A new approach from Google towards review sources for local businesses is likely to make localised search engine marketing more complex as the search engine introduces non-traditional websites into its mix.
To increase the volume and coverage of the reviews on its place pages – the information listed on businesses on Google Maps – Google is going beyond traditional review sites and incorporating information from ‘non-traditional’ sources. This includes blogs, articles in newspapers and magazines, user comments on other sites and other such pages where reviews can be found.
Mike Blumenthal of the Understanding Google Maps and Local Search blog has already highlighted how this could complicate localised search engine marketing by adding to the emerging area of reputation management. Effectively this will complicate SEO for a business in local search listings because of the potentially huge expansion in reviews and commentary that will appear alongside results.
Blumenthal reports that the incorporation of comments from blog posts for related local searches has been confirmed by the Google Maps Product Manager, Carter Maslan in an email conversation. Maslan reportedly said that Google wants to make more use of posts like the most commonly seen example, of how the place page for fitness trainer in Portland incorporated a review from a Portland blogger about his satisfaction with the personal trainer. Significantly, this blog was not review focused but was instead locally focused.
As Blumenthal notes, “with little context other than the language of the post, the business name and the phone number Google was able to attach the information as a review…and highlighted the review like language from the post”.
Among the possible implications of this new addition to Google Maps, Blumenthal notes that this could open up new ground for spammers and could alter the relationship between established review sites and local businesses; personal anecdotes shared on blogs could now be just as visible as explicitly critical content hosted on sites such as Qype or other consumer review sites. He also notes that localised news and blogging sites should be aware of and plan for the new capability, keeping SEO in mind for their content and page structure.
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