Google Places Removes Third Party Reviews from Search Results

[joe.pistell]

How does that make sense..

51 negative reviews.
16 negative reviews.
441 all positive reviews.
110 all positive reviews.
...

Damn those trees! Always getting in the way of the forest!

Mario T wrote:

Have you tried using Cars.com for consumer reviews?

I replied:

Marco,

Your team needs to be here ---> Google<--- before your reviews become important ...or... they have to be NOT HIDDEN on your platform before they become important to shoppers.

Granted that wasn't a pristine example, but... Cars.com reviews are completely missing in the SERPs, for ANY dealers' name SERP.

You with me now?

 

[kcar]

kcar,

There are 2 dealers represented in this search, one dealer in AZ one in CA. The "51" represents the CA dealer.

Also, on the AZ store, it isn't that there are 16 mostly negative reviews on Yelp, there are 45 filtered reviews that appeared to be mostly positive. The breakdown is more like this:

61 mostly positive reviews on Yelp (45 of which are filtered)
441 mostly positive reviews on DealerRater (certified partner for nearly 2 yrs, not a surprising number of reviews at all over that period)
110 mostly positive reviews on Google (some of which are likely the result of DealerRater's Push tool)

I don't think the discrepancy is in the star count as much as it is the volume, and that can be explained pretty simply by the date range and ease of use for a consumer to leave their feedback. It is reasonable that a consumer will leave a review where they researched, or in DealerRater's case, where the sales team leveraged the content to make the sale.

This is a good store doing a great job of building reviews on multiple platforms and leveraging them. Unfortunately Yelp's filtering out non-Yelpers is not helping them much.

What is that exactly? Thanks. & What does it cost, bundled with the DealerRater program?

 

[ryan.leslie]

What is that exactly? Thanks. & What does it cost, bundled with the DealerRater program?

I'll tell you it really wasn't supposed to be a cleverly disguised way to slip in a sales pitch, but since you asked, and Push got mentioned in the first few pages of this thread already, I'll give you an update (I like you more and more kcar! )

What is PUSH?

Push is basically a tool to "lead a horse to water." DealerRater is vehemently against dealers and vendors posting content on behalf of a consumer, but there is nothing wrong with making it really easy for a consumer to post to multiple properties. When a consumer posts on DealerRater for a certified store and the review is positive they see this screen:


Their review is shown along with the dealer's chosen target url for a secondary review site framed into the page as a Step 2. I'm showing Edmunds here, but it could be Places or Yelp or MerchantCircle or wherever the dealer needs a positive review. The consumer can easily copy and paste their review to another property from within the DealerRater page. It is STILL the consumer hitting submit, we aren't "syndicating content" or faking usernames on another property to post this. That is a very important point to make. Again, not making them drink, but we are pouring the water in their mouth for them.

Does it work?

Obviously I didn't set this up, this was Pistell's link and I'm using the AZ dealer. See any similarities between this review on DealerRater and this review on the AZ Dealer's Places page?

(the type is small, but it's verbatim)

What Does it Cost?

There is no cost. Push is simply part of the DealerRater Certification program. Happy to help any Certified stores set this up. PM me if you want to talk through it...