In mid December, Google quietly rolled out an upgrade to the customer reviews filtering algorithm. It was intended to take out a lot of review spamming that has been going on. Around the same time, Google also quietly removed the old Google My Business Reviews Policy page, making much of the
Google extends Review Notifications
During the 3rd week of June, 2017, Google quietly extended the review notifications for listings from just the primary owner, to any user on the listing with review notifications enabled. This has been a much requested feature, and we're delighted it has rolled out. Exceptions As with every
If even God can’t get it right…
Customer reviews - they make some go weak at the knees. The knee-knocking usually comes from two schools of thought: Thinking it’s too hard. Done right, it becomes part of your marketing and customer service and is simple. That’s a discussion for another post. Fear of negative reviews. Let’s
Reviews disappearing? You’re not alone…
Google's review filters are finally getting some attention again, and finally appear to be getting periodic updates like the standard website algorithm does. While reviews disappear periodically, there are still so very many fake ones out there still alive and kicking. If you've noticed a
New Review Filters for Google Maps
Update: May 2017 When the review filters first came out, they were in whole numbers - 4.0, 3.0, etc. In May 2017, Google introduced half-star increments.note: Images in this article have not been updated to reflect the change. Wouldn't it be nice if you could cut down the options and
Are Anonymous Online Reviewers in Danger?
Update: In mid 2018, Google removed tens if not hundreds of thousands of anonymous reviews from listings. These were largely been from Google reviewers whose accounts had been deleted or never had Google accounts associated with them. The name of the reviewer was normally "A Google User" From