What’s Up with the Google Map Reviews?

What’s the best way to get people to come to your website; buy your service or come to your travel destination? It’s probably as simple as having a good review on Google Maps. But is it really that easy?

We now know that 90% of all consumers look for the service, product or travel destination before they make a purchase, even when that purchase isn’t an online one.

Google Maps and Outreach Services

Businesses that have effectively taken advantage of their online traffic often use ratings, reviews, photos and recommendations on Google maps to get people to buy from them. Essentially, reviewing a place or adding photos, making a positive opinion, offers an outstanding way of getting more traffic. However, there are policies you need to follow when adding photos or writing reviews. These policies, set forth by Google are essential, as they mean the difference between your information getting ranked or not.

Google is more than likely to throw out any reviews that don’t meet up to their standards, and they have trashed a number of reviews and photos for not meeting the right qualifications.

According to Google, reviews need to meet these criteria:

• Be spam free
• Have no phone numbers or links to other sites
• Reviews must be about the business
• Avoid the use of obscene language
• Keep them unbiased
• Must not contain illegal or sexually explicit material
• Cannot impersonate or misrepresent your identity
• They cannot contain personal and confidential information
• Reviews cannot be racial or hate related. Google will eliminate reviews that are against a group of people based solely on their race or ethnic origin

Can You Ask for Reviews?

When it comes to Google, they want authentic reviews. Now this doesn’t mean you can’t solicit reviews by reaching out to your customers and asking them for one, but you shouldn’t do this in large waves. If you do want to reach out to customers and asked them to review, we recommend that you contact them immediately after concluding your business with them.

Policies and Guidelines for Photos

Everyone knows that adding photos and its visual aesthetics and helps customers quickly understand the meaning of content. However, you can’t just use any photo in your blogs on your website. Google has specific regulations that pertain to photos as well. You need to:

Relevant – keep it relevant by making sure that the photograph relates to your website or your content, otherwise, Google may remove photos that are not related to your business.

Quality photos – will once succeed high-quality photos or videos. Those that are too blurry, dark or rotated will find themselves thrown in the trash.

There are certain things that you want to avoid with your photos as well. These include:

• Illegal or copyrighted photographs
• Trademark infringement
• Photographs that incite violence
• Pornography
• Photographs that contain or promote hate crimes
• Photos that infringe on privacy

Having your customers place a review on Google maps or adding photos can be very beneficial in bring you traffic, just make sure you abide by the regulations Google imposes, otherwise all your hard work will be deleted.

Meet the Requirements

Actually what Google wants is quite simple; good content that is not plagiarized, and good photos that work at identifying your business. They are not looking for advertisements and certainly not spam. It’s as simple as that.