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Posts tagged google places
The evident loss of Google Places reviews for the term “Sydney Restaurant”
Aug 1st
Last week we saw an interesting move by Google (confirmed on the official blog)
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/07/ongoing-evolution-of-place-pages.html
It seems that all citation data from 3rd party sources has been removed from Google places, Anyone who has worked in Google Places knows that Review data is highly important, Reviews are like Links for ranking withing Google Places and are seen as a strong factor.
So if clients see a huge drop in the number of reviews it has, I have an example below of how many reviews clients may lose,
Looking at the term “Sydney Restaurant” in November 2010 we saw the following ranks:
Compare this with “Sydney Restaurant” in July 2011
(view picture below)
Sydney Restaurant Google Places
Tetsuya’s = 521 reviews reduced to 85 reviews.
Quay = 335 reviews reduced to 86 reviews.
Aria Restaurant = 466 reviews reduced to 64 reviews.
It is evident to see how much of a drop some of these locations have actually had in review numbers.
Thought this change was worth sharing, to bring awareness to this area.
Google Pleace Review Data Sucks
Nov 23rd
I recently posted about Google Place Problems on my blog and the more and more I research into Google places the more problems you find. Take a look at the number one Places listing for “Hotels Sydney” This term gets around 6,000 searches a month so traffic is quite good one would think. Yet taking a look at the type of reviews Google allows they are obviously not the high quality you would expect, you would think their is at least a word limit some one has written a review consisting of “Hi” other reviews are just random scrapings it looks like.
google places reviews
I think Google needs to clean up this mess as business’s who have invested in SEO for organic listings now need to compete with these new changes in Places listings yet you would never advise a client to use “dodgy” tactics like the ones I have been seeing in places listings around the world.
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