Google Woke Up!!

Those of you who have been following my posts for a while know that I have written frequently about the importance of accumulating quality reviews from your happy and loyal patients. There is an unquestioned and direct correlation between the quality and volume of patient reviews and how your practice ranks on the local Google business map. Since studies show that something approaching 70% of people choose from the top two listings, you certainly want to take advantage of this proven SEO strategy.

The easiest way to get a patient to write a review was to have that patient go to your Google Place Page–sign in with a Gmail account–and publish the review.  To make this process more user friendly, I have recommended that you install a Google button on your website  (you can see what I have done) where someone can click the button and in one step  be directed to your Page and write the Google review.  That process was working just fine until to my dismay, seven months ago, Google Pages changed to something called Google+Local. Click here to read how this change became a major disaster. Google’s efforts to control spam or false reviews resulted in a situation where it was virtually impossible for anyone to post a review on your Page.

Whether this was Google changing their filtering algorithms to become very aggressive, or whether it was some other mechanical issue, nobody will ever know. But no worries–I am writing today to tell you that Google must have actually read my blog post of October 24 and decided to fix the problem!

About ten days ago–when checking my own Google+Local Page–I discovered something amazing.  As if by magic – five or six reviews for my services that had been written during the past six months – but  had never been published on my Page – were now suddenly  showing up. I quickly checked the Google Place Pages for several of my clients to excitedly find similar results. The following day, just because I had become so paranoid about all of this, I had someone else write a review for me, and it was published instantly–just like the old days.

So don’t wait any longer. The Google review process for the moment is alive, well, and functioning.