Respond to Google Review as Business or Individual?
-
Hello Moz World!
My agency has never had a great strategy for reputation management, but have begun acquiring some Google reviews. We know it's best practice to respond – but I've never considered whether I should respond as an individual or with our company's GMB? The owner of our GMB is "Engenius" – a general admin account for our agency. I'm also a user on the account, as the "owner," but I'm technically not the owner of our company.
Should the owner be added as a user and respond directly? Or is it okay to respond as "Engenius" (the brand)? Or can I respond as the "owner," though I'm not technically?
I know ultimately it's probably not a huge deal, but any thoughts would be awesome! Thanks!
-
You're welcome, Brooks!
-
Thanks for this, Miriam! I love that take on thinking big.
-
I think it's best to respond as a company rather than as an individual. Company responses seem more legitimate and help to build trust especially when responding to a negative review. Personally, when I see these responses, I don't really think it's the actual owner but are representatives of the company.
-
This is a good question, Brooks!
My take: When scaling rep management for companies with 100s or 1,000s of locations, there's no way the owner is going to be personally responding to each review. Rather, he/she will be designating staff to act in his/her name. So, basically, you can think of this scenario this way. You're being empowered by the owner to act on his/her behalf, and putting the name "owner" on the review is an indication that the reply represents company policy, rather than the owner sitting at a laptop late into the night writing responses. I can't imagine John Mackey was logging hours replying to Whole Foods reviews.
So, this is one of those scenarios in which I say, "Think big." If the "big guys" have staff who respond in their names, then smaller businesses can follow suit. I think we're pretty safe in assuming that Google's generic language of "response from the owner" isn't convincing Whole Foods shoppers that they've just receive a personal reply from John Mackey
That being said, it would certainly behoove owners and C-suites to craft very clear policy governing how employees should respond to the public while representing the brand. This is a step that should not be overlooked in organizations large or small.
I hope others will weigh in on this, as this is just my opinion.
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
-
Purchasing and rebranding practice with bad reviews
An optometrist is looking to buy a practice with really bad Google reviews. They want to rebrand it under their name. This practice has pretty bad SEO as well. What should they do? Should they just mark the GMB page as permanently closed then make a new one under the new business name? Or is that risky or considered spammy since the "new" practice is also an optometrist? Could Google think it is a duplicate or an attempt to trick them?
Reviews and Ratings | | Mike-i0 -
Local Search for Home Businesses
I'm a home based business. I know Google has cracked down on PO boxes and UPS locations. What is one to do if they work from home but don't conduct business with clients from their home office? How can I get an address that's Google-approved?
Reviews and Ratings | | FathomMarketing1 -
Review page set up
Hey Gang! So I have a client with multiple locations in different metros. I would like to set up a page in WordPress for each metro that the technician can give to the happy client so they can review us. I would like to have a link to my GMB, Yelp, Yellowpages, and whatever else I can grab. Is there a badass plugin for this or what would you guys do? Much love.
Reviews and Ratings | | Meier0 -
Google Review Guidelines update.
OK Moz peeps... Right then, I have just been reading an article over on SEO RoundTable from Barry Schwartz. NEW Local review guidelines for businesses - take a look. It in effect alludes to Google stamping all over review schema and snippets, third party review solutions/providers and really trying to limit how they are used. I have interpreted the new guidelines to say that you can no longer mark up and use external stats on your own site in the form of aggregate ratings from the likes of TrustPilot, Feefo, Revoo (some uk review sites) and more.... These were the two key lines for more Only include reviews that have been directly produced by your site, not reviews from third-party sites or syndicated reviews. Aggregators or content providers must have no commercial agreements paid or otherwise with businesses to provide reviews. What does everyone else think? and how soon before people get penalised (if ever) for marking up external stats to make your own site and services look more favourable... Could definately be a slap in the face for Serp CTR and onpage conversion optimisation. Also how do people expect this to affect PPC review rating going forward. Will Partner sites become a thing of the past? Looking forward to a good discussion here 🙂 PS - I am not staff at Moz just have a t-shirt which is my avatar. I am not sure why below my avatar it suggests I am Staff due to the tag added to it. Is anyone else getting that on their profile too?
Reviews and Ratings | | TimHolmes0 -
Customer Reviews inputted by a single person
We send out a product review survey through an email after a purchase has been made. It is okay that we input those in manually ourselves when they are returned? They are legitimate reviews. I want to make sure it doesn't send a red flag to search engines since the same person inputs them from the same computer and IP address. Thanks in advance for your inputs.
Reviews and Ratings | | jwanner1 -
Schema Markup for email with review action for Google places listing - Auto segment.
Hi Guys I have been trying to integrate schema markup with review action into car purchase emails to drive additional reviews for dealership google places listings. I have used the below mark-up but im struggling to get the review action when defining itemtype as AutoDealer. When changing itemtype to FoodEstablishment the review action works perfectly. Has anyone got any suggestions why this may be or have any experience using the review action within emails for google places or itemtype other than FoodEstablishment. I have read the great Moz post on this here but im still struggling. Thanks in advance for any help! See mark-up below... http://schema.org/EmailMessage">http://schema.org/ReviewAction">http://schema.org/Review">https://schema.org/AutoDealer">https://schema.org/Rating">http://schema.org/HttpActionHandler">http://schema.org/Property">http://schema.org/Property"> http://schema.org/HttpRequestMethod/POST"/>
Reviews and Ratings | | MBASydney0 -
Google Warns Local Businesses: You Have 3 Weeks to Save Your Places Listing
Has anyone heard anything about this Google warning that was supposedly sent to some Google Place owners recently. The message says: We are making some changes to Google Places for Business and Google Maps so we can continue providing people with the best experience when they're looking for local businesses. As part of this process, we're asking business owners to review and confirm some of the information in their Google Places accounts so we can keep showing it to Google users. We know this will be a few extra steps for merchants, and we apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your time. We have sent business owners affected by these changes an email entitled "Action Required: You have 3 weeks to save your Google Places Listing". Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2327744/Google-Warns-Local-Businesses-You-Have-3-Weeks-to-Save-Your-Places-Listing I haven't found much other information in the SEO community but I just wanted to see if anyone has actually received this notice or not? Someone suggested it may just be a test in Australia/Austria. (Not sure which one it is as the comment in the above list references both countries) Thanks for any information you have on this topic.
Reviews and Ratings | | DCochrane1 -
Schema Reviews
Question about using Schema reviews. I believe I've set everything up correctly, and the Google Rich Snippets tool displays that I have...however in the SERP and on the page instead of displaying a graphic of four stars, it displays "4/5 stars" text. The Rich Snippet tool says that it should be displaying the graphic though. Anyone have experience with Schema and know if there's an extra step to take to display the graphic? Thank you!
Reviews and Ratings | | PlanetDISH0