Blumenthal Reports Google Intros Review Monitoring System

[ed.brooks]

Mike Blumenthal (the KING of local marketing) reported today, "Google Intros the Mother of All SMB Review Monitoring Systems"

According to Mike,

"The system, a new module for the updated Places for Business Dashboard, not only shows Google based reviews to dashboard owners and managers, it shows every review that Google has found from the thousands of review sites that it indexes. In addition Google is providing review analytic reports for both the volume and rating stats of reviews from Google and across the web."​

"Google has also integrated the owner review response option directly into the dashboard and will now be showing those responses in the review panel on the front page of serps"​

My main question, how will it treat automotive specific sites like DealerRater and dealer ratings on Cars.com?

 

[JD Rucker]

Both DealerRater and Cars will integrate nicely. They're still going to be valid for sure. The beauty is this simply gives a better way for dealers to be organized with their replies - that to me is the biggest benefit. Stats and a single interface make it a win for dealers.

 

[ed.brooks]

Both DealerRater and Cars will integrate nicely. They're still going to be valid for sure. The beauty is this simply gives a better way for dealers to be organized with their replies - that to me is the biggest benefit. Stats and a single interface make it a win for dealers.

Then the exclusion of Yelp is the only downside that I see. With mobile becoming more and more important, and Yelp's growing importance in the iOS ecosystem, that seems to be a substantial shortcoming.

But the Google system looks to be full featured, robust, and best of all - FREE!

 

[JD Rucker]

Then the exclusion of Yelp is the only downside that I see.

It's a downside for those dealers that have really rocked on Yelp, but a good chunk of dealers that I've seen have very few Yelp reviews (that stuck) and lower ratings there than on DealerRater, Cars.com, and others. Yelp will stand on its own since Google and Bing rank them so well but they've always had a bit of a conflict with Google ever since the "stop indexing us" days a couple of years ago.

I'm definitely very excited to get my hands on the interface itself. I tried with some dealers but it wasn't there yet.

 

[joeyabna]

I'm still waiting on being converted to the new Dashboard. I get frustrated when Google can't seem to bring existing users into new features and platforms when they launch new stuff. On the subject of Yelp, I have noticed an uptick in Referral traffic in the last several weeks.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Another reason for businesses to actually (have to) use Google+.

I see this causing a bit of a stir to some of the industry services that provide a like tool/dashboard for monitoring a dealers online reviews. But let's be real, how many dealers are currently utilizing their Google Local + accounts the way they should be?

I was in there messing around - seems as if they have a ways to go but I'm sure with time they will get the needed missing features in there.

Some items that are a must for me include:

- Email Alert and copy of the corresponding review. This is a much have for ANY dealership taking their online reviews seriously. As in - using unfiltered review to move the culture of the dealership rather than than for promotional purposes only.

- Currently no Mobile administration - I'm sure this will quickly change within a short time.

- No enterprise abilities to rollup reports across locations - any larger group will want this.

We will see with time...never know with Google.