Will Google Places put ranking weight on google reviews instead of 3rd party now?
-
WIth the visual update to Google Places over the past 2 days do you think that Google reviews will become a higher ranking factor as compared to 3rd party reviews. The research I have done shows that 3rd party reviews seem to correlate better with higher rankings..Any thoughts on what might be coming down the road?
-
Seems to me like the third party reviews are still making an impact on the rankings, it is just that google is no longer displaying them due to legal reasons.
-
I have to agree with you. We generally try to push customers to about 4 review sites Google Yelp City search And a specific vertical review site. I do think that eventually more weight will be given to google reviews simply to push business to use their service but I. Think a company would be foolish to put all eggs in the places review basket when they have such a problem with losing reviews and support.
-
I can't imagine Google would diminish the importance of third party reviews, which is one of the most meaningful signals of a business' local authority. Google reviews seem more susceptible to spam and bugs than many high quality review sites like Yelp.
Just because Google is no longer displaying certain items on Place pages, doesn't necessarily mean Google is changing the way those items are considered as as ranking factors.
-
Completely agree on the Citation point. They dont provide solid info on the places page so it makes sense that they have been pulled like mymaps were. I am just wondering about thoughts on reviews from 3rd party sites vs. reviews on Google. The approach has been to diversify your reviews to mutlple sites for rankings and also for "keeping eggs out of one basket". Wondering if many are going to switch strategy based on latest info.
-
"My personal opinion is that citations will not diminish, at least in the short term, in importance for Google’s algorithm. Particularly here in Brazil it’s amazing how reliant they are on sources beyond claimed Places. They’ve just gone 100% of the way to obfuscating what those sources are." - David Mihm
Personally, i have seen that citations are still quite powerful, especially if you can get quality citations from authority sites, not just all those fluff directories, those are just useless filler.
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
-
Image results Bing vs Google
I have a website with a number of images and I have optimized all of the images on both a file name and ALT text level, relevant to content on the page they are published on. I haven't created a separate image sitemap, but the strange thing is that Google has all of my images indexed and they can be found for the right keywords, but when I look in BING! images, there is no image indexed available at all ...
Image & Video Optimization | | ConclusionDigital0 -
Google Places best practise
Hi, just wondering what peoples' thoughts are on linking from a Google Places listing; where multiple locations are present (and multiple Places listings), do people generally link back to the home page or to the individual location pages? I would be interested to hear anybody's thoughts. Thank you
Image & Video Optimization | | jasarrow0 -
Local SEO, hard time ranking a keyword
Hello. Im working with beauty salon client, i do rank them for top services, but there a term that i can't rank for, my page it optimized for this keywords (url,h1,h2) i have this keyword in Google places, as a category, and in description. i have build many citations with this term, BUT still cant rank it. If anyone can help me on that, ill be really appreciated, as i'm still learning this. Thanks You!
Image & Video Optimization | | Davidmez0 -
None of my images are being indexed by google.
None of my images are being indexed by google. Here is a link to one of my site images : http://www.yourlamode.com/sitemap_images.xml Its been uploaded for more then 5 days
Image & Video Optimization | | spidersite0 -
Is it possible to have an ogranic and places listing on the same SERP?
Have a bit of a quandary; I am working with a site that ranks fourth for their main term via a Google Places listing. However, I can't seem to find a traditional organic listing to save my life.The only way I can do it is to search from a mobile device, or expand the search results to 100 listings. When I do that, the site appears in the top 10 organic listings. That got me to wondering, is it possible this client's traditional organic listing is being cannabalized by their listing in Google Places?
Image & Video Optimization | | phantom1 -
Canadian site ranking well in states
Hello, one of my clients has a site that ranks well in Google.com but is a Canadian company and therefore has a canadian address. They have not yet done any local optimization so if I was to add them to local directories, would that hurt their ranks in the states or anywhere else?
Image & Video Optimization | | matmox0 -
How do I get google to index review sites for Google Places?
Some of our competitors are ranking higher than we are in google places due to a larger variety of review sites. Google is picking up reviews for them on certain review sites such as yelp.com or projectwedding.com. We have a lot of reviews on those sites also, but google is not picking those reviews up for us. I checked and verified that the phone number and address is exactly correct and has the exact same formatting on all the sites, but google still hasn't picked up those reviews for us. I've waited a couple months now and still nothing. Is there anything I'm missing?
Image & Video Optimization | | DanielLowe0