Yesterday I recapped a great Webmaster Radio interview John Carcutt and Ross Dunn did with Google Places expert Mike Blumenthal, where he specifically talked about his philosophy about reviews. It’s worth calling out one specific point he made during that interview that’s significant:
To me, a review is effective when a customer see’s it- and the impact on the algorithm is secondary. The value of a review is in the credibility it provides and the call to action on the part of somebody seeing your listing.
The key idea is that you shouldn’t be chasing reviews to increase your rank in the search engines, or have a knee-jerk reaction to every change in Google’s algorithm.
I’ve been working in marketing and advertising since 1985, online marketing since 1992, and had my first experience with the revolution that is search working with the pioneering AltaVista search engine in 1996. I’ve run $100 million TV campaigns for Fortune 500 companies and lived the wonderful, reliable era of mass advertising and long client lunches by the Four Seasons LA pool. And what I can tell you having done this for a while is the safe and predictable orbit of your marketing universe has ended. If you are a marketer, advertiser or just a business trying to get a few customers, disruption is here. All that you need to do to get done what you need to get done, is changing very quickly. Social Media, Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search, Analytics and Mobile Marketing are revolutionizing the way you get people to buy whatever it is you’re selling. And you either need to get on the bus and starting tooting the horn, or at the very least figure out how not to get run over. This blog is here to help you do that.