Will reviews be ranked higher if responded to?

[DigitalMarketingSEO]

I can't find any up to date information on reviews and whether or not Google pushes up reviews with responses or does the ranking stay the same?

[PatrickDelehanty]

HI there

No, there is no evidence that responding to reviews will help you rank better in search. Don't look at responding to reviews as an opportunity to rank higher in search (because it won't happen) - look at it as an opportunity to directly engage someone who had an experience with your product or service; whether good or bad. It will speak volumes about your brand if users see that you are actively engaging and responding to users.

That, ultimately, is more valuable in the eyes of users, not rankings. Remember - you're trying to please users, not search engines. Please users, and search engines will catch up.

Shameless plug - I wrote a post awhile back on customer engagement and why it matters that dives a bit deeper and gives some examples

Hope this helps! Let me know if it doesn't! Good luck!
Patrick

[GlobeRunner]

As far as we could find, there hasn't been any recent articles written about this lately. At least where someone has tested it and publicly come out with the results. However, we aren't particularly interested in the ranking or order of reviews per se, our biggest concern is more of a customer service type of issue. All reviews, good & bad, are responded to in a very prompt manner. That way people reading the reviews will see the response.