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Who Provides Facebook’s Local-Business Data?

November 2, 2015 by Phil 7 Comments

I’ve never created a Facebook page for Local Visibility System, LLC:

Sure, I created a Facebook page for myself about 10 years ago (and haven’t spent any time there in probably 7-8 years). But I didn’t make one for the business, because I prefer my site and email list to be home base. Call me crazy.

Some years ago I created listings on the basic sites. Lest the shoemaker’s son go unshod, every now and then I do a quick check on my basic listings / citations. As a true local SEO geek, I like to see which listings are new, which have changed, which have gone the way of tie-dye and free love, etc.

My first stop was (as always) Moz Local, where I noticed that seemingly new, threadbare Facebook page for the first time.

The first thing I noticed about the Facebook page was that it didn’t include the “LLC” at the end of my business name. I always include the “LLC” in my business name (not that it matters for SEO purposes). That tells me that Facebook is probably grabbing my business info from a place where I’m listed simply as “Local Visibility System.”

So I checked out the usual suspects. Turns out I’m not on Acxiom or LocalEze.

Then I checked InfoGroup. I’ve been listed there for a long time, but the name doesn’t match.

So what site caused Facebook to squirt out a business page for me?

The answer is…Factual.

It was a Moz Local scan that alerted me to the name-match in the first place.

If I was paying attention a couple months ago I might not have had to do any gumshoeing. Turns out Factual announced (quietly) its local-data partnership with Facebook.

I know I didn’t have a business Facebook page before then, so it all makes sense now.

According to David Mihm’s Local Search Ecosystem graphic, it’s possible that other sources still feed Facebook directly. But the Factual-Facebook partnership is so new that maybe it’s now exclusive.

Anyway, on a practical level, why should you care that Factual feeds business info to Facebook?

It can help you clean up duplicate Facebook pages – which are a common burr in the saddle.

If you’re having problems making changes to or removing a Facebook page, try to update Factual (manually, or through one of its trusted partners, or through their API if you’re a hardcore geek).

If you do not want a Facebook page for your business, try to squash it at Factual.

If you don’t want your address showing on your Facebook page, try to get the address concealed at Factual.

In general, Factual may be more important than you’d think. (It’s long been a data-provider for Apple Maps, for instance.)

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Any Facebook or Factual fiascos you’d like to share?

Do you know of any other little-known data-feeding relationships between sites?

Questions?

Leave a comment!

How to Know If Your Local Reviews Strategy Works

May 4, 2015 by Phil 16 Comments

Your review count and average ratings are just the tip of the iceberg.

Your business might have 200 reviews and a 5-star average and your review strategy could still be a flop.

That’s because lots of other factors – I can think of 51 – determine how much your customers’ reviews help your local visibility and your ability to get more customers. It matters which sites you’ve got reviews on, who your reviewers are, what they say in their reviews, what they don’t say, and how much marketing mojo you wring from those reviews.

You can use this post as a checklist to “audit” your reviews strategy, and you’ll probably think of ways to improve your strategy right away. But this is not a paint-by-numbers, “Do these 51 things” type of post. How to improve your strategy and your reviews may not be simple or easy. The first step is to know what success looks like.

Beyond review count and average rating, here are 51 ways to know whether your reviews strategy is working.

(By the way, you’ll want a “Yes” answer to each of these questions.)

Sites

1. Do you have reviews on the sites that show up on the first page (or two) of Google when you search for your business by name?

2. Do you have reviews on the sites that show up on the first page or two for your main search terms?

3. Do you have plenty of reviews on sites that are geared toward to your industry?

4. Do you have reviews on any sites that feed your reviews to partner sites?

5. Have you removed as many duplicate listings as possible, and tried to consolidate reviews that were spread out among duplicate listings? (See this for Google, and this for Yelp.)

6. Do any of your colleagues who work at your location (other doctors, lawyers, agents, etc.) also have reviews – and on a diversity of sites?

7. Do all of your locations have reviews?

8. Do you have at least one Yelp review? Crucial because Yelp reviews will also show up on Apple Maps, Bing Places, and Yahoo Local.

9. Have Yelp reviewers uploaded photos of your business (or your handiwork)?

Reviewers

10. Are your reviewers from the cities where you want more customers?

11. Do some of your longtime customers mention in their reviews that they’re longtime customers?

12. Have some of your customers left reviews spontaneously – without your asking?

13. Have some of your reviewers uploaded profile photos? (They can upload profile photos on Google+, Yelp, and Facebook. Can’t think of other sites at the moment – but please tell me if you know of any.)

14. Is there roughly the right balance of women and men among your reviewers?

(Props to you if you can tell me what movie this arm-wrestle is from.)

15. Do your reviewers’ ethnicities more or less reflect those of your customer-base?

16. Do you have any reviews from “Elite” Yelpers?

17. Do you have any Google reviews from “Local Guides” or other high-volume power reviewers?

18. If your customers (or clients or patients) are concerned about associating their full names with reviews, do some of them still write you “anonymous” reviews?

19. Do you have any reviews from non-customers (e.g. leads or peers)?

Reviews and ratings

20. Are at least some of your reviews long and detailed?

21. Do reviewers mention specific services?

22. Do you have recent reviews?

23. Do you have old reviews? (If you don’t, I guess you can’t help it. Just start racking ‘em up today.)

24. Do you have at least a few less-than-stellar reviews? (You should.)

25. Do reviewers mention your company by name?

26. Do customers mention the selling points you hoped they’d mention?

27. Do reviewers ever mention exactly where they’re from, or where you performed your services for them?

28. Is at least one review funny?

29. Do you have a reviewer who was skeptical at first but became a raving fan – and mentioned that fact in his / her review?

30. Are your filtered reviews (on Yelp) mostly positive?

31. Have you tried to get removed any negative reviews that violate the site’s content policies?

32. Do your reviews indicate what types of people should not become your customers?

33. Have any customers updated once-negative reviews to positive reviews?

34. Do any customers compare you favorably to specific competitors? Bonus points if customers make a comparison in your favor in their reviews of your competitors.

Leverage

35. Do you post responses to (at least some of) your reviews? (Read this for tips on responding to reviews.)

36. On Yelp, do readers “vote” on your reviews?

37. Do you have a separate “Reviews” page on your site?

(You can create one the old-fashioned way, or use a service like Grade.us. Above is an example of its “Review Stream” plugin in action.)

38. Does your email signature include links to where people can read your reviews?

39. If your reviews are pretty positive on average, do you showcase them on your site in such a way that most visitors will see your reviews? (Like with widgets and badges.)

40. Are the review snippets that show up in the search results more or less positive?

41. Is Google showing flattering review snippets in the knowledge graph?

42. Do you re-share your Google Plus reviews in your “Posts” stream?

43. Do you mention your name, role in the company (if appropriate), and contact info (if appropriate) in your responses?

Conversion power

44. Are your Google Plus “review stars” showing up in the search results?

45. Do you rank at or near the top of the search results within a given review site?

46. Do reviewers mention specific people in your organization as standouts?

47. Have you won any awards as a result of your reviews? (E.g. Angie’s List Super Service Award.)

48. Does one of your listings (or your “Reviews” page) rank for name of service + “reviews” search terms? This is probably the best approach to barnacle SEO, by the way.

49. Has a happy customer ever written a polite and unprompted defense of you in response to another customer’s negative review?

50. Are you the obvious choice to click on in the Google Places results?

51. Do customers ever say, “I chose you because of your reviews”?

20+ Depressing Observations about Yelp Reviews

April 23, 2015 by Phil 23 Comments

I’ve seen Yelp from many angles: as a local SEO-er, as a local-reviews madman, as a consumer, as a two-year “Elite” reviewer, as a concerned citizen, and as a business owner.

That means I’ve got a love like-hate relationship with Yelp reviews.

It’s a nice feeling every time a client of mine gets a hard-earned review there. Also, I pay some attention to Yelp reviews when I’m debating where to take my open wallet.

On the other hand, Yelp is infuriating for most business owners. From the misleading (at best) ad-sales tactics, to the aggressive review filter, to the absurd policy that says you can’t even ask for a review, Yelp’s about as likeable as Genghis Khan.

Those issues are just the beginning. I can think of at least 20 difficulties with Yelp reviews you’ll have to navigate. You might have learned about some of them the hard way already. Now you can find out about the rest.

This isn’t just a mope-fest. You’ll learn a thing or two about how Yelp handles your reviews, and once I’ve laid out all the problems (that come to mind) you’ll probably think of ways to improve your reviews strategy.

Well-known problems

1. Yelp filters reviews – and often does a poor job of it.

2. You aren’t supposed to ask for Yelp reviews.

3. Reviews are the main factor for your rankings within Yelp, and Yelp’s category pages often dominate Google’s search results.

4. There’s a good chance a negative review will be visible on the first page of your brand-name search results, especially if the reviewer mentions your company by name.

5. Yelp doesn’t make its policies apparent enough. Its “don’t ask for reviews” policy should be impossible for business owners to miss. That it filters most reviews by first-timers and other new reviewers should be obvious to would-be reviewers before they write anything.

6. As soon as you get even one Yelp review you’ll start getting sales calls, pressuring you to pay for ads. (I wouldn’t suggest you bite.)

7. Yelp is hard to avoid on the Coasts (especially on the West Coast). In certain cities – like San Francisco, Portland, and NYC – you’re probably behind a lot of local competitors if you don’t have at least a few reviews there.

Little-known problems

8. Yelp feeds reviews to Apple Maps, Bing Places, and Yahoo Local. Your bad reviews can show up on those 3 major local search engines (and beyond).

9. It usually takes 10-15 reviews before a Yelp reviewer is “trusted” and his/her reviews are no longer filtered often or at all. It’s not practical to ask your reviewers to make a habit of Yelping, so as to reach that number of reviews . That’s why the name of the game is to identify any customers / clients/ patients who are already active on Yelp, and to let it be known that you’re on Yelp and like feedback (wink, wink).

10. Yelp reviews can get filtered and unfiltered multiple times. It depends on whether the reviewer goes inactive for more than a couple of weeks. But this problem seems to go away once a reviewer has written about 15-20 reviews over a period of around 3 months.

11. Even some “approved” reviews can become collateral damage if later you get too many reviews that do get filtered.For example, let’s say you have 4 reviews. 2 of them were written by very active Yelpers (maybe “Elites”) and are safe. The other 2 were written by people with a handful of reviews each, and those reviews live happily on your page for a few months.

Now you put on your Icarus wings and ask half a dozen people who’ve never written a review on Yelp to review you. Their reviews show up on your page for a couple of days before going into the grinder – and 2 of your reviews written by sometime Yelpers get filtered, too. The only reviews that remain are the ones written by hardcore Yelpers.

12. Negative reviews appear somewhat more likely to stick.

13. The first review of a business is somewhat more likely to stick.

14. If your business’s first review on Yelp is negative it’s probably going to stick.

15. Reviews written by people with many “friends” are somewhat more likely to stick. It’s very easy to rack up “friends” on Yelp, so if you have a ticked-off customer with many “friends” you may have a problem.

16. Content has almost no bearing on whether a review gets filtered. It’s mostly about how active the reviewer is / has been. Swearing (as long as it’s not name-calling) is usually allowed. Also, the mischievous elves who man Yelp’s review filter seem entertained by the kinds of reviews that could have been ghostwritten by Jack Nicholson.

17. Reviews that you “flag” are very hard to get removed unless the text of the review is ad hominem or un-PC. The truthfulness of the review or credibility of reviewer doesn’t matter much to Yelp.

18. If your business moves to a new location Yelp probably won’t transfer your reviews.

19. Yelp reviews won’t show up in your knowledge graph.

20. You’re at a disadvantage if you can’t or don’t want to offer a Yelp check-in offer. Why? Because if you do a check-in offer Yelp will ask your customers to write reviews. Pretty hypocritical, as I’ve argued.

21. Yelp has been pushing the “not recommended” reviews farther and farther out of sight. You click the link to see “reviews that are not currently recommended,” you’re shown two filtered reviews, and then you have to scroll down and click another gray link that says, “Continue reading other reviews that are not currently recommended.” How many customers will do that? Oy.

22. Who becomes an “Elite” reviewer is arbitrary. It partly depends on whether your reviews get “voted” on, and whether you’ve written any “Reviews of the Day.”

But it seems to depend above all on whether your region’s “Community Manager” sees your reviews and likes them.

23. Only the first couple of lines of business owners’ responses will show up, unless readers click the small “Read more” link. Bad reviews will show in their Tolstoyan entirety, but you’ve got to say something compelling in haiku space, or else the would-be customer never sees your side of the story.

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Don’t you feel better now? No? Time for a cat picture – and not just of any cat:

Now that we’re both in a happier place, let’s take up a weighty question:

Given the massive PITA factor, why on earth should you still pay any attention to Yelp?

Because the reviews get lots of eyeballs, and because Yelp is splattered across Google’s local results

What can you do?

Ask most or all of your customers for reviews, and give them choices (including easier sites). Some of those people will be Yelpers.

Link to your Yelp reviews – or just your page – on your website and in your email signature.

Identify already-active Yelpers and send them mind-waves.

Diversify where you get reviews.

Keep making customers happy.

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Any observations on Yelp reviews?

Any strategy suggestions?