Customer Reviews & Message Boards
-
Hi there,
Is there any value to responding to negative reviews that are older than this year? I have some that span from 2009 until now, as well as negative message board posts.
Another question, to mitigate this, should I have the client respond to just reviews or actually get on the message boards as well and address some issues that have been brought up with the company? Some are specific customer complains, some are just talking about the company in general.
Thanks!
-
IMO.. Regardless of the age of the reviews, when you respond in a professional, understanding & helpful manner, this will help new visitors/potential customers to see that you care, and take the time to engage in the reviews left about your business. Good or bad, reviews are helpful to both potential customers as well as the business itself. As the business owner, this helps us understand how we can improve our service/product/customer support.
I would go in and leave a reply to all reviews, Good & Bad and regardless of the age. It will only help the users. Good luck SEOSnyder!!
-
Agree completely with the above.
Every situation is different and your mileage may vary.
That said, as a general rule and in most circumstances:
It is probably best to let sleeping dogs lie re: old reviews. Much better to focus your attention on new, positive reviews...and general link-building.
There are some common sense exemptions, of course. If there is a persistent pattern in the negative reviews..it is best to address the root cause head on -- to show you have improved.
As I have written elsewhere, short and snappy " zinger" responses that avoid tit-for-tat re-hash are best.
Examples from my own practice:
In response to a 1,000 word complaint re: recurring credit card charges: "We issued a full refund as soon as we were notified of theproblem." In response to a complaint about a trade school:
**"The author of this review is a former employee, and not a student. We're sorry things didn't work out for her, but wish her well. " ** -
Hi SEOSynder!
Good question! Yes, I do think there would be value in having the client respond to any negative press you find, whether on message boards or otherwise, provided he can do so effectively. I see some challenges here, however.
A problem with responding to old negative reviews is that you are unlikely to remember the specific circumstances surrounding a customer's complaint. For example, if you own a hotel and someone you can identify leaves a negative review about their stay that happened last week, you can remember what happened and be really specific about the circumstances and what you did to address them. If the stay happened 5 years ago, who knows what happened? So, if you did respond to those old ones, your replies would have to be kind of generic, so the persuasiveness of your responses will likely be less.
I think it will be important to discuss with the client what the goal is here. If it is to
A) Assess complaints to see if there are frequent ones that have occurred in order to discover if internal fixes have been implemented to remedy a negative situation (improving customer service and then having something to write about, explaining what the client did to fix the problem)
B) To create a good impression of the business' responsiveness to complaints by responding with empathy and a will to improve
...then I think it could be worth the time to respond.
*But, do be sure the client is doing this on his own. Don't post replies to negative feedback on the behalf of the client. You can help him craft caring replies, but let him post them on his own, under his own account.
My only other proviso here would be to weigh whether responding to negative threads on message boards might have the effect of making them appear more recent and relevant than leaving them alone. Something to consider
Hope these thoughts are helpful!
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
-
Google Removed All Anonymous Reviews from GMB Listings with No Warning
I just saw that Google is no longer accepting anonymous reviews for businesses, and in fact have REMOVED all current anonymous reviews. This just happened in late May, but I'm pretty surprised there hasn't been any talk about this, it's a pretty big deal. Before I knew this I called their "specialists" to ask why we lost so many reviews. I specifically asked if Google had changed their review requirements that would result in old reviews being removed. She said no. She's either not well informed or just lied. https://orthopreneur.com/anonymous-google-reviews-disappeared/ My company just lost 20+ positive reviews. Anyone else hurting from the change and finding solutions?
Reviews and Ratings | | HammerandHand1 -
Marking up an iframe with reviews schema. Possible? Ethical?
Hey there fellow Mozzers! I work with a broad variety of clients, many of them local businesses, and they in turn sometimes find a vendor that stumps me. This is one of those special cases, where the vendor is doing some shady stuff with reviews schema. First, they're taking reviews from third party sites and filtering them to only show 4 and 5 star reviews (red flag #1), then they're asking us to post them to the website (red flag #2) and finally they are marking them up with schema (red flag #3). If this were my vendor I would have fired them when they started telling me Google doesn't care, doesn't enforce the guidelines, and all that other nonsense, but hey, I'm not the client and I have to make good for them. I did flat out refuse to place these reviews as they asked, but they came back with a "solution", that I'm not sure I trust. They're telling me they can't remove the schema (red flag #4), but they can iframe it onto the website. Their logic, which is wrong, is that Google can't/doesn't crawl iframes so therefore the reviews can be displayed without any negative consequence. I obviously have some ethical concerns with this, but I have to provide the service to my client whether or not they share my values. However, I can object on professional grounds if I think they will take on undue risk. My only problem here is that I have no documentation for how this proposed solution would work. Working through this logically still leaves me with a gap, and that's where you folks come in!
Reviews and Ratings | | brettmandoes
A) We know that Google crawls iframes
B) We know that Google can apply schema within iframes (works with YouTube embeds)
C) We know that content within an iframe is technically on another website, so it doesn't normally apply to your website
D) I don't know how specifically reviews schema would interact with an iframe
E) I don't know if this would result in Google triggering an alarm and blocking the business I'm hoping you guys can help me figure this out. Ethics aside (making me cringe to type that) is this technically feasible without risk, or would this still be a risky move? For the record, another client tried filtering their reviews while marking up with schema against my recommendation and got caught, and received a penalty alert. They were removed from results until the problem was fixed.0 -
Does anyone use an embeddable Google review widget?
Currently, I use an embeddable Yelp review widget on my site. The widget I use has been helpful, but is no longer actively maintained and I'd prefer to show Google reviews instead. Does anyone have a recommendation for a widget to embed Google reviews?
Reviews and Ratings | | Dions0 -
New building ownership and NAP - strategies for removing old listings with bad reviews
I have a question based on this scenario: An apartment building changes ownership. Previous owners were terrible and online listings have had terrible reviews. Since the apartment building now has a new brand name, new office address and phone number, the new owners want to create new online listings instead of claiming the old listings with the bad reviews. Also they want to report the old listings as "closed". They would like to remove the old listings with bad reviews from the old management and old brand name and start fresh, since they plan many improvements. Has anyone tried this strategy? How much luck has anyone had rebranding an apartment building and reporting old business listings as closed?
Reviews and Ratings | | DragonSearch0 -
Google+ Places Reviews
Hi There, Am I right in saying that Google Places reviews cannot be reviewed easily if at all. I have advised a client wirth a negative review to instead respond to the review and get clients to place good quality reviews. However, they seem to think if I ring Google they will just remove them and that Google has confirmed this. I am pretty sure I am right but before I jump through pointless hurdles with Google to be told I am, I want to make sure. Has anyone been successful in removing negative reviews from Google. Kind Regards Neil
Reviews and Ratings | | nezona0 -
What are some powerful reviews websites for online-only businesses?
Looking for a small handful of places that I can lead customers to, following a transaction with my dot com (i.e., no brick and mortar presence) business, so that they can leave reviews Chiefly interested in the sites that Google is most likely to notice Thanks! 🙂
Reviews and Ratings | | ntcma0 -
Using structured data for reviews - for negative or warnings.
We all use review markup today and we use it linearly as only a vote up or down. My question is around a site that will judge the negative impacts of given chemicals introduced into certain waterways. (Sorry, I must protect the client so I cannot give out all the info; I hope this is enough for a reasonable understanding.) Is there anyone who has ever used or is aware of any markup that does not result in a star? So, if we use the current system, we end up where a bad chemical gets a ton of single stars. In essence what we are measuring is degrees of Positive. With four stars there is no zero positive, but 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% (Ok unless it is aggregated). I want to be able to show degrees of negative and obviously stars would be confusing. So, have a symbol that connotes a negative (skull and crossbones, X, !!, etc.) and the more of these someone marks shows more displeasure or more danger. Are there any ideas for this or any occurrences already on the Internet you may be aware of? Preference would be to be able to at some point have search engines show them as snippets. Thanks to all you Mozzers, Robert
Reviews and Ratings | | RobertFisher0 -
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