Google Reviews.... - BOO! Returning from the great beyond!!!

[Sharko]

Is anybody else experiencing this?

Remember about a year or two ago when we were talking about how a bunch of reviews went "DISAPPEARED" on our G+page?

Well, all of a sudden, I'm seeing a bunch of those reviews pop back up. How do I know? Because I make sure to reply to all reviews on G+ every month and I know how many reviews we have, so when I logged in 2 days ago, I saw all those old reviews that I remember from before.

Anyway, has anyone else experienced this?

 

[ryan.leslie]

Interesting! I don't have the time to look for it unfortunately, but I do remember Blumenthal writing about reviews being "lost" that he expected would eventually return. It had something to do with migrating systems and account coding. They were "lost" as in "misplaced with a chance of being found" as opposed to "on a mysterious deserted island for 7 seasons before you find out they were really dead all along."

That probably wasn't helpful. This may be...

• It is great that you are seeing content return, but I don't think this is a signal that Google has relaxed the positions that caused the TOU rewrite and subsequent loss of reviews for so many dealers in Dec of 2012. Those were certainly filtered not misplaced reviews.
• Old reviews are a little like a service visit on the vehicle history report. They show a good history but give no indication of present condition. Old reviews returning is great, but they don't take the place of recent reviews to build consumer trust and confidence in the retailer.

 

[yagoparamo]

Ryan,

Do you see a general change in attitude towards reviews now that the market is more mature?

 

[craigh]

Ryan,

Do you see a general change in attitude towards reviews now that the market is more mature?

This is a great question and I would be very curious to know the answer.
In the past we have had difficulty getting analytics for things like N49, Google and DealerRater.
I want to be able to track how many customers, not employees or competitors, are looking at something as automotive-targeted as DealerRater. In a survey of people I know who had purchased a car in the past 24 months (30 people), 1 had heard of DealerRater and they said it did not affect their purchasing decision.

I would love to be able to say that all the effort we put into reputation management pays off, but it's a statistic that I find harder to track than most statistics we've learned to play with.

 

[ryan.leslie]

Ryan,

Do you see a general change in attitude towards reviews now that the market is more mature?

Let me try to understand the question. Are you asking if dealers have changed their attitude towards reviews as the competitive vendor product landscape has matured or if consumers have changed their attitude towards reviews as they have become a centerpiece of product and services research pre-purchase? (I think the answer is "Yes" to both questions, but I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing.)

 

[yagoparamo]

Let me try to understand the question. Are you asking if dealers have changed their attitude towards reviews as the competitive vendor product landscape has matured or if consumers have changed their attitude towards reviews as they have become a centerpiece of product and services research pre-purchase? (I think the answer is "Yes" to both questions, but I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing.)

Towards do companies like Google see reviews differently as they seem to change policies?

 

[ryan.leslie]

Towards do companies like Google see reviews differently as they seem to change policies?

Big question and the following is really my opinion only. I'd imagine that some would disagree. I'll try to answer as briefly as possible.

Google showed their hand in Dec. of 2012 with a massive rewrite of their TOU and a purge of a lot of "low quality" reviews. This was a signal that they recognized that they were only as reliable to the consumer as their content was valuable. If they failed to enforce standards for collection and that lowered the bar for the kind of content they showed it ultimately impacted their credibility and usefulness to the consumer. It was a poor reflection on Google, not the businesses reviewed. All of the repository sites deal with this issue. It is a delicate balancing act to make it easy for the consumer base to submit content AND hold to standards that make the content valuable to that same consumer base.

I've alluded to this phrase in nearly every speaking event I've done in the last 24 months. "5 words and 5 stars won't sell or service cars!" Joe Pistell wrote a great piece here many years ago now called "Star Wars." Uncle Joe not only has rules to be followed, but he's also the Nostradamus of DealerRefresh. The stars don't matter; the STORIES matter. Google, and many dealerships too, have come to realize that star count and score don't have much value in and of themselves. There must be a story to validate a ranking.

I think we also need to be cognizant of the consumer's awareness of "astroturfing." Hard to believe it has been a year since Edmunds sued Humankind out of existence, Yelp sued a lawyer for bearing false witness on behalf of themselves, and the state of New York sued 19 companies in a crackdown of fake reviews to the tune of $350k. These very newsworthy events from Sept 2013 have crept into the collective conscience... and yet... according to BrightLocal, 88% of consumers say they trust online review content as much as a personal recommendation for some types of businesses with multiple reviews that they believe to be authentic. That is the battle for sites. They want to preserve authenticity and credibility while making the content easy to access and submit.

 

[ryan.leslie]

In a survey of people I know who had purchased a car in the past 24 months (30 people), 1 had heard of DealerRater and they said it did not affect their purchasing decision.

Respectfully, there is another active thread on the forum right now that is dealing with the validity of statistics in a vacuum. I'd strongly discourage basing your opinions on a survey of friends and neighbors. 30 is a really small sample size.

Attribution is tricky for any site that doesn't gate their content. It is really tricky for a site like DealerRater that syndicates content to multiple partners. Your friends may not know the name, but if they researched on KBB, used Autotrader, visited the dealer's website, clicked on a link in SERP1, etc. there is a chance they were looking at DealerRater content with no reason to recall the DealerRater brand, and that is really okay with us as long as it moved them closer to purchase. I can read off the names of 250+ salespeople across the country that are seeing results from their efforts and have gone above and beyond to take additional training to earn individual certifications, several of them have become good friends over the years.

I would love to be able to say that all the effort we put into reputation management pays off, but it's a statistic that I find harder to track than most statistics we've learned to play with.

There are over 600 definitions of the 3 letter word "run" in the dictionary. Noses run, so do joggers. Pantyhose run; so do faucets. Eggs are runny; Pepto Bismol is the cure for... You get the point... I think there are just slightly less than 600 meanings for "reputation management" in the automotive vernacular. Let me say this, if you are putting effort into the customer experience with the intent that it will trickle out to the web, you are making a worthwhile investment of your time, energy and resources. If you are just trying to "look good online" I don't know that you'll ever find a long term sustainable model.

Last thought my friend, I really hope that this response came across the way I intended. Yago and I fiercely debated differences of opinion and he is now one of the guys I look for at conferences. We don't always agree about everything, but we can enjoy discussing it over a beer. I want that relationship with every person that posts here, except for kcar

 

[craigh]

Respectfully, there is another active thread on the forum right now that is dealing with the validity of statistics in a vacuum. I'd strongly discourage basing your opinions on a survey of friends and neighbors. 30 is a really small sample size.

Agreed. I think I'm part of that discussion as well. I'm certainly not saying 30 is the answer or an honest data set.

Attribution is tricky for any site that doesn't gate their content. It is really tricky for a site like DealerRater that syndicates content to multiple partners. Your friends may not know the name, but if they researched on KBB, used Autotrader, visited the dealer's website, clicked on a link in SERP1, etc. there is a chance they were looking at DealerRater content with no reason to recall the DealerRater brand, and that is really okay with us as long as it moved them closer to purchase.

Is it possible to possibly get reports from DealerRater that I don't know about? I want to see visitor counts, etc.
Currently what I'm finding (and I may just be blind) is simply reports based on reviews gathered, etc.

I can read off the names of 250+ salespeople across the country that are seeing results from their efforts and have gone above and beyond to take additional training to earn individual certifications, several of them have become good friends over the years.

We are pushing all the sales people we work with to go through the recent certification program and get the necessary reviews to stay in the program. Some of them have - hard to say if it's affected anything yet, but they all have to have their arm twisted just to put in the effort.

There are over 600 definitions of the 3 letter word "run" in the dictionary. Noses run, so do joggers. Pantyhose run; so do faucets. Eggs are runny; Pepto Bismol is the cure for... You get the point... I think there are just slightly less than 600 meanings for "reputation management" in the automotive vernacular. Let me say this, if you are putting effort into the customer experience with the intent that it will trickle out to the web, you are making a worthwhile investment of your time, energy and resources. If you are just trying to "look good online" I don't know that you'll ever find a long term sustainable model.

Last thought my friend, I really hope that this response came across the way I intended. Yago and I fiercely debated differences of opinion and he is now one of the guys I look for at conferences. We don't always agree about everything, but we can enjoy discussing it over a beer. I want that relationship with every person that posts here, except for kcar

Agreed and I certainly don't take it the wrong way.
I'm as hard on myself as I am on everyone else and I find that it ends up producing the best results in the long run.
I just find the review thing very difficult to work with because I'm missing way too much data.
I need to know how many visitors to those pages, how many referrals to the website, how many views on the inventory I provide to DR, where they came from when they landed on that page.

In a nutshell, I just want Google Analytics on my DR page. Is this possible? The lack of data keeps me up at night.

 

[ryan.leslie]

I just sent you a PM Craig. Give me a call sometime today and I'll do my best to help you get what you are looking for.