Hi Drew,

This article has the best info on the facebook.com/referral question that I've seen - https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Articles/facebook-com-referral-on-Google-Analytics/ba-p/539366.

As for the discrepancy you are seeing between FB and GA, I've seen similar issues at times - hoping someone else will have some insight into that one!

Ira

I was doing some research today and came across a business that has 5 reviews, all 5 stars. For some reason, their average is showing as 4.8, instead of a perfect 5.

Looking at some other businesses, I see one with 4 5-stars, 1 4-star, and 1 1-star. 25/6 = 4.1666666.  That would round to 4.2, but Google lists them as 4.3.

Is Google just bad at math, or are they using some other factor in calculating these averages?

It seems like this is an issue with BLC, I don't think it will actually cause you any issues. This post suggests adding LinkedIn to the BLC exclusion list to address the issue. The only problem there is you can't actually depend on BLC to check those links. Based on a review of various reports of similar issues, this problem is not limited to BLC, but any attempt to check too much/too fast on LinkedIn.

Hi Peter,

You'll want to make sure that your branch/location pages have a combination of the following:

• Links to the pages of the services they provide - if all branches deliver all products/services, then your main navigation should be fine, but if there are differences or specialties, you should highlight those on the location page (or a sub-page of the location page).
• Unique content - at the very least, an embedded map and a picture of the branch.
• Any additional relevant content that is unique to that location.

Then, on your Category pages, you'll want to make sure you have clear info about your locations. If you only have a handful of locations, you can probably include the full citation (name/address/phone) info for all of them in a footer or sidebar. If you have many locations, you'll want to make sure the location finder is a key part of all the category pages.

There are also off-site things you can do. If your reviews, social media mentions, and backlinks mention specific services while linking to a specific location, that will help that branch rank for those categories.

Hope this helps,

Ira

I was thinking about this some more after I posted last night. If your site is organized into sections with subpages, then you don't have to create a filter for every one. For example, if you exclude pages containing http://mysite.com/services/, then you would get rid of not only that page, but http://mysite.com/services/service1, http://mysite.com/services/service2, etc.

(And if your site is not organized in that fashion, you might want to look into adjusting it, as such a structure would likely help your SEO.)

One idea, which would only work if you don't have an overwhelming number of pages, would be to make a series of Exclude Filters in the pages report. (https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034832?hl=en)  You could then save the set of filters with the "Add to dashboard" feature (http://www.blastam.com/blog/index.php/2010/09/google-analytics-tips-save-filtered-reports).

Hope that helps,

Ira

Hi Drew,

This article has the best info on the facebook.com/referral question that I've seen - https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Articles/facebook-com-referral-on-Google-Analytics/ba-p/539366.

As for the discrepancy you are seeing between FB and GA, I've seen similar issues at times - hoping someone else will have some insight into that one!

Ira

I was doing some research today and came across a business that has 5 reviews, all 5 stars. For some reason, their average is showing as 4.8, instead of a perfect 5.

Looking at some other businesses, I see one with 4 5-stars, 1 4-star, and 1 1-star. 25/6 = 4.1666666.  That would round to 4.2, but Google lists them as 4.3.

Is Google just bad at math, or are they using some other factor in calculating these averages?

Hi Peter,

You'll want to make sure that your branch/location pages have a combination of the following:

• Links to the pages of the services they provide - if all branches deliver all products/services, then your main navigation should be fine, but if there are differences or specialties, you should highlight those on the location page (or a sub-page of the location page).
• Unique content - at the very least, an embedded map and a picture of the branch.
• Any additional relevant content that is unique to that location.

Then, on your Category pages, you'll want to make sure you have clear info about your locations. If you only have a handful of locations, you can probably include the full citation (name/address/phone) info for all of them in a footer or sidebar. If you have many locations, you'll want to make sure the location finder is a key part of all the category pages.

There are also off-site things you can do. If your reviews, social media mentions, and backlinks mention specific services while linking to a specific location, that will help that branch rank for those categories.

Hope this helps,

Ira

It seems like this is an issue with BLC, I don't think it will actually cause you any issues. This post suggests adding LinkedIn to the BLC exclusion list to address the issue. The only problem there is you can't actually depend on BLC to check those links. Based on a review of various reports of similar issues, this problem is not limited to BLC, but any attempt to check too much/too fast on LinkedIn.