Important - the Google Filter rolls out

We have been writing about the Google Filter and 'Top Rated' for over a year now - Google have been intermittently testing on both sides of the Atlantic (as you can see in the article behind the link). In December Google rolled out the Filter across multiple business types and locations in the USA, this weekend they began expanding its use in the UK.

Here's the up-to-the-minute search for 'estate agent Kennington':

At top left just below the map you will see the word 'Rating' with a drop-down arrow. click on that and this happens:

Select '4 stars and up' (who would not? and why would anyone select 3 or 2?) and Google presents the Maps listing:

...and you will notice that Barnard Marcus, and any other business scoring less than 4.0 that would have previously been returned, has vanished.

It's the same for mobile and tablet:

...except Google are calling it 'Top Rated' there, which is not strictly true if you define top rated as 'the highest score'; Google are simply listing businesses that pass the Filter - for now.

Is this happening for all kinds of business, for all locations?

No, not yet. Here's a similar search for Blackheath:

...where the filter, as yet, only applies to opening hours.

Here's another - intentionally more obscure - search:

...but the filter has even been applied for 'patisserie'! And two out of three of these fail:

...with two of those - both Paul - that currently pass being within one or two negative reviews of failing too.

The logical extension - and the issues Google faces

Consumers want search to return the best businesses, but there are issues here for Google:

• many businesses have no reviews at all - especially high value businesses such as financial and legal services. But Google reviews are accelerating fast (see this article)
• human nature - the motivation to write a negative review is massively more than that to write a positive one - and that is one of the main reasons that low-footfall businesses like the ones mentioned above have steered clear of Google reviews: fear of unfair reputational damage
• consumers need some kind of Google account before they can write a review: although the fact that this can be a G+ account, a Gmail or Googlemail account or an account with a Google subsidiary (YouTube, for example) means that approaching 20 million UK consumers can now write a Google review in an instant
• Google need to define 'Top Rated'. Let us pose an obvious question: would a business with 300 reviews and a score of 4.9 rank above or below a business with 6 reviews and a score of 5.0?

Action needed:

For everyone who is not currently a client of ours: do not take action without reading what follows next very carefully.

It is tempting to simply get staff to ask happy customers to post a review direct to Google: don't. Why not? For the following reasons:

1. The government body appointed to regulate reviews - the Competition and Markets Authority - insists that customers are not 'selected' to write reviews. It will want to see evidence that your business treats all its customers equally, and it has statutory powers to do so
2. If you simply invite all your customers to post a review direct to Google human nature will dictate that those who have had a negative experience will be far more likely to (recent research shows that they are more likely to do so by a factor of 15 times). Just think of your own recent experiences and imagine how much more likely, if invited by the business, you would be to respond if your own experience had been negative; your own customers will be the same
3. Customers often make inaccurate or misleading statements in reviews; you need an mechanism to ensure that the minimum of these appear on Google for all your potential customers to see (Google do allow the business to respond, but the damage will have been done - through the score allocated to your business if nowhere else)
4. You will have missed a great opportunity to get great reviews for your own website. Almost everyone using a business checks the business's own website after finding them on Google, if they don't go straight there in the first place

Obeying these four points will mean that your review management will be beyond criticism, by your potential customers, the regulators and your competitors (if you select customers to post to Google direct your most aware competitors will soon notice - and the last thing you want is a review from a customer who was not invited).

Professional review management, of the kind we do for our clients here at HelpHound, is designed to positively add value, both in terms of credibility and in terms of your business's bottom line - that's why we don't lose clients.

And finally...

And what don't you see in any of these searches? The independent review sites. We won't stop banging that particular drum: focus on your own site and Google, then on Facebook. We have no intrinsic bias against the independent sites - it's just that they don't show in search and our loyalty is to our clients, not any individual solution.

A Google score of 4.1 is simply not good enough

It is very easy to fall into the trap of looking at your business on Google and thinking "We score [between 4.0 and 4.5]" and then sitting back and relaxing. Don't!

Here are three reasons why not:

1. A Google score of less than 4.6 invariably contains a significant proportion of negative reviews. just look at this example:

Here negatives show in Google's default ('Most recent'). Consumers invariably click on 'Lowest score' when searching, especially if negatives don't show immediately. And they are influenced by what they see there - a single, well-written, negative review has the power to deflect them away from taking the next step - making contact.


2. A score of less than 4.6 leaves your business a handful of negative reviews away from the Google Filter - especially if you don't have critical mass in Google reviews (a great score and significant numbers of reviews):

The top business - a HelpHound client - passes the Google Filter (top right in this screenshot) with flying colours. The second is vulnerable to a flurry of negative reviews driving its score down towards the filter, purely because it does not have the numbers of reviews to counteract the impact of two or three negatives, the third is filtered.

3. Your business runs the risk that it will fall out of search when Google introduces 'Top Rated':

Google will introduce 'Top Rated' for services - estate agency, medical, financial and so on  - it's only a matter of time - and we will ensure that our clients are ready to top those searches.

Action

Don't:

Adopt a DIY solution. You will inevitably be cherry-picking 'happy customers' - and that will hand your competitors a massive advantage. More importantly: you will miss out on the opportunity to display independently verified reviews on your own website - the next port of call for anyone who has been impressed by your Google reviews.

Do:

Adopt professional review management. It will enable you to address inaccurate or misleading reviews pre-publication and it will enable you to display reviews on your own website with complete credibility. It will also enable you to look like Winkworth Kensal Rise - and our other clients - in Google search.

Professional review management - now essential for every business

Recent developments at Google have moved review management from 'makes us look great in search' to 'must have' virtually overnight. Here we set out the reasons why.

Up until August 2016 search results were a pretty random affair.  If you got your SEO right - and up-to-date - your business stood a fairly good chance of...

• appearing on page one of local search
• appearing in the 3-pack in desktop search
• listing reasonably prominently in mobile search 

...irrespective of whether or not it had Google reviews. 

The introduction of the Google filter has changed that - forever.  For the time-being Google are content to leave the filtering in the hands of users, but it is certain that they will replace it with 'Top Rated' in the very near future (the filter was introduced for hospitality in January - and 'Top Rated' was introduced last month).

Google has always fought SEO tooth-and-nail - it hates its search results being manipulated. Just stop and think a minute - do Google's users want the businesses with the best SEO returned in search? - of course they don't. What do they want? The best business for any given search, of course.

So how was Google going to deliver the best businesses? The only answer they were ever going to come up with was 'by listing them according to their review scores'.

Now Google needed to keep its advertisers, many of whom had yet to engage with reviews, on side. So it wasn't going to jump in all at once - and nor did it. Google have been continually flagging the importance of reviews ever since they migrated them from Google Places to G+ and Google my Business nearly two years ago. They have effectively been warning businesses that they would have no choice but to bow to competitive pressure to introduce qualitative search results sooner rather than later.

And those qualitative search results? They were bound to be based on G+ reviews.

But for businesses getting great reviews - and therefore looking great in search - was always going to be easier said than done. And that is where professional review management comes in. 

  Compare these two screen grabs - the one on the left is unfiltered, the one on the right filtered. Two agents, in this example, drop out of search, completely. Our prediction is that Google will soon introduce 'Top Rated' which will place our client, Greene & Co, at the top of the result - on both score and number of reviews. In this example the filter has been set at 4 stars - we cannot think of a reason why any user would set their filter lower. For much more information on the Google filter read this

With professional review management - such as we provide for our clients at HelpHound - you avoid all the pitfalls:

• Not engaging altogether - we meet so many business that say to us "Until we met HelpHound we saw reviews as a minefield best avoided." Professional review management is your guide through that minefield - with professional review management on board you should be able to relax in the knowledge that your business is doing all it can to engage with the world of reviews in the best way possible
• Choosing the wrong solution - without professional advice it is so easy to buy a solution that won't deliver for your business. There is a whole world of a difference between a review website and professional review management - perhaps a good comparison is the difference between an accountant and accountancy software: a good accountant will recommend the best software for your business - HelpHound will recommend the best review solution for your business
• Missing out on a wealth of professional understanding and ongoing advice - do you have the in-houseknowledge and resources to stay on top of developments at Google and all the other review sites? Do you have the expertise to draft an appeal against an unfair or misleading review on Google or any other review site? Do you know the most effective way to build reviews into your sales and marketing? Do you understand how a 'closed' review site can harm your brand? Do you know what a 'hostage' review site is? And much more besides - always up-to-date and, most important of all, all with your business's best interests to the fore
• Inviting consumers to write reviews direct to Google - means you miss the opportunity to get your own reviews to your own website and leaves you open to accusations of cherry-picking - unless you invite all your customers. And if you do that, without a professional review management mechanism in place, human nature dictates that you will receive a disproportionate number of negative - and potentially misleading and unfair - reviews. It is a superficially attractive quick fix that leads to problems stored up downstream 

Great businesses care how they show in search - HelpHound will ensure your business looks great in search.