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Review Acquisition


    Pie Chart of Whitespark 2023 Local Search Ranking Factors--Reviews: 11% Overall

    Whitespark:   Local Pack/Finder (16%)   Organic (6%)
    The 2021 Whitespark survey partipants named reviews as accounting for 17 percent of factors for ranking well in the Google local pack/finder listings, and 5 percent for ranking well in Google organic results.

    The survey participants say that what matters about reviews are: 1) quantity, 2) velocity and 3) diversity. Thus, it's not just how many reviews you have, but how consistently often you acquire them, as well as getting them in a range of review sites.

    We also know that Google cares what reviews say, because it wants to reward businesses that provide a good user experience and penalize those that provide bad user experience. Thus, we can add 4) sentiment as a fourth factor. Sentiment analysis became part of Google's ranking algorithm in 2010, we believe, after Google was embarrassed by a New York Times story on DecorMyEyes, an eyeglass company whose owner bragged about ripping off customers because the bad reviews and postings catapulted him to the top of search results.

    Reviews are a factor, and a big one, in clickthrough rates. For example, if you're one of the three listings in a Google Snack Pack, and don't have the five reviews needed to get a star rating, but your other two competitors have 5-star ratings, you will likely get far fewer clickthroughs than your competitors.

    Review BUILDER Service
    Review HELPER's Review BUILDER service promotes all four aspects of reviews as a local ranking factor.

    We have unequaled expertise in online reviews, having specialized in helping clients with reviews since 2012. With our Review BUILDER service, we generate reviews from your customers. We get their feedback either through a customized online questionnaire we create, or through speaking with them on the phone. (We recommend phone interviews for the highest quality). We then engage with them about writing it themselves based on our feedback, or we write it on their behalf. They then publish it, so it comes from their residential IP address and does not violate any review sites' essential terms of service (TOS).

    The important criteria is to work with customers/clients/patients that love your service, and to focus on quality rather than quantity.

    It's also important to emphasize that we only work with real customers and don't get involved with fake reviews. There are practical as well as legal reasons for this.

    See Review BUILDER for more information.