AI search - why Google reviews (and scores) are now absolutely vital

Regular readers will know that we have been banging the drum for Google reviews since the beginning of the 2010s; we may even have, wrongly, of course, given the impression to some that we only focus on Google reviews on our clients' behalf. 

The following have been our priorities for well over a decade, and we cannot see them changing any time soon:

1. Get a great score from as many Google reviews as possible
2. Get as many reviews to your own website as possible, so that they can be moderated and then copied across to Google
3. Keep an eye on the other review sites, and channel reviews to them as and when necessary

No. 3 comes into play when a business finds that negative reviews on other sites are being mobilised by their competitors. Trustpilot is an obvious example. If we see a client's score fall below 4.5 on Trustpilot or any other review sites with reach, we will advise them to channel a proportion of their reviews to that site to maintain their score. 

How?

It is easily done: we simply add a link to the business's listing on the relevant site to the existing invitation.

Does it work?

Yes. It has been tried and tested over several years. Customers of good businesses understand the power of factually questionable or misleading negative reviews to harm businesses and are, providing the email is worded correctly*, more than happy to support them by writing multiple reviews (usually by simply copying the first review they write to the secondary sites).

*'Email' and 'worded correctly': both of these are important. Email because it has been. proven time and again that text requests for reviews elicit one or two-word reviews, but email requests result in far more helpful reviews, for readers as well as the business. 'Worded correctly': we have, as you might expect, well over a decade's worth of experience in testing both response rates and quality of response. We will advise on the best wording.

So: back to the headline - which reviews 'surface' (get used to the new use of that word - meaning 'referenced by') most consistently in AI search?

The best way to answer this crucial question is to conduct some popular searches. Here are three...

1.  'Best estate agent in my area'

2.  'Best estate agent in [location]'

3.  'Best vet in my area'

4. 'Best GP in my area'

5. 'Best wealth manager near me'

Just out of interest, here's what happens when we change one word in our search, replacing 'best' with 'top'...

...and here's what ChatGPT returns for 'Best estate agent in [location]'...

So: is our current Google-focussed strategy still the right advice for clients? The simple answer is a resounding 'Yes'. You don't see any review sites referenced or linked to in these answers. What you do see is two consistent sources...

1.  The business's own reviews (as distinct from Google reviews) from its own website being surfaced...

Yes. Follow the grey 'Winkworth' link, and you will arrive at the business's own website, and the source of the score and 'hundreds of reviews': the business's own reviews, moderated and processed by HelpHound

2.  In default of the AI search finding the business's own reviews on the business's own website, it will return results based on Google reviews, as you can see above. Almost always, the business with the highest score is ranked first. 

What we struggle to find, unless the AI is specifically asked for them, are reviews and scores hosted by the review sites, as in this search...

...but even then, Google reviews are, quite rightly in our opinion, referenced the most. Why 'quite rightly'? Simply because...

• Google reviews are free for both the reviewer and the business under review
• Google reviews are consistently returned in every search
• Google reviews carry greater credibility with consumers
• Google hosts 81% of online reviews
• The next largest review sites are Facebook, Yelp and TripAdvisor

Goodness, are we glad we backed Google. And so, we are sure, are our clients.

Further information

If you would like a more in-depth and technical description of the AI search process, we recommend typing 'describe the process AI uses to provide search results' into Google (Google Gemini - Google's AI - will lead the results of that search, however it is performed). It will provide links to all the information you need. Including this helpful video...

AI search makes hosting your own reviews, and then getting them to Google, more important than ever

Trustpilot's recent results brought AI firmly into the reviews spotlight. Read this from Proactive Investors...

Regular readers may be mildly surprised to hear that we agree with every word. 

Let's now look at a ChatGPT local search; the kind of search millions make every day:

Bear with us, because this is important, very important. What do we see in the grey box right next to 'One of the highest-rated locally (around 4.9* with hundreds of reviews)'? That's right: a grey box with the word 'Winkworth'. So what, precisely, does that mean? Where is ChatGPT sourcing - or in search parlance, 'surfacing' - the reviews that make up the business's impressive 4.9* rating? From Google? No. From another review site (Trustpilot, even?). No. The score is based on the business's own reviews, hosted on its own website.

...all gathered using HelpHound. Oh! And don't worry, we've always had conventional search covered...

Leading in natural/organic local search, with the score, stars and number of reviews hosted on its own website showing prominently underneath

...and yes, however many consumers automatically assume those 776 reviews, the score, and the stars are from Google, they are not. We repeat: they are also sourced directly from the reviews on the business's own website. They are Winkworth's own reviews. Again, gathered using HelpHound.

Don't discount Google reviews. We certainly don't; they are the ultimate goal for almost all of our clients. Here is the client's Google Knowledge Panel.

...seen by everyone who searches for the business's name and location. Find almost any one of those 607 individual reviews, and there is a better than even chance that it found its way to Google thanks to a repost request initiated by HelpHound.

The client's review on the business's own website...

For anyone thinking 'How many people actually read the reviews on the business's website?', there's a clue here in the 'X people found this review helpful', in this case 'X' being '5'. We estimate that for every 'like', something in the region of ten people read the review without bothering to 'like' it. And what kind of person bothers to a) read the reviews and b) click on 'Helpful'? Yes. Exactly. Someone who is seriously considering using this business.

Then copied, at HelpHound's invitation, to Google...

All bases covered. Now and for the future.

 

Further reading

The ultimate secret of our, and our clients', success with reviews: moderation. Every single review is read before publication. Simple errors of spelling and grammar are corrected, and if there is any evidence at all of factually inaccurate comments or a statement that might reasonably be expected to mislead a reader, we engage with all parties concerned to give them the chance to correct the review pre-publication. Whilst this only happens on average 7 times for every 100 reviews, it is an essential safety mechanism for everyone concerned. It is this that gives businesses the confidence to invite reviews in the first place, whilst maintaining compliance with the law (the CMA regulations). 

The only other options for high-value professional businesses are a) to cherry-pick 'happy' customers to invite to write a review (against the law in the UK) or b) to ignore reviews altogether (and thus miss out on their power to drive new business, whilst at the same time remaining vulnerable to unmoderated negative reviews). 

HelpHound - the COMPREHENSIVE solution to reviews for ALL businesses

Regular readers will have seen all the Google AI scrapes posted here in recent months. One theme has been consistent: the comparison of HelpHound with Trustpilot. Here's a typical example...

Not 100% accurate - our reviews are incorporated into your Google listing, not under (or not at all):

Our client leading local search (in a very crowded marketplace) with their stars and rating highlighted (arrow); see Trustpilot anywhere? Quite.  And we should be quite clear: we moderate every single review, but we will only intervene if a review contains factual inaccuracies or has the potential to mislead a future reader, we do not - and cannot, by UK law - intervene simply because the reviewer is 'unhappy'.

And so far, so good. We are delighted to be singled out as the best review management option for high-value professional businesses, because that's exactly what we developed HelpHound to be (not, as some other solutions - no names - as a way of confecting a score of 4.5 to be used in marketing).

But here's the thing: a business doesn't have to choose between HelpHound and the review sites, be that Trustpilot or one of the myriad out there - Feefo, reviews.io, Yelp, Tripadvisor, or one of the industry-specific sites (Trusted Trader and so on) - if we (and our client) decide that they need a profile on one of those sites, then we will manage that as well. 

We have a high-profile client that looked great on Google and on its own site, but noticed that Trustpilot was attracting reviews from those that had - often unfounded or the result of misunderstanding - negative opinions. This was driving the business's score down to a point where competitors were able to weaponise it against the business in question. Unfairly. Funnily enough, the business also had an inbound sales call from Trustpilot offering 'help' too.

What did we do, together?

First, we pointed out the following:

1. The business's Trustscore (Trustpilot's name for the rating) could be improved without having to pay Trustpilot
2. That the business owned their own reviews, and could do whatever they liked with them, and that included asking their customers to copy them across to Trustpilot
3. That their Google score was of paramount importance, notwithstanding Trustpilot's pitch as to visibility in search. Google's own reviews always take pole position in search and Google is the search engine of choice for well over 90 per cent of the UK population, and it commands 98 per cent of UK mobile search

Second, we implemented - jointly - the following strategy:

• We first set up a test: we asked a percentage of customers who had written a review to the business's own site to copy it to Trustpilot
• We measured response, and then we calculated the number of positive reviews that would be needed to restore the business's Trustscore to good health
• We switched the repost request away from Google to Trustpilot for a percentage of customers for a period of weeks

Result?

The business's score on Trustpilot restored to well above 4 ('Great' in Trustpilot terminology). All for no extra cost. Diary note to repeat the procedure at intervals in the future.

So, our objective on behalf of all our clients:

First...

...to enable them to safely - and compliantly - invite reviews to display on their own website and use in their own marketing

Second...

...to get as many of those reviews as possible across to Google, to ensure a really impressive presence in competitive searches there

Third, and it is a distant third if we are honest...

...to look good on the review sites that matter to our client without incurring any extra costs

One more important consideration

Both Google and HelpHound are designed to host reviews and score a business per location. If a business has multiple locations, it is essential that the consumer can discover how the customers of that specific location feel about the service they were provided, and the service they can expect. Trustpilot charges significant fees for multiple listings, which is why it is so rare to see individual branch/office/outlet scores hosted there.

Conclusion

So, we repeat the title of this article: HelpHound works for all kinds of businesses, and it works more effectively and more comprehensively than any other review solution. Think of us as a review broker, in the sense that wherever your business needs reviews, now and in the future (remember Qype or Ciao, anyone?), we will enable you to get them there. If that means to Trustpilot, fine; if that means on Yelp!, so be it. But, just for the foreseeable future, at least, we will almost certainly continue to focus on enabling our clients to positively glow on Google, and in the relevant Google searches.

Another reason to embrace moderated review management

It is easy to see HelpHound and its moderation as a simple means to an end. That 'end'? Harnessing genuine customer opinions to attract new business. 

There is a clue in the word 'genuine'. Until recently, there were many ways to attract and display such opinions, all loosely gathered together under the heading 'social media'. Review sites - Yelp, Tustpilot, Feefo, X, Facebook, Instagram. Even TikTok and the likes of Reddit and Quora.

So what has changed?

Joe Public, or rather 'Joe Public with an axe to grind', has come to realise that these sites are highly unlikely to challenge anything he or she posts. This has led to many of these, in the main well-intentioned, sites hosting increasing amounts of content verging on - and in many cases not 'verging' at all - abusive content. 

You will remember when you could innocently post something on Facebook, even a 'mild' political opinion, and get nothing but polite responses? Those days are well behind us now. The same goes for Instagram and TikTok, where the use of foul language seems to be all but obligatory. The review sites may take down posts using such language, but fake reviews, as well as factually inaccurate and intentionally malicious reviews, are so frequently posted as to be commonplace. 

So, what used to be useful marketing avenues have become high-risk. Ten years ago, we routinely advised clients to re-post their reviews to social media. Now we are increasingly reluctant to advise any engagement whatsoever, outside of responses to reviews on Google (which are essential) or a select number of less influential review sites. 

The importance of moderated reviews

This has brought our moderation - checking every single review for factual accuracy or the potential to mislead the reader pre-publication - into much sharper focus. What was once a 'nice to have' feature has become core. 

Here is what Google's Gemini has to say about us today...

Let us highlight some key points from this remarkably accurate assessment of our service:

1. Pre-moderation: this is essential. Hard experience has taught us that once a comment is posted anywhere, from Google to Trustpilot to X, it is going to remain there. We conduct many appeals on behalf of clients, but success is a lottery at best. Misinformation has to be dealt with pre-publication
2. Compliance: just about every business - at least in the UK - that actively engages with reviews is currently breaking the law. Usually, by identifying (known as cherry-picking by the CMA)  'happy' customers and then only inviting them, and them alone, to post a review. So unnecessary when compliant review management has so many other benefits
3. 'Hybrid Hosting': after every review is posted to the business's website, an automatic invitation is sent to enable the reviewer to copy their review to Google. Our most successful clients have a conversion rate of well over fifty per cent
4. Conflict resolution: this is an interesting one; HelpHound does not exist to prevent customers from airing genuine grievances or dissatisfaction (this would be against the law in the UK); this is made clear during moderation. What we do - in roughly one in twelve cases - is engage with both the business and the customer if we think the review contains factual inaccuracies or statements likely to mislead any future reader

And the comparison?

We couldn't have put it better. The 'Primary Goal' is key to everything we do here at helpHound: our clients, as Gemini has realised, are almost exclusively in the high-value professional and service sectors (as opposed to online retail, for instance), where a single well-crafted but factually incorrect review can do untold and lasting harm to a business. Often unfairly.

The reason so many of these kinds of businesses have yet to engage with reviews is not that they don't understand the power of a positive presence on Google to drive custom; it is the result of a well-founded fear that such engagement, unprotected, can do far more harm than good. And they are correct. 

Leading in local search (in a very crowded marketplace), these 775 reviews are taken from the business's own reviews displayed on its website. These, in turn, feed into its Google score and reviews:

Their last one-star review was received over three years ago

HelpHound is that protection. 

Further reading...

• No more one-star reviews: how this business embraced review management in order to ensure a clean sheet, both on Google and with its own reviews on its website

• The 'secret' impact of professional review management: from estate agency to women's health; what gives businesses the confidence to engage with reviews without flouting the law?

• The CMA begins its crackdown: if your business is one of the many currently hand-picking customers to invite to write a review, from Google to one of the review sites, you should read this today!

• Our guarantee: it has been in place for over two years. How many clients have invoked it? 

Trustpilot - where it works

Readers, especially lately, may have gained the impression that we are not Trustpilot's No. 1 fan. So we thought we'd give you an example of where Trustpilot can be helpful. It's been highlighted by Google's Gemini AI in this recent article as well.

The example

You are shopping online. You know which product you want or need. But you are faced with a range of possible suppliers. Take this shampoo, for just one example...

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But, quite understandably, you want reassurance that the online retailer is reliable, so you conduct just one more quick search...

A score of 4.8 from nearly 1500 reviews. Job done. No need to mine down any further...

Confidence given. Purchase made.

And this is exactly what Google's Gemini is saying:

We concur.  It may sound strange at first, but when we set out our stall as 'review managers' (not, you notice, a review site like Trustpilot or Yelp or any of the many others), we decided that it would be important for our clients to retain ownership of their reviews. After all, they are written by their customers, not HelpHound's, and we all know just how valuable that kind of data is these days. 

You only have to look at any HelpHound client in competitive search to see just how great a) the social proof and b) the SEO kicker is; just look at this client in a Google search:

The scores - of the business's own reviews - pulled from their website by Google, just about every one fed through from the moderated reviews on their own site, enhancing the business's SEO and providing ample social proof...

Visit their website and see for yourself

Leading the Google Maps 3-pack and leading organic search for all the most popular searches (in a very crowded marketplace). Scoring 4.9 from over 600 reviews on Google, and just as importantly, scoring 4.9 from well over 700 moderated and verified customer reviews on HelpHound (it is those that provide the raw material for the Google reviews). 

Gemini reinforces this point as well:

One further point bears repetition, which we have consistently hinted at, but never expressed quite as bluntly as Google: '[HelpHound] only generally work with businesses that demonstrate a commitment to high customer service standards.' Maybe strike the word 'generally'.

Talk about belt and braces. HelpHound's moderation has been key to achieving all of this. 

Further reading

• Moderation: how it gives complex high-value services the confidence to actively engage in reviews

• Fees: comparable to Trustpilot's freemium model, we would only argue on the point of value added for our clients' businesses

• Leading to 'The 'secret' impact' that HelpHound has on its client businesses

• Compliance: of course, many businesses continue to look nearly as good as this by flouting the CMA regulations, particularly those against 'cherry-picking', but with the CMA currently on the warpath, surely it is no longer a risk worth running?

What does Google's AI - Gemini - say about review management?

We asked Gemini the kind of question any sensible business owner or CMO might reasonably ask as a first step (we have intentionally avoided asking a leading question, to the extent of referencing Trustpilot before HelpHound)...

 

In summary

As you might imagine, it was tempting, at least initially, to annotate each paragraph and fight HelpHound's corner in every instance. But the more times we read Gemini's conclusions, the more we were inclined to leave them to stand on their own merit. The last paragraph, 'Strategic Tip', pretty well sums it all up. In our opinion, at least.

Why not go through the same process and substitute the vertical your business operates in for 'Wealth Management'? When you see Gemini's answer, make a list of any other questions you have, and we will be delighted to give you our own - non-AI - answers.

And, by the way, the only comparator Gemini has so far failed to pick up is our fee scale and our money-back guarantee.

Yet another way to confuse the consumer

Is there a day when we don't come across another wheeze? Look at this advertisement on the London Underground...

...and what do we see? 'The UK's most trusted major appliance group.' And four and a half green stars (it seems like it's always four and a half stars, doesn't it?). And this on the front page of their website:

As well as this:

So we did what almost no consumer ever does. We googled 'Hotpoint Trustpilot'. 

This is the first result in the above search:

Over 30,000 reviews, rating Hotpoint 'Service' at 1.7 and 'Bad'.

So we looked some more. Back to Google. The second organic search result came up with this:

Again: over 30,000 reviews. But this time rating the business 'Excellent'. What on earth is going on? You might reasonably take the two listings at face value and make an assumption something along the lines of 'Hotpoint makes great appliances, but their after-sales service is awful'. But when we read some - actually quite a few - of the underlying reviews, a pattern began to emerge, but before we mine down into that, perhaps read these two summaries at the head of the two Trustpilot listings:

So which is it? We'll let you decide! Now on to the reviews themselves. We read a significant sample from both listings. Let's play a silly game for a second: it's called 'Guess Which Listing the Review was Written on'.

Review 1:

Review 2:

We will put you out of your misery straight away: Review 1 was written on the 'Hotpoint' listing; Review 2 was written on the 'Hotpoint Service' listing. So far, so 'alright - you cannot expect customers to understand the difference (or care, for that matter).' But look again, do you see the word 'invited' next to Janet's 5-star review? And do you see the words 'Unprompted review' underneath Colin White's review?

What is happening here?

There's a clue above: although the business has 'claimed' both Trustpilot profiles, they are only 'subscribed' - i.e. 'paying for' the one on the right.

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All the above could be forgiven for giving the impression that happy customers are asked to post a review on one listing, and unhappy (and far more motivated) customers are left to find their way to the other. This is backed up by our research into the content of the reviews themselves: almost all relate to 'service' rather than 'product' issues, on both listings, the only differentiator being that over 90% of the reviews on the 'Hotpoint' listing have been 'invited' by the business; we struggled to find a single 'invited' review on the 'Hotpoint Service' listing.

A reminder. Not written by us, but by Microsoft's Copilot - we agree with every word*

So, to answer our own question, any reasonable person looking at all of the above must surely come to the conclusion that the separate listings are solely to ensure that Hotpoint can have at least one to back up the rating used in all of its marketing.

Conclusion

In addition to the paragraph above, there is a wider issue here, and it is not confined to businesses such as Hotpoint. Marketing departments pay for review sites for a reason. That reason, all too often, has less to do with customer service and more to do with achieving a rating for use in the business's advertising and marketing. Review sites, and the CMA in the UK, have a duty, moral as well as legal, to protect consumers from being misled. Practices that manipulate reviews, in any way at all, innocently or not, must be stopped. If they are not, consumers will ultimately lose confidence in online reviews, and their considerable potential to aid decision-making will be forever lost.

*And it wouldn't be fair if we didn't ask Copilot what it thinks HelpHound is for:

We could spend a while and struggle to better this as well

Further reading 

• The CMA begins its online reviews crackdown: we have warned businesses time and again, over the years. The CMA has teeth, and it will use them; it's just a matter of 'when' and 'on which businesses' now. 

• But risking a fine and reputational damage is so unnecessary if you run a great business, however large or small, when there is a solution, proven over many years, that will give your marketing department what they crave, whilst at the same time ensuring you are not breaking the law.