The Complete Guide to Getting
More Google Reviews

The importance of Google reviews and how to get them.

Table of Contents

1. Why are Google Reviews Important? Go here

2. How can I get Google reviews for my Business? Go here

3. How to Get New Google Reviews Manually Go here

4. How to Get New Google Reviews Automatically Go here

5. How to Ask Your Customers for Google Reviews Go here

6. How to Shorten Your Google Review URL Go here

7. You Have Reviews- Now What? Go here

Why are Google Reviews Important? Does it Help Business?

Studies show that 92% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business. While all reviews sites are important, Google reviews have the most impact because people turn to Google more than any other search engine or review site. We’ve found that 58% of all reviews written in 2018 were written on Google, more than Facebook and Yelp combined.

It’s all about Google!

Google is often the first place consumers look when they are searching for almost anything: a dentist accepting new patients, a good restaurant for an anniversary dinner, or even the best place to get their car serviced.

Google’s robust and ever-adapting search engine, maps, business listings, and reviews ensure that the searcher gets the information that he or she is looking for – information that is comprehensive, relevant and reliable.

Google reviews follow the same commitment to quality that all other Google products are known for. Bottom-line – Google reviews inspire trust!

Benefits of Reviews

Local search ranking and Google reviewsLocal search ranking on Google (or SEO) is extremely important, especially if you have a brick-and-mortar store, or if your business provides a service to a certain locality. Your business needs to show up high in search results if you want the customer to consider your business.

Google reviews is a ranking factor to show up on Google search results. Simply put, more Google reviews = better local search rankings.

Quality, Quantity, and Frequency

Obviously, your overall star rating is important for showing potential customers they can trust your business. If your business shows up high on search rankings, you definitely need to look good in order for the customer to choose you.

We’ve found that the average rating overall across review platforms in 2018 is 4.3. Scoring below a 4.3 can make customers feel like the services that you’re offering are below average.

Most of the time, the best businesses have more Google reviews. Check out how top rated businesses compare to typical businesses in their industry.

But having lots of reviews isn’t the end of the story. Businesses need to constantly seek out new reviews, no matter how many reviews they already have. Having lots of reviews doesn’t mean anything to a lot of customers if they’re all from a year ago. Studies show that 44% of customers consider reviews older than a month irrelevant.

How can I get Google reviews for my business?

Getting Google reviews for your business is actually quite simple, but first you need to set yourself up for success. The process really starts with claiming and updating your Google My Business account.

Once that’s taken care of, all you have to do is ask your customers to leave their feedback on Google. Let’s break the process of setting up your Google My Business account into two easy-to-follow steps.

Helping Customers Find Your Business on Google in 2 Steps

Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool that helps you manage how your business appears in Google Search and Google Maps. GMB ensures correct information is available to your customers and as a bonus, it also helps boost your business local search rankings.

Step 1: Claiming Your Business ProfileIf your business has been around long enough, you can find your listing with a simple company name search. Once you find it, all you need to do is claim the profile.

Google will send you a PIN to verify that you are actually the owner of the business. Most business owners choose to receive the PIN through mail, which takes a couple of weeks depending on location. Email and phone verification are also available for select businesses.

Step 2: Updating Your Business InformationNow that your Google My Business account has been claimed, you can start adding information to your profile that will help more customers discover your business.

This includes:

Adding correct contact information.
Uploading high-resolution images.
Keeping accurate hours of operation, including holiday closures.
Ability to publish offers and news (posts).

These steps will go a long way to make your profile look complete and trustworthy to both customers and Google’s ranking algorithm.

If you cannot locate your profile and have to create one from scratch, here is a quick guide - how to setup Google my business page.

Three Tips to Maximize Google Reviews

Once you claim your business profile, you are ready for more customers to discover your business through Google. However, before we jump into the process of getting more reviews, here are a few things that you should keep in mind:

Timing is everything.Like most things in life, asking for reviews is all about timing. Studies have confirmed that 70% of customers are willing to leave a review if asked. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. We have found that the timing of these requests is just as important as making sure all customers get your request for feedback.

Let’s say your client just got this gorgeous haircut that she absolutely loves. Now if you were to send her a request to write a review the very same day, there’s a good chance she’ll do it. But the chances of her providing feedback get significantly slimmer if you send this request a week or two after her visit.

Ask all your customers for reviews.Make sure you ask all your customers for reviews - every one of them. Sometimes businesses like to cherry-pick their customers and selectively request reviews only from satisfied customers. This not only prevents you from getting well-rounded feedback on your business or services but also impacts the number of reviews you get.

In addition, Google does not support this type of review gating and recently updated its review guidelines to reflect this. Reviews are meant to describe authentic experiences from unbiased sources, so when you ‘gate’ reviews, they are no longer from unbiased sources.

Keep it simple.When you keep the process easy, you’ll end up getting more reviews. Even very satisfied customers don’t want to have to jump through hoops in order to leave feedback.

Though asking for reviews in person is great, it’s often not enough to get the results that businesses are hoping for. If you ask customers to look for you online and then write a review, you’re asking them to do a lot of work. You may not get the results that you are hoping for.

Luckily, there’s an easier way: sending review requests through text and SMS. By sending a direct short link to your business, all they have to do is click the link and leave a review. It’s quick, convenient, and simple.

Let’s talk about what you can do to send review requests and get lots of new customer reviews.

How to Get New Google Reviews Manually

If you’re someone who prefers to do everything yourself, that’s great. All you need to do is find a link to your business’s review page on Google and send that to your customers via email or SMS. This makes it convenient for your customers to write a review by simply clicking on the link.

How to automate getting Google Reviews

At the end of the day, you have a business to run. Sending review requests to all your customers manually every day can be a time-consuming process. With all the work you have to do, there’s just not enough time to send a text and email to each one of your customers on a daily basis.

This is why we recommend that you automate the process of getting reviews. Let review generation be part of your business just like sending invoices.

Review management software can take care of the whole process for you. BirdEye, for example, uses deep-linking to route customers directly to the Google review form in one click. This makes the process of writing a review even easier than not writing one - especially when the customer is happy with their experience and likes your business. BirdEye takes care of this process for Google and over 150 other review sites.

BirdEye is fully integrated with Google, so every step of the review collection process is automatic. In fact, BirdEye is one of the few companies integrated directly with Google's private API, which makes the collection process easier and review load times faster.

How to Ask Your Customers for Google My Business Reviews

Now that you know the basics of sending review requests, here’s an email template that you can use to request reviews from your customers.

Subject Line: How Was Your Experience?

Thank you for choosing us! Please take a moment to leave us a review. Your responses will help us serve you better in the future.

Here’s a template that you can use for text review requests. We’ve found that keeping it short and sweet usually gets the best results.

Hi [Customer Name], please provide your feedback by clicking the link. Thanks!

Of course, you want to make sure that both of these review requests include a short link to your Google My Business profile. Remember, the easier the process is for customers, the more reviews you’ll end up getting. Let’s talk about how you can get a Google My Business short link quickly and easily.

How to Shorten Your Google My Business URL

Recently, Google introduced a new feature that allows businesses to create their own custom short URLs to their Google My Business profile. This is a feature that you should take advantage of. While a typical Google My Business profile might be a long string of random numbers and letters like https://goo.gl/maps/xzsNaMqNNTxk5zox5, a custom URL can be much shorter and easier to remember.

A new custom URL usually takes the form of:

Having a custom short URL makes it easier to share your business on review requests, in-person, and on marketing materials. This feature is still being rolled out, so it’s possible that your business might not have this option available just yet.

If you do have this feature available, here’s a step-by-step guide of how you can get a custom short link to your Google My Business page.

Step 1. Sign in to Google My Business.

Step 2. If you have a multi-location business, open the location you wish to create a short name for.

Step 3. From the menu on the left, click Info > Add profile short name. If this feature is available, you should see this in the box under “phone number”.

Step 4. Enter your short name. Your short name can be anywhere between 5-32 characters.

Step 5. Click Apply. Your short name will show as pending. It will show on your business profile when it’s approved.

You have reviews - now what?

Customers are investing their time when they sit down to leave a review. It’s only fair that you acknowledge that effort by responding to these reviews in a timely manner. Plus, your responses to these reviews also impact your SEO. The better you are about responding to customers, the better your online visibility.

If you’re getting lots of customer feedback, you may feel that responding to each and every review is too much effort. Though it might take a lot of work, the rewards are worthwhile. At BirdEye, we believe that managing and responding to reviews is almost as important as getting them in the first place.

After all, reviews can help customers view your business more positively. A study by Bazaarvoice found that 7 in 10 survey respondents said that a brand’s response to a review changed their perception of that brand.

Using BirdEye, business owners can conveniently respond to all reviews right from the dashboard. They can even set up rules to auto-post responses based on certain review criteria.

Wondering how to write an impactful response to a review. Check out these cool positive review examples.

Can I delete Google reviews?

The fact of the matter is - all businesses are likely to get a negative review at some point or another. Negative reviews can hurt. But remember, they also offer insight into aspects of your business that you can improve.

Responding politely to these negative reviews with a real promise to improve will help your business in the long run. Doing this will demonstrate to customers that you’re dedicated to making sure every customer has a great experience.

However, if the review is fake you can (and should) take action. If you can back your claim of a fake review, Google can remove the review in question.

Start collecting Google reviews today

Whether your business is lacking an online presence or you have so many Google reviews that you don’t know how to manage them - BirdEye is here to help. Getting more Google reviews is just the first step.

As new reviews start pouring in, you need a strategy in place to manage and respond to them in a timely manner. Click the button below to schedule a time with a BirdEye reputation expert and get new reviews today.

Get more reviews with BirdEye