Google+ Local Reviews

[FernwoodFitness]

Hi everyone,

Is it against Google+ Local's guidelines to request one's customers to post reviews on their page?

For example, asking my customers on my email list, or through Facebook if they can leave a review on the G+ Local page?

Thanks

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Diana,

As Jim has said, Google has no problem with you asking for reviews, by any means except for at a shop-based review station/kiosk. However, I would advise you against doing any type of mass request via email, Facebook or any other platform. The reason for this is that Google's review filters appear to target velocity. If you get too many reviews at once, they could be filtered out and permanently lost. Because of this, many in the Local SEO community are now recommending that you ask no more than a couple of customers for reviews each week. This may prevent review loss.

Also, as Jim says, always give the customer the option to use their favorite platform. Diversity is good insurance against review loss, in that if you lose reviews on one platform, you still have them on others.

Just remember, the one review platform you must exclude from your review acquisition efforts is Yelp. They expressly forbid local business owners from requesting customer reviews in any way. Very strict, but there it is.

Hope this helps!

[jimthornton]

No, that's perfectly fine to do.

With real estate agencies I work with in vacation rentals markets, I've set up automated emails asking for feedback. If the feedback has a positive rating, we automatically send another email asking them to review us where our local listings are.

Personally, I don't like pushing them to one review source (like Google+) because typically people have their own review preferences, and I haven't tested this but giving them options likely means a higher review rate.