Do you dread the Facebook reviews that are posted about your small business? Here’s how you can handle them effectively, and how you can do damage control. Bad Facebook reviews can suck. They can harm business and perpetual negative reviews can be a nightmare for business owners. Bad reviews CAN help drive business though, if used as a tool and not thought of as world-ending. The way to use it as a tool to drive business is to consider using human communication in dealing with people in this very online world. When someone is spoken to like a person, they […]

Google matters far more than Yelp when it comes to reviews. Here’s a guide as to why that is and how you can use them to better serve your business. The ability to read and write online reviews has drastically changed how we choose which businesses to support. Gone are the days of showing up at a restaurant or store and not knowing what to expect. Now, we can learn everything from store hours to information about cleanliness, and more, with a quick online search. For businesses, it has become essential to encourage, read, and manage online reviews in order […]

What Google My Business review response notifications mean for your local business Google has announced the launch of review response notifications – a new Google My Business feature. When business owners respond to reviews, Google will now send an email notification to the customer to inform them of the response. Here’s the update as it was posted on the Google community forum : “We’re launching notifications to inform your customers when you respond to their reviews, with plans to release mobile push notifications at a later date. When businesses respond to, or update responses to customer reviews, the customer now receives an […]

In late April, both Google and Facebook made some important changes to their review systems/policies. And since the big G and FB are the top two review sites for most businesses, we want you to be aware of what these changes are and how they impact both your business and your Get More Reviews account. Here’s what you need to know: Google has updated its review policy In April, a change appeared on Google’s review policy. The change added the following “criteria” for review content on Google Maps: “Don’t discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from […]

Negative reviews are near impossible to remove. But if you’ve received a fake or spam review, there are steps you can take. As a business owner, it’s exciting to see that someone has taken the time to share their thoughts about your company’s products or services. However, that excitement can turn to frustration when you realize the review is fake or full of spam. You may fear that other people reading your business reviews will be turned off. Part of your frustration may stem from the mistaken belief that you can’t do anything about it. While it is nearly impossible […]

13% of local search rank is attributed to reviews There is no question that there are eyes on a business’s Google reviews before a one decides to or not to become a customer of that entity. What is filled in of those five stars that stand next to a business’s name holds more weight than a lot of business owners realize. The sheer volume of Google reviews partnered with the positive sentiment throughout is what makes a business outshine their competition. This is not the only reason that a business should place a lot of concern into their Google reviews. […]

Yelp is cracking down on its policy against asking for customer reviews. Here’s what you need to know. This week Yelp became more strict in enforcing their review solicitation policy ( Yelp’s content guidelines can be found here ). More specifically, there are increased reports nationwide of local businesses being contacted by Yelp with the request to stop ” soliciting customers for reviews “. Here is what you should know, and steps you may want to take to comply with Yelp’s policies: What is Yelp’s review solicitation policy? Many review sites have a policy against offering incentives to customers in exchange for reviews. Here’s […]

Deleting a negative review is not necessarily the right action to take. Simply deleting a negative review that has been posted about a business is not something that a business can do. Most likely if a business owner is trying to delete a review, he or she has found themselves on this page (below) before reading this blog post. It is important to note that the image above is simply instructing a reviewer on how to delete his or her review NOT instructing a business owner on how to delete a negative review that was left about the business. If […]

Google Reviews: “You can run but you can’t hide.” Google is here to stay, so a business should not hide from it. They should use it! If a business does not, Google will be its worst nightmare. But if a business plays its cards right, Google can be the best thing for a it. I’m here to help with the latter. First and foremost, why do Google reviews matter? The main reason that Google reviews matter, is because according to Google themselves, Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 […]

Generating New Yelp Reviews Can Be Hard. This is How You Ensure Your Best Customers Share Their Experience On Yelp. As one of the original review sites, Yelp continues to be one of the most important places a business can try to get more reviews on. Yelp reviews can be hard to come by and difficult to generate from your customers. In fact, sometimes it may feel like you’re doing everything right and only the negative Yelp reviews are showing up. Over the years, Yelp has been the source of quite a bit of controversy among business owners. Despite every […]