Industry News & Trends

Google Places Removes Third Party Reviews

Jeff Kershner
Posted onJul 21, 2011 at 7:32 PM

Have you checked your Google Places pages today?

Kevin Fry just posted a thread in the DealerRefresh Forums “Google Places Removes Third Party Reviews” informing all that Google has quickly and currently YANKED ALL third party reviews such as DealerRater from your dealership Google Places page.

This is sorta SUCKS!

With the temporary removal of 3rd party reviews from the Google Places page, Google has made some visual changes on their end to try and drive their own reviews.

Google Places Review Button Placement

Has Google recognized that small businesses (on average) are focusing on one, maybe two review sites alone?

Most dealerships focus on DealerRater. I bet Google knows this and I also bet they know that in order to get exclusive reviews on Google Places page, they will need to cut the other reviews sites off at the knees.

What do you think…is this a smart move or a dumb move for Google?

Click here to comment in the forums

Jeff Kershner
Founder of DealerRefresh - 20+ Years of dealership Sales, Management, Training, Marketing and Leadership.
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    Lbeaubien
  • July 22, 2011
One thing that has inspired a lot of speculation here is
that the folks at Google often change their minds as part of the innovation
process.  Some of you have wondered if they might require those of us who
have a third-party review component to our site register as a “certified”
content provider in order to have some control over the quality of their
content, or they may reverse course and go back to the way things were, for
example.


 


Right now, even though Google has changed the way they
aggregate reviews on Google Places, there is still an SEO benefit to having
good review volume in as many places as possible.  Many of our most
successful customers have also shared with us that one of the secrets to their
review success has been casting the widest net possible with reviews so they’re
covered in the many places shoppers go in the car buying process.


 


At the end of the day, the importance of building review
volume across all review sites hasn’t changed.  Admittedly, Cars.com is a
little new to reviews, but we’re committed to the space and want to make the
process as easy as possible.  We appreciate as much feedback as possible.

Lauren Beaubien
Solutions Manager - Dealer Reviews, Cars.com
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    ms
  • September 8, 2011
Dealer rater is a terrible company. I am glad that Google punted them as well. They use barbarian tacktics and lied to there customer base about this possibly happening.. No tears here.. Yelp bit the hand that fed it.. Cya later CEO..  Good for Google!
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