What types of businesses does Google display reviews in SERP for?
-
In just the last week, it seems like Google has removed reviews for businesses in our industry (staffing), which is unfortunate since we've been working hard for those reviews. The effect has been to be completely left off the local google business results. One week, we're at the top of the business reviews with our location prominently featured on the map and the next, we aren't even listed.
It seems like there must be list of industries in which Google takes reviews into account (or if they do, then at least displays the reviews in the results). For us, up until last week, if you searched "temp agencies", these reviews were included in SERP. Now, nothing.
Is this fairly normal behavior for Google?
-
Hi Jacob,
Yes, unfortunately there is no strategy for overriding Possum if you are being affected by it due to sharing a building and category with a competitor. This is a completely separate issue from whether or not Google is displaying in-SERP stars for your industry. It's highly unlikely that the two things have anything to do with one another.
While I don't know the complete details of your scenario, what you are describing regarding having to zoom on Maps to see yourself sounds very much like Possum, given your shared building/category with a competitor. Unless you can change your categories (which normally you wouldn't want to do) the effect you are experiencing is now being felt by numerous businesses in your same scenario.
How are you doing in terms of competing with that competitor who is showing up at the non-zoomed level of the map? How are your citations (do you have a good set, are they accurate, free of duplicates)? How about review count and sentiment in Google? How strong is your website?
Because Possum is still so new, I've yet to see many cases brought to light of how a given business is chosen over another one as the one Google is showing at the non-zoomed level, but I would expect ranking factors and user behavior have something to do with it.
Sorry not to have an easy solution for you. I hope these thoughts are at least helpful.
-
Thanks for this.
The Possum article is very interesting, but there's no word as to how to appear on the map. We don't show up until you zoom in to the block, which is problematic for us. We had actually been showing up first on the local search results (on page one, but not the actual map results page) until the SERP stars were removed.
-
Hi Jacob,
From what you are describing, it sounds like you are actually experiencing two different things:
-
Google not showing in-SERPs stars for your geo-industry (they do make these pop in and out of existence, so they could come back).
-
Possum. If you are sharing a physical building and Google categories with a competitor, this is most likely why your business isn't showing up in Maps unless you zoom in. Here's a very good guide to this: http://searchengineland.com/everything-need-know-googles-possum-algorithm-update-258900
Hope this helps.
-
-
I'll add that what I'm seeing is similar to this issue, reported last February. At the time, it was temporary, so hopefully this is a bug that Google will address shortly:
-
It looks like what happened is that Google removed review summaries (stars and such) from SERP for our business category, so our reviews are no longer visible on the page. On local, the review summary is also missing, unless you click on us specifically.
This had the effect of removing us completely off of the local map results. We're listed, but not on the map. This is probably the biggest loss for us, as we share a building with a competitor and only recently overtook them (as local did not like displaying two companies in one building unless you zoomed in close).
The link you provided doesn't discuss how reviews are displayed on SERP, but thank you nonetheless!
-
Hi Jacob,
The definitive resource on reviews for Google is found here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/reviews
I'm not 100% certain I understand your problem. Are you worried about first party reviews wrapped in schema, or third party reviews? Are you able to see reviews in your Google My Business dashboard, or in a knowledge panel when you search your brand? Have you checked competitors who have been garnering reviews?
There are some industries that cannot display reviews due to legislation, such as financial advisors. I don't believe your industry falls into that category, and you may just be experiencing some normal fluctuation in the SERP. Verify the points I mentioned above and perhaps we can find an answer.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Structured Data Reviews in Knowledge Panel
I need help with getting my site appearing in the knowledge panel for reviews. Our reviews are appearing in the search snippets but not on the knowledge panel when our competitors with far fewer reviews are. We’ve labored over best practices in perfecting our markup but would love a second opinion to see if there’s something we’re overlooking. For example take this venue on our website: https://www.eventsource.ca/cathedral-centre It has 136 of our own reviews. https://www.google.ca/search?q=cathedral+centre We are the 1st result and it shows our star rating, reviews and price range. However, we don’t appear in the knowledge panel - this is happening for almost every business we have listed on our site. In this particular example, the knowledge panel has en Ville Catering with 45 reviews. I cannot find any errors in our structured data but I see it in our competition: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eventsource.ca%2Fcathedral-centre https://enville.com/saint-james-cathedral-centre-wedding-catering/ Example 2: Search: https://www.google.ca/search?q=burlington+convention+centre US: https://www.eventsource.ca/burlington-convention-centre
Reviews and Ratings | | Neumarkets.com
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eventsource.ca%2Fburlington-convention-centre Competitor in KP: https://www.weddingwire.ca/wedding-banquet-halls/burlington-convention-centre--e12513
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.weddingwire.ca%2Fwedding-banquet-halls%2Fburlington-convention-centre--e12513 Example 3: US: https://www.eventsource.ca/mississauga-convention-centre
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eventsource.ca%2Fmississauga-convention-centre Search: https://www.google.ca/search?q=mississauga+convention+centre
Competitor 1 in KP: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaConventionCentre/
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FMississaugaConventionCentre%2F (I know it’s Facebook. However, there’s about 6-8 competitors appearing in the KP with Schema issues and we aren’t. We’ve compared ourselves against each one of them and cannot determine what the issue might be.) Competitor 2 in KP: https://www.weddingwire.ca/wedding-banquet-halls/mississauga-convention-centre--e8086
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.weddingwire.ca%2Fwedding-banquet-halls%2Fmississauga-convention-centre--e8086 Competitor 3 in KP: http://www.eventvenues.ca/b/54/mississauga-convention-centre-on-mississauga-75-derry-road-west/
SDTT: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eventvenues.ca%2Fb%2F54%2Fmississauga-convention-centre-on-mississauga-75-derry-road-west%2F CMxg9Z10 -
Review stars dropped off in Google from Rich Snippets (started in October '17 - Jan '18 timeframe)
Our review stars from Rich Snippets are not showing up in Google for Novus products. I believe these are structured correctly or at least there are no errors. We have tried to troubleshoot on our own and asked multiple SEO'er's and partners, but have not had success. Turning to MOZ! They were there in September/October timeframe but dropped off in October to January timeframe. example URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=hif+1+alpha+antibody&oq=hif+1+alpha+antibod (It seems to be off all products); This started in October to January time frame so was before the latest algo update.
Reviews and Ratings | | revelkayla0 -
Google Reviews Hassle Reduced - Will It Affect Your Strategy?
Hey Local Pals 🙂 As you may have read this past week, Google has FINALLY stopped requiring users to have a G+ account in order to leave reviews. I find this such a breath of fresh air, given what a hassle it was for many customers who simply didn't ever get into the whole Google+ thing to leave reviews on this major player. I believe this can be seen as one of the last stages of the plus/local separation that has been ongoing for many, many months. Given this change, I thought it would be a good time to discuss reviews. My main question is, now that the only thing your customers need to leave a review is some type of Google account, will you be ramping up your Google-specific review outreach? And, in your own experience, do you feel that Google, Yelp or a different review source has the most impact on your business? Would that be ranking impact, leads, conversions, something else? Best practice is to be diverse, of course, but if you could earn good reviews in just one place, which would it be, and why? And, if you have any unusual tips for review outreach, I know the community would love to benefit from them. Thanks for joining the discussion!
Reviews and Ratings | | MiriamEllis1 -
Should I change to new URL after going through a period of bad reviews
A couple of years ago we had a series of bad reviews due to our billing company. We have not been able to recover from this and are unable to appear in Local listings due to the horrible reviews even though they are from years ago. Would it be a good idea to change domains and google+ accounts in order to start over with reviews and local citations?
Reviews and Ratings | | OhYeahSteve0 -
Local review site discovery
Rand and others have shared a link to a free service where you type in a state location and it shows a list of the most used local listings & review sites for that area. I can't find this service or link anywhere. Was this a service that was on getlisted.org that no longer exists?? Anyone know where it is or where it went?
Reviews and Ratings | | clearlyseo1 -
Started using a 3rd Party Review Company for our Website. Do we need to show the reviews or is a widget (badge) with a link back to review company sufficient enough from an SEO ranking point of view?
Hi All, We have started to use a 3rd party review company and now have the choice of either implementing their re-supplied widgets (Java ) on our site showing customer reviews or use their an API to get this information. The widgets (Java) , would be loaded once the page is actually loaded so I am not sure how and if google will read this information if at all? If we use a widget then we won't be able to implement it with Schema.org although we will be able to use rich snippets to it will appear on any PPC (once we have had 30 reviews). If we go down the API route, it's more expensive for us but we can use the review schema.org for this. Does anyone have any experience of what works best for them ?.. We have a choice of having a widget showing latest reviews or just a badge (which is actually a link to the review site showing our reviews). From an SEO point of view, is one better than the other ? Does google actually read the content of the review or is the link back to the 3rd party review company sufficient enough to help with rankings etc. Am I correct in assuming that by linking to a 3rd party review company and showing our reviews on our site , this will help with rankings as even though the content in the reviews doesn't really say much ,. I did see it was a ranking factor on the survey but not sure how google uses this. ? I've read up some information on reviews etc but wondered what the general consensus was with what others found works best for them Any help greatly appreciated Pete
Reviews and Ratings | | PeteC120 -
Bing Local Lists Yelp Reviews From Another Business At Shared Address
Hi everyone, I am having a problem with Bing local listings and am hoping someone might be able to help me out. Basically I am working with a business that shares an address with another (separate legal entities, different owners, different phone, different domain). Both are bathroom remodelers, but one uses the space as a storefront/showroom, the other is strictly a service area business and uses the space for storage/office space (this is the one I am working with). I have claimed their listing on bing local and set it to hide the address. The problem I am having is that for whatever reason, Bing local is associating the yelp page of business 1 (showroom) with business 2 (business 2 is not currently on yelp). My question: what options do I have to remedy this? Is there a way to request a manual review of sorts to have this fixed? Would it be sufficient to create/verify a yelp page for business 2 and hope that Bing picks up on this?
Reviews and Ratings | | rbmac0 -
Grade Us vs 5 Star Reviews?
We need to get some more reviews, so we're looking at either getting Grade Us or 5 Star Reviews' services. Does anyone have strong feelings about either one? Or another service? Thanks, Ruben
Reviews and Ratings | | KempRugeLawGroup0