LOCAL MARKET MONOPOLY EPISODE 01
BANNED! Google Review Gating: What It Means For You
Podcast by Clarence Fisher
Google Review Gating: What It Means For You

About This Episode

Welcome to the first episode of Local Market Monopoly, a podcast by Clarence Fisher t uncover the tools, tactics, and strategies the most successful small businesses use to dominate their local market and OWN the block. In this episode, Clarence talks about Google review gating. He explains what it is and what the new ban might mean for you.

Clarence Fisher (00:00): What's up, ? It's Clarence Fisher and you're tuned in to Local Market Monopoly, the podcast for small businesses who want to do more than just stay around. So we don't play around. We wake up every morning on a mission to own the block, and what we're going to talk about today is like Gate. Now it's not a scandal. Though it could actually, actually, it's called Review Gating. I got that wrong. It's not like Gate. Actually, that was kind of a thing not too long ago where Facebook said that it is now against their terms of service to ask fans to do a specific favor. When I say favor, my mind goes left is yours to do anything for you. Okay? That's not better to in order to your page. Well, Google now is jumping on the same bandwagon as far as the reviews go. Now it is illegal for you to gate your reviews and what it is, we've all done it as far as some people use, I think what Five Star Reviews does this also Reputation Loop does this.

(01:16): You send out a template to every customer, client, patient that comes through your business. You send out an email to template asking for feedback, and if that feedback comes back positive, then you say, Hey, well could you leave a review for me on Google or on Facebook? But right now we're going to talk about Google. So could you leave a review on Google? And some of us even went so far as to give him the link to click that would automatically take them to my business page and then pull up the review box and automatically populate a five star review. So all you have to do is just put, yeah, what they said. No, you would just put your review in there. But here's the thing. If this is the beauty of gating your reviews is through a system like that is, let's say the review came back horrible. The guy's like I come in here all the time and to get my pedicure, and today she tried to do my pedicure through my boots, didn't even take my shoes off. This is a horrible service. Well, that would be routed to you or your front desk would prefer routed to your front desk so that you have a chance to write that wrong, save that customer and more importantly, keep them from going online because everybody goes online and rant about you.

(02:51): So that is what we used gating for because everybody wants 5,005 star reviews, which I've been saying this for a long time, is totally unnatural. I mean, think about it. When we first started review gating, I would say, Hey anything four star or above, let's let through. And clients would be like no, no, no. Only let through the five stars. And I'm thinking, dude, that is not natural to have 50,005 star reviews. Nobody's saying anything bad about you. So of course marketers ruin everything. So now that's why we're in this situation right now. Okay? You want to know anyway, I'm not going to go down that rabbit trail. So software like Reputation Loop is making it optional for you. They're not totally outlawing it, I don't think within their software, but I'm going to tell you if you get reported for it, it could be something for you as far as in Google them, but you just want to think about it and take heed.

(03:55): My job here is to just let you know that it's happening so you can take heed. You still want to get your reviews though because good reviews are awesome. People Look at the reviews before they purchase from you. Here's the thing, when you get good reviews, I want to end with this. When you get great reviews, comment on those as well. Have somebody comment on those. And thank him. When you log into your Google My Business, go ahead and comment. So that's what I got to share for you today is the Review Gate. Google has banned them from terms of service. Now it is against the law, according to Google, to discourage negative reviews. Now Google, we're just going to find a way around that and we're going to talk about that, but not today. All right, next time on Local Market Monopoly For business owners who want to own the block.

Resources

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Episode 02: The 4 Proven Marketing Systems That Ensure Business Growth