In May of the year, many small businesses lost several Google reviews. A month later, Search engines provided my colleague Mike Blumenthal a statement that confirmed the particular reviews were not coming back:
We do not allow anonymous testimonials today and we’ ve taken out legacy anonymous reviews.
The reviews removed had been old reviews from anonymous information that didn’ t have a profile attached to all of them . Since they didn’ t possess profiles attached, it would also get you to a blank page when you attempted to click the username, which is not the best user experience.
The number of reviews were removed?
BrightLocal looked at nearly 2 mil Google reviews for over 40, 1000 businesses and found that a few percent (just over 50, 1000 in their sample) were removed due to this.
I wondered if this might be a good opportunity to figure out if the amount of reviews on a listing impacts position. I looked through dozens of good examples comparing the search results before this particular update to what they were after. I needed to find cases where several rank businesses dropped reviews to see what the impact had been.
My example
In my research, I discovered several ranking business listings dropped a good number of reviews. I’ ve taken the most extreme cases below.
Here’ s a display shot of what the search results appeared as if for “ dentist NYC” after i searched using a New York City ZIP program code on May 23. Focus on the company results in positions 5-8.
On Might 25, just two days later, exactly the same businesses had significantly fewer testimonials than two days prior:
[ Read the full article on Search Engine Land .]
Opinions expressed in this post are those of the guest author rather than necessarily Marketing Land. Staff writers are listed here .
About The Author
Joy Hawkins is a Local SEO expert who might be a Google My Business Best Contributor. She regularly contributes to numerous online communities in the Local SEO world, such as the Google My Business forum (Top Contributor), the Local Search Forum (Top Contributor), and the Local University Community forum (Moderator). She is also a contributor towards the Moz Local Search Ranking Factors study. Joy is the owner of Sterling Sky within Canada and is the author of the Expert’s Guide to Nearby SEO , which is an advanced education manual for people wanting a detailed take a look at what it takes to succeed in the Local SEO room.
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