According to recent studies, 93% of consumers say that online reviews and UGC are very helpful in their purchase decision process when buying anything over the Internet.
The numbers speak for themselves: your business reviews, especially those collected on Google, have the power to either make or break your local business.
For that reason, properly managing your Google reviews (and all other testimonials) becomes a crucial step towards growing a modern business, especially when dealing with negative reviews.
Keep on reading as we cover what this process includes!
FYI: You can automatically embed Google reviews widget on your website and show authentic user-generated reviews, increasing trust for more sales. Try it now.
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Why Google review management is so important?
Google reviews are the digital word-of-mouth that people share on a Google business listing. They help a business grow their reputation and sales numbers as they come with numerous benefits:
Benefit #1: Boost your brand’s credibility and trust
Authentic Google reviews are the first sign that tells newcomers that you are a legitimate place of business offering real products and services.
However, while you should strive to get as many positive reviews as possible, you may also receive negative reviews now and then. If played right, you can use these kinds of reviews to learn how to improve your product and gain a loyal customer, too!
For example, here’s how this business owner used the opportunity to apologize for the client’s experience and get a second chance to improve the impression:
Benefit #2: Improve your local SEO rankings
When you obtain genuine reviews, you signal to Google that you’re a reliable business that strives to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
What does this mean for you as a business owner?
The more Google reviews you collect (positive Google reviews), the higher Google will rank your business in local Google search results. We all click the top results first, right?
For example, when we type in ‘best burger near me’ in the Google Maps App, the first results we get are businesses with thousands of quality reviews:
Benefit #3: Influence customers to buy your products
Driving new customers to your business is perhaps the most important benefit you get from great reviews. Ultimately, you want to grow your sales numbers!
Collecting reviews drives brand awareness and boosts search engine optimization and visibility, thus creating a closed loop that continuously attacks new clients.
Benefit #4: Gain valuable insights
Besides helping your business grow, reviews come with valuable insights, especially detailed negative Google reviews that describe which business areas need improvement!
For that reason, you shouldn’t be scared to dig deeper, review every piece of feedback you get, and even contact unsatisfied customers!
Doing so will give you tons of feedback and insights that will help you improve your products and services and ultimately turn some frowns upside down!
For example, from this review, an obvious takeaway is that this business could adjust the music but highly appreciated for the consistency and the standard quality:
How to manage Google reviews?
Managing Google reviews includes everything from collecting, filtering, and responding to reusing your marketing materials and embedding Google reviews on your websites and social media!
Let’s break down all of these phases for you:
Phase 1: Collect Google business reviews
The first step in the review management process is getting as many reviews as possible. That said, if you are exceptional at what you do, you won’t have any issues with that.
However, you must also be prepared to ask for more reviews. The basic process is rather simple: you have to identify all your satisfied customers:
- Provide them with your Google review link;
- Follow up (if a customer hasn’t left a review);
- Respond to every Google review you receive;
- Rinse and repeat for every future review.
While asking for more reviews via different channels is the most effective strategy, there are other things you can do to get more Google reviews:
- Ask by email or SMS—the most simple way to collect Google reviews is via email or SMS after completing a transaction; just remember to write a personalized message to thank the buyer and provide clear instructions with a link to your review page;
- Ask on your website—you can embed a Google review button on your website that functions as a CTA that encourages customers to leave reviews;
- Ask with a QR code on printed materials—create a unique QR code that takes customers to your Google Business Profile, print it on your marketing materials, and place it prominently across all your locations; you can even plaster it to the walls and doors;
- Ask with an NFC card—this is a very modern method for networking and asking for customer reviews, as it uses digital business cards with NFC technology;
- Ask in person—last but not least, you’ll never go wrong by asking for reviews in person; to grow, you must be bold and communicative, so chat up your customers!
Phase 2: Moderate, edit, and/or delete your business reviews
After collecting customer feedback, you have to moderate it into categories. While you know what to do with all your great feedback (showcase it prominently, naturally!), your negative reviews deserve special consideration. After all, you can’t simply remove them!
Yes, you read that right: as a business owner, you cannot delete Google reviews. However, there are a few things you could do, such as:
- Flag inappropriate reviews so Google can remove them;
- Reach out to the person who wrote the review and ask them to delete it or
- Ask Google to delete negative reviews that are proven to be fake.
Remember: your negative reviews are an opportunity to grow personally and professionally! You learn a lot from them; they give you a chance to convert the customer!
Still unsure how to respond to bad reviews? Here are 25+ free response templates!
Phase 3: Respond to positive and negative reviews on Google
Get ready to spend time responding to reviews on Google. It’s very important, as it’s the best way to send a clear message to your customers that you value their feedback! Once they start trusting you, you know you have exceeded their expectations!
You must manage negative Google reviews, as they allow you to address any issues or misunderstandings directly. Plus, providing thoughtful and professional responses helps you engage with dissatisfied customers and turn a negative review into a positive one.
On top of this, responding to reviews will boost your local SEO efforts because Google’s algorithm loves businesses that interact with their customers.
Pro tip: Never ignore a negative review. Instead, thank them for their feedback, apologize for the bad experience, and ask for a second chance.
Phase 4: Analyze your Google business reviews
Analyzing your online reviews is an important step on the path to business growth. It helps you learn which areas your products and services need improvement.
Doing a deep dive into your Google Business Profile review section helps you:
- Understand your customer experiences;
- Pinpoint areas where your business excels; and
- Identify aspects that might need improvements;
This is how you improve and get 5-star Google reviews in the future!
Remember: it’s a continuous cycle of collecting reviews, listening to feedback, analyzing that feedback, and then refining your offer to become better over time.
Phase 5: Display your Google online reviews
We’ve come to the fun phase: embedding all your Google reviews (especially the great ones) into gorgeous widgets across your online websites and platforms.
Although Google doesn’t offer a straightforward way to do this, you can do it with third-party review management platforms such as EmbedSocial:
- Sign up for the Google reviews widget;
- Log in, go to ‘Sources’ and select Google as your source;
- Search for and select your Google business location in case you manage multiple Google listings;
- Choose your widget layout and wait for the reviews to generate;
- Customize your widget and copy the embeddable code;
- Open your website builder and paste the code into an HTML block.
That’s all! You now have all your reviews displayed proudly on your website. Аnd if you are wondering where to place them, check 10 best practices for displaying your reviews.
How to automate Google review management?
The ability to manage Google reviews with third-party tools helps you automate some of the steps and save tons of time.
So here is how to automate Google review management:
Find the right Google reviews management tool
Do some research and find the app that mostly fits your budget and automation needs.
Some of the apps on the market, especially for eCommerce stores, are focused on collection, some for SMEs focused on responding to multiple locations, and there are apps specialized more on the analytics and reporting side.
Connect your Google Business locations
Make sure you or some of your team has the access to the Google business profile manager panel in order to connect with the app. This is very important in order to be able to use some of the autmations provided by the software.
Setup Slack or email alerts
Once you start setting up the app, make sure you get the email digests from all your accounts, so you can monitor the reviews coming on your Google business listings. Also some of the tools provide integration with Slack so your team responsible for responding and monitoring the Google reviews, will get instant alerts.
Why do you need Google Reviews management software?
Usually, brands with thousands of reviews are mostly local businesses with multiple locations that need Google review management software to help manage Google reviews more efficiently.
If this is your case, too, then here is a summary of the top reasons why you might need software for managing reviews:
Multi-location and multi-source review management
With a review management platform like EmbedSocial, you will be able to simplify the process of managing all your reviews across Google and other platforms.
For instance, you can embed all your reviews into a single widget, which will combine Google, Yelp, G2, Facebook, and other review platforms.
In addition, you could manage one or more accounts in 10+ languages from a single spot. No more switching back and forth between platforms to find the right review.
Automatically collect Google reviews
Connect your Google Business profile to automatically collect and generate reviews from all your locations.
The direct Google GMB API integration allows the software to continuously aggregate all the new Google reviews, send you notifications via email or Slack, and store them in your business account.
Sentiment analysis at scale
As mentioned above, these tools also come with insight tools that look at the review trends and can analyze reviews over bigger period of time. Plus you will be able to find insights about the real customer sentiment especially in the negative feedback and understand customer expectations at larger scale.
Again, this is especially important for businesses with multiple business locations that might receive tons of new reviews every day and possibly false reviews that they need a tool to manage.
Auto-reply to Google reviews
There is still no option to remove negative Google reviews, but you can use the platform’s notifications to see them immediately and respond. The best part is that if you need to respond to reviews from multiple Google business listings, you can do it from one place—you won’t need to log in to all locations like before.
Plus, the new AI-powered features are here to make the job of managing Google reviews much easier. For instance, most platforms include at least an AI responder tool that will reply to every review you receive in your brand’s voice!
Display reviews on your website automatically
Whether you are a small business owner or a larger business, the ability to show Google reviews on your website will help you instantly improve credibility and brand reputation on the website.
Yes, this is automatic, meaning you will be able to use a tool to create a Google reviews widget and add it to your website.
The widget usually syncs in real time and can show thousands of reviews in one place.
Plus, these widgets are becoming very powerful and provide an AI review summary, filters by most used keywords, the option to tag the products mentioned with links to checkout pages, etc.
Control which reviews to display
Every modern review management platform comes with advanced filtering options that help you moderate all the reviews you receive.
On top of this, you could prioritize reviews based on different criteria, such as star rating, providing you with the option to “hide” certain Google reviews.
Advanced customization options
You can configure everything in your review widgets, including the title, padding, size, color scheme, and image sizes, to sync your reviews to your overall brand image.
After all, you don’t want big and clunky widgets to stand out from your website design. They need to look and feel as if they are right where they belong!
How to choose the best Google review management tool?
The goal when using a tool is to be able to make existing processes better.
This means that before you choose the tool, you need to consider some of the main functionalities:
- Google My Business API Integration.
- Centralized review management for multiple locations.
- Analytics and reports.
- AI Review Response Management.
- Notifications and alerts.
- Display widgets.
- Sub-accounts for collaboration.
- Multilingual localization.
- Support and data security.
Considering the above, here are the main reviews
EmbedSocial
EmbedSocial is a robust platform that primarily focuses on the automation of the aggregation of Google reviews from multiple locations, analytical tools, and tools to display Google reviews on the users’ websites.
EmbedSocial’s most unique advantage is the robust widgets editor, which allows brands to build interactive widgets that will highly improve website conversion rates.
Yext
Yext has direct integration with Google, allowing for real-time updates to business listings and the ability to respond to negative and positive reviews directly within the Yext platform. This integration ensures that any changes made in Yext are immediately reflected on Google, helping businesses maintain accurate and up-to-date information.
Reputation.com
Reputation.com offers a suite of tools for managing online reputation, including review management. It helps businesses collect, monitor, and respond to reviews from Google and other sites, along with providing analytics and reporting capabilities.
Start managing Google reviews today
Remember: small businesses and corporations must implement solid review management strategies to build brand trust and an effective online reputation!
However, in addition to implementing all the steps outlined above, you should also consider finding the best review management software for your specific needs to help you collect, manage, and display your business reviews on the Internet.
Google review management software will help you to encourage customers to leave reviews, understand customer opinions on a larger scale, and display customer satisfaction on your website, which will boost your online reputation.
FYI: You can automatically embed Google reviews widget on your website and show authentic user-generated reviews, increasing trust for more sales. Try it now.
FAQs
How do I manage my reviews on Google?
While you can manually manage reviews via your Google My Business Profile, the better approach is to sign up with a review management platform such as EmbedSocial.
Can you remove Google reviews?
You can only remove Google My Business reviews if you wrote them yourself. If you represent a business receiving Google reviews from others, you cannot delete them. However, if you get reviews that violate Google’s review policies, you can report them if they are fake and inappropriate, and Google will remove them.
Where do I see my Google reviews?
The fastest way to see your Google reviews is to navigate to your Google Maps location and find the ‘Reviews’ tab. There, you can view and filter all your reviews.
