For the first time, I’ve just seen “review sentiment” from Google Plus reviews in the local knowledge graph for brand-name searches. In English:
As you can see, those “sentiment” blobs are the conclusions that Google draws about a business by looking at its Google Plus reviews. They show up on the right-hand side of the search results when you search for that business by name. Obviously, it requires that the business have a certain number of reviews.
This seems to be the love-child of a couple pieces of the local results that Google has been doodling around with for some time: the knowledge graph off to the right of the local results, and the “At a glance” snippets that show up on the Google+ Local page.
There might also be some DNA from the third-party review snippets that disappeared almost 3 years ago. Let’s go on The Maury Show.
I saw this a few minutes ago for a couple businesses. I haven’t been able to replicate it. I’m probably in one of Google’s test buckets.
Something tells me this isn’t the last time those review snippets will show up there. Google pushed reviews very hard in 2013. I’m guessing this is just the first leg of the continued march in 2014.
Interesting Phil. Good catch!
Not seeing it in SoCal so ya, you must be sitting on a test server. Lucky you!
Next time you see it, sniff around to see if there are any other changes.
Hey there, Linda. Thanks. This one was a real phantom. I saw snippets in the KG for a couple other businesses, but didn’t poke around more extensively. Didn’t notice anything else unusual, either.
Phil: Those snippets, created by algo, are sometimes on target, and sometimes 100% completely wrong. When they are wrong they become problematic. ….and then I’ve seen responses in the forums to these issues ….that are just not responsive…so the erroneous one’s remained.
My comment would be….If they are up there, can they be adjusted, especially when they are dead wrong!!!
Great point, Dave. As I think you and I were commenting on one of Mike’s posts, Google is very good at amplifying its F-ups.
Ha ha. I guess when one does things by algo, one has no sense of shame. LOL