Google Reviews are an essential part of Google Maps businesses. Your business’s success largely depends upon how many reviews you have with a certain number reflecting your credibility to the public.
Reviews are the most common way that customers evaluate their experience with your restaurant, hotel, or any other type of business. These reviews can be posted by regular website visitors or even potential clients who might want to book a stay in your establishment that looks appealing on Google Maps or the Google My Business page.
Reviews come in handy for a customer and also for an owner because what you say about your business on a review site can help others get more information about it and make an informed decision before booking anything from you.
In general, what people choose to review your business on Google Maps or the Google My Business page depends on the quality of your service and their experience with it.
If a customer has a positive experience, they often tend to tell the whole world about it. On the other hand, if they had a negative experience, they often tend to hide their bad experience from others and write only good things about them, so that everyone else would not know that they are less than perfect.
Google Reviews can help in managing your overall online presence by bringing more customers to you because people trust these reviews as an accurate source of information regarding a certain business.
With the help of Google Reviews, more people would be willing to choose you over any similar competitors that may have fewer reviews and also lesser details provided by customers.
Nowadays, many people rely on Google Maps when they need some directions to a certain place. For example, search for “Sushi near me” on Google Maps and you will see a list of restaurants with their addresses, phone numbers, and reviews provided by customers.
Reviews are always shown in this type of listing because they provide real information about the business from a customer’s point of view instead of just telling what is written on the official website or other advertising materials.
No one wants to eat at a restaurant where people just had bad experiences and therefore, the owner keeps his mouth shut about the positive reviews and only shows negative ones on top of the list. The reputation of your business is in your hands and how you manage your online presence can make or break it because people always trust what others say about them.
What are Google Reviews?
Google Reviews is one of the many review sites like Yelp, Foursquare, and TripAdvisor that are focusing on online reviews from customers. The only difference is that Google Reviews has its own exclusive social media platform which is Google My Business. With a single login, you can manage all your business listings in one location.
On Google Maps, customers are able to leave reviews for your business based on their experience with it and you will also be able to respond to their feedback. If a customer’s opinion differs from yours, you can address the issue by explaining how things were done and what you did to resolve it as well as thanking the customer for providing helpful information.
Google Reviews are an essential part of Google My Business, which means that your business will not rank well on Google Maps unless you have a lot of positive reviews and also many reviews in general. In other words, Google Reviews help you rank better on Google Maps because they show how powerful your business is and how good it is to people who search for it.
What Is the Impact of Google Reviews on SEO?
If you ask any SEO expert, they will tell you that Google My Business Reviews are very helpful for ranking on Google Maps but users and customers use them as an informative source of information.
If you have a restaurant, hotel, or any other business, people will be interested to read about your business on the page that directly ranks for your business’s name or where it is located.
Google is trying to be a fair and open company which means that it has made the rules clear and provided enough information so that people can understand them. This means that if you want to rank better on Google Maps, provide good quality service and maintain positive customer feedback in order to rank higher in local searches.
You can search for “best dentist in Miami” in the Google Maps and you would see that the top results in your search result are with a rating of at least 4.5 and most of them have a 5.0 out of 5.0 rating.
That would mean that your business will rank high on the map if it gets good reviews because people will still trust these reviews as a source of information. On the other hand, if you have a lot of bad reviews with unclear reasons and lack of an explanation, they likely will make the business listing de-rank from the Google SERPs and Maps.
You can see below a search result producing some Google Maps listings with the best rating and number of reviews on the top of the page.
How to Get More Good Reviews
With the help of Google Reviews, you can make your business listing rank higher than any competitor in local searches. To get more reviews and positive feedback, you should first improve your service to deliver good quality products and proper service.
If a customer is satisfied with the experience, they often want to tell others about it because people nowadays like and trust Google Reviews.
If a customer does not like something about your business, you should also take part in resolving this issue as soon as possible by communicating with them and pointing out how you took action to fix that problem.
This would mean that if there was a misunderstanding between the customer and yourself or something went wrong between both of you, then you can start by apologizing if needed.
Next, you should explain what you have done to fix that problem and how you tried to resolve it. It is also important to thank the customer for helping you improve by pointing out the things that need improvement and how they can help.
This would mean that customers will often want to provide more information on the type of business they are reviewing so that other people would know what to expect before visiting your business.
If you do not communicate with your customers in a proper manner, there is a bigger chance of getting bad reviews which means that you will rank lower on Google Maps as well as bring fewer visitors to your page.
The Negative Effects of Bad Review Sites
If you have a restaurant and your customers complain that the food wasn’t good and there were a lot of flies in the place, it would mean that they were not satisfied with their experience and will probably not come back.
Another example would be customers who complained that the restaurant did not provide what they ordered, which could mean anything from bad service to bad quality food. This would be a very effective way to get more negative reviews as well as having your business eventually de-ranked online from the search results.
If you are getting some bad reviews on your Google Maps listing, it is not just the customers who will not consider you for your service but Google will also put your listing in the Sandbox.
Being in the Google Sandbox is like having a very new business with no trust and authority online. So, you need to work very hard from scratch to build your authority and trust score.
How to Deal with Bad Reviews
If a customer says that the service was bad, it can be as simple as not being able to get an order delivered in a specified time frame. This is such a simple issue that most businesses do it and they need more training and better staff management so they can improve them within a short amount of time.
If you are unable to properly deliver the offered services, then the consumer will probably not feel satisfied with his/her experience. This will make them want to leave negative reviews on other review sites as well as a post on other social media platforms in order to express how unhappy they are with your business.
Bad quality of the product or service: If you deliver a bad quality product or service, it will make customers unhappy, which means that they would not want to come back for more.
Even if you deliver a product or service and it does not meet the customer’s needs, that customer will probably look for another provider who is able to provide what they want.
As an example, let’s say you own a hotel and all of your staff members forget how to do their jobs and make a lot of mistakes with checking in guests and delivering orders.
This can be very effective if you have customers who are concerned about their safety while traveling and they make mistakes with their ID number, or they ask for a different room than what they booked.
In order to avoid such bad customer experiences and situations that may lead to negative reviews, it is important to train your staff members on how to deliver good customer service.
Poor customer service: This is one of the most common reasons for bad reviews that people give other businesses. There are many reasons why this happens, but in most cases, it is because a business does not provide good customer service at all even though it has good products or services.
For example, you do not have good customer service, but you deliver a good quality product to your customers.
If a person is not happy with their product, they will still leave you bad reviews because they are not satisfied with your services.
This type of situation would make it difficult for your business to rank high on your local search results and in Google Maps because people will trust these reviews as they do not care about the experience that they have at the time.
Conclusion
Good reviews can make a noticeable difference in your business and will help you get more customers. However, not all reviews are good. There are people who write bad reviews because they are trying to make themselves look more important and knowledgeable about the subject at hand, or they have personal issues with the owner of the business that makes them want to post negative comments about them.
Bad reviews can be very harmful to your business and can significantly affect how many people will continue coming to your place of business. For this reason, it is important to make sure that you get rid of such reviews as they can greatly affect your SEO rankings as well as overall visibility on the internet.
