SMX West 2011 - Ratings, Reviews & Reputation: Their Growing Impact On Search

REVIEW SIGNALS & TECHNIQUES Rhea Drysdale Co-Founder, Outspoken Media @rhea

REVIEW SIGNALS

Known signals from public records:
Reviewer location
Frequency of reviews
Reputation scores
Social network of user
Content aspects
Sentiment-ish

Google Assigns Reputation Scores to:
Reviewers
AND
Reviews
Per Reviewer Rating patent:
“… people, products, advertisers and merchants”

REPUTATION SCORE OF USER’S FRIENDS

USER PERSONALIZATION

USER’S REVIEW HISTORY

Versus…

REVIEW CONTENT
Preference given to those with summaries and/or descriptions

FRESHNESS

USER’S OWN SOCIAL NETWORKS

What drives social results?
Friends on:
Gmail (with Google profiles)
Twitter
Flickr
Quora
Yelp
Friend’s websites (not shared, profile pull)
Search social beta: &tbs=frim%3A1 (or sidebar)

Aspects Early screenshots from Mike Blumenthal and Bill Slawski show aspects have been refined over time.

Common Aspects

Common Aspect Sources
Yahoo.com
Citysearch.com
InsiderPages.com
Judysbook.com
Niche local sites

Sentiment Analysis FLAWED!

SENTIMENT
After DecorMyEyes update, Google said they took out:
“ Extremely poor user experience”
No measurable result from the update.
Details: googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html

KEYWORDS? Filtered from appearing on Place Page

FUTURE SIGNALS
Improved sentiment analysis? Increased filtering of data sources and signals for irregularly high negative responses (DecorMyEyes)
Transaction verification with services like Mint.com and SpendGo

QUESTIONS

Do you need reviews to rank in local?
No , but… Reviews add relevant content and count as social indicators. Google’s “Related places” on a review-free Place page will draw user’s eyes and potentially clicks drawn to:

Do you need to use hReview?
No, but… Using hReview and structured markup helps Google correlate your pages with places mentioned. Can also add rich snippets to the SERPs, which may improve conversions.

More on hReview microformat
What?
Open standard for distributed reviews.
Aims for simple properties common to multiple products, objects and services.
More on hReview: microformats.org/wiki/hreview
Implementing hReview with Wordpress: yoast.com/implement-hreview-wordpress-theme/

Ratings
Use microdata, microformat or RDF markup.
Google assumes 1 (worst) to 5 (best) rating scale by default.
Can use anything to classify rating,

Test your rich snippets!
google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
More on reviews (go to the source): google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=146645

SOLICITING REVIEWS

According to Yelp on 3/8/11 @SMX!
Talk about the site where you’d like a review, e.g. Yelp.
Use that site’s services and offers to incentivize reviews.
Create great content, services, products that users will want to review.
Ta da!

Other methods…

REVIEW SERVICES Check with your ecommerce solution!

CASE STUDY

ORM Problem Scope
Very negative review appearing above the fold in the SERPs
Negative source had optimized the page and built internal links to it

SEO Strategy
Establish baseline
Audit existing reviews
Manage fake reviews & conflict of interests
Create a testimonials page and strengthen internal/external backlinks
Solicit testimonials through exit interviews
Develop and promote off-site content
Develop and publish video testimonials
Publish testimonials and bulk up directories

Results
Website
Website
Website
Website
Niche directory
Niche directory
Citysearch
Social profile
Social profile
Press mention

THANK YOU
Contact:
[email_address]
Follow:
@ outspokenmedia | @rhea

SMX West 2011 - Ratings, Reviews & Reputation: Their Growing Impact On Search

by Rhea Drysdale

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