Google Makes Changes to Place Pages

Bringing you more ways to rate, discover, and share places you love faster and easier than ever, from wherever you are, and on whichever device you choose is the message Google sent to its fellow Google users as they announced changes made to their Google Places page. Why did Google make these changes? Well, it was a way to cut down on review spam as well as provide Google with more control and better insight over their reviews. With that being said, Google is no longer showing the count for third party reviews on the main search page for places.

What the Place Page Change Looks Like:
Google will no longer be showing the count for 3rd party reviews on their main search page, and snippets for all business reviews have been removed except for restaurants and hotels. On the Places page, Google is now highlighting in a bright, bold, red box, the suggestion to, "Write a Review," and upload of places you've been. Google plans to reduce their reliance on third party reviews and increase prominence of their own. This new idea gives more reliability and security for Google users as they search for places they may have interests in. Rating and review counts now only reflects those that have been written by fellow Google users. Google says that this feature to only show reviews from Google users brings its users more personalized results when they search for local places, because they understand that information from the people you know is what's most meaningful.

The New and Improved Google Places Page

How Will This Affect Businesses?
The value of third party reviews will slowly decline when it comes to Google searches, although that doesn't mean you shouldn't stop getting their reviews.  Yahoo, Yelp, Bing, CitySearch and industry specific sites are still great sources for third party reviews and will continue to effect your local listings.  On the other hand, reviews from third party review management companies like DemandForce will most likely diminish in value.  Make sure to create profiles at all the local websites to enable users to give you reviews every chance they get.  Although Google wants to rely solely on their own reviews, they too would be hurt by doing this as it wouldn't benefit the user.  There are too many industry specific review sites which hold far more value than Google does for their specific industry.  Google wants to compliment those sites. So although the general review site will decrease in value slightly, it is recommended to continue receiving reviews from these sites.  Just focus on Google reviews a bit more than you had previously.

Comments

• By Real Time Web Analytics on Monday, October 17, 2011
   

  Real Time Web Analytics

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