I have talked in the past about Entity Search and how Google views your business as an entity with other entities associated with it. In some areas, you can see what entities Google associates with your business. It is never as clear as what has been popping up recently in local search reviews. Google will show entities or qualities it associates with your business based on what people have mentioned in their reviews. Google believes what people say about you more than what you say about yourself. Especially people that Google views as legitimate reviewers. We all know there are some glitches in that system, but Google is getting better and better at plucking out fake reviews and identifying real ones, even if it can be frustrating to watch their failures.
Ask For Detailed Reviews
This underscores more than ever the importance of getting detailed reviews. Though your score definitely matters, the things people say may matter even more than that. It can even get your business to show up for searches that you may not have ranked for before. In January, I posted about a search for “pasta” on a trip I took and how three businesses without websites popped up on the first page because reviewers had mentioned their great pasta. Since then, Google is showing business attributes right next to your reviews. Phrases or words that are mentioned frequently in reviews are attributed to your business. Not to toot my own horn, but if you look at the feature image for this article, you will see that “responsive”, “rank”, “expert”, and “results” are key entities and attributes associated with my business. I take pride in that because I view that as the core strength of my business and my customers are saying the same.
Customer Reviews Help In Many Ways
Not only does the score and positive attributes help our business, the complaints, when they happen, can help us better understand what we need to improve on. Is our service slow? Is the quality lacking or the staff unfriendly? Rather than get offended, though that is always the natural first response, view it as a great way to learn to work on something. Read those negative reviews. Maybe the communication about length of time could be better to help customers understand. Maybe a welcoming message can be the difference between being viewed as unfriendly and friendly. This is free market research you can use to better understand how your business is viewed by the public and make changes. The good news is that all signs point to recency of reviews being more important, so if you can stack some “fast service” reviews on top of those old “slow” ones, you can turn a negative into a positive.
Keep doing a great job and asking for detailed reviews and remember that Google believes what people say about you, so you can use the good work you are doing as a digital tool for rankings. If you need help with a review management tool, please give us a call and we can help.
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