Yelp releases data every year that shows the star rating distribution for all reviews left on their site. I recorded the numbers that were listed in their reports for the last 4 years to see what trends they show. There are two main things that stick out: The number of people that leave 2, 3,…
Google Business Profiles (GBP) are meant to help businesses make money and gain exposure. When GBP breaks, it can have costly effects on businesses. 5 major issues are plaguing GPB at the moment. You will either need to wait for Google the fix the issue while you slowly go out of business or take matters…
Several weeks ago, a thread came up on the Local Search Forum where Jim Frolling noticed a business had their primary category in Google My Business changed from “tire store” to “wheel shop”. He noticed that this appeared to happen to every single listing on Google that did not have their address displayed publicly (known…
There are lots of frustrating scenarios that I read regularly where small businesses are plagued by negative reviews on Google. This one that I helped on the Google Business Profile forum caught my attention because I was really surprised that Google wouldn’t remove it. This business owner has had a customer update his negative review…
My colleague Dave DiGregorio noticed this morning that Google has a “New on Google” label that is showing beside listings in both the local pack results and the local finder. ‘ This feature can be really useful for keeping an eye on your competition and also identifying listings for your own brand that recently got…
Today I spotted a test that Google is doing on the Google Maps app. So far, none of my colleagues have been able to reproduce this themselves. What I’m noticing is that Google is adding a red dot and drawing attention to the “Updates” tab for businesses that have recently added a Google post. From…
Many of us in the local search industry know that including phone numbers in Google My Business posts often results in the post getting rejected. However, as of today, Google has finally added this to their guidelines. In the help article on Google Posts policies, Google has added the following: Phone stuffing To avoid the…
Google has just launched a new handy tool to help people keep track of reviews they have reported to Google for removal. If you visit this link it will bring you to a page where you can select your business and see a list of the reviews that you currently have reported and a list…
Tom Waddington recently tweeted that Google is showing star ratings now in the review snippets section of the Knowledge Panel. First time I’ve seen the star rating appear with the review snippet here pic.twitter.com/gXoP0mG7hn — Tom Waddington (@tomwaddington8) February 3, 2021 Here is a before and after screenshot that shows how this compares with what…
My colleague Zach Mallett just noticed that Google updated their options for flagging a review inside the Google My Business dashboard. This is what it looks like: What’s Changed? The descriptions below each option weren’t there before. This is new and extremely helpful as it makes it much easier for a business owner to see…