Google Places Reviews – Do’s and Don’ts

As a follow-up to our post earlier this month, “Say Goodbye To Third Party Review Content And Listings On Google Places”, scoring Google Place page reviews is more important than ever. Here are some helpful guidelines when writing reviews in Google Places. Just be aware that Google will remove any content that violates their Google Places content policy, so please make sure you read this before you write a review.

Business Owners:
Don’t lead people to your Place Page (or any other review website) to give reviews from an office computer. It seems innocent enough; you have a happy customer at your business location who wants to tell everyone about the great job your company has done for them. But if all your reviews are made from the same computer, they will all come from the same IP address. To Google, Yelp and other review sites, this is a red flag that the reviews are not authentic. Happy customers need to go home and write a review from their own computers. 
Don’t offer products or money in exchange for positive customer reviews.
Don’t post fake reviews.

Customers:
Don’t write multiple reviews from your Google account to the same company.
Don’t accept products or money from companies in exchange for writing positives reviews for them.
Don’t post fake reviews.

Business Owners:
Do encourage your happy customers to write a review about your company and ask them to be specific about what they like.
Do take the reviews by your customers seriously. If there is a negative online review, try to resolve the situation with that customer if possible.
Do respond online to negative reviews in a professional and courteous manner. Remember that other potential customers will be influenced by what you write as well.
Do link to your Google Places page from your website so that your customers can more easily find it to read and write reviews.

Customers:
Do specifically describe your experience in your review. Why did you like it or why did you dislike it? Maybe offer a suggestion on how to improve customer experience.
Do be honest and sincere so others customers can get a true idea of your experience.
Do be respectful in your review even if you did not have a positive experience. Try to offer constructive criticism.

In short, be respectful, honest and informative in your reviews. They are there to help people, good or bad.  A business’ Google Place page is not the place for rants!