Google Adds “Verified Reviews”

Positive online reviews hold significant value to your search ranking. Adversely, negative reviews can hurt it. In an attempt to promote quality customer feedback, Google recently joined a practice of Amazon.com in offering verified reviews — encouraging people who have purchased an item from your online store to leave an authenticated review.

Although Google has always discouraged fake or incentivized reviews, this is the first feature they've added that clearly promotes signal over noise. In addition to confirming that a review is written by a real customer, this may serve as a useful tool for businesses who want to solicit customer reviews without exploring the discouraged and ambiguous realm of review incentivization. These verified reviews may end up being promoted or visually differentiated to help them stand out from all the other reviews.

How it works.
In order to enable verified reviews, your business must:

• Set up a Google Merchant Center Account and opt into the Google Customer Reviews program.
  
• Add the opt-in code to your website.
  
• Google will then begin sending an email to your customers who have made a purchase, encouraging them to review their experience with you.
  

For more information about how to respond to negative reviews or to understand better how they affect your search ranking, check our our article The Good and Bad of Customer Reviews. If you need help adding verified customer reviews to your site, give us a call — we’d love to help you out.