download a CSV file so that it will make repeat audits easier over top competitors in order for them not to know where their weaknesses lie at all times.
Happy Crush!
SEO Lover, my motto is Action Over Words.
