Google has been working rather hard these past few years to make it so that it can create a community on its various platforms. The search engine arm of the company has been letting users leave reviews for quite some time now, and Google Maps also has a feature that allows customers to leave updates that people can learn from to some degree. However, a misuse of this feature has some questioning whether or not it is helpful in the first place.
Your business listing on Google Maps will now have a customer updates section that would show reviews from Local Guides and the like. This might be rather annoying for some businesses because it might show negative reviews and sometimes even completely random comments that a customer may have written. Clicking on this will show all of the other customer reviews which can help someone or the other get a more balanced view, but many customers often go on the very first thing that they see and if that is negative then they might not be willing to trust the business at all.
It can be difficult for companies to figure out how to deal with this. Some are saying that this should be incorporated into their overall SEO strategy, whereas others are claiming that this update is just harmful in general and should be reversed as quickly as possible.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that this is by no means a new phenomenon. Irrelevant customer comments and updates have been a plague for business owners for quite some time now, and this is just another representation of that. Most business owners need to figure out a way to reach out to customers that make these updates so that they can address whatever it is that they were trying to say.
Some people on social media are using this feature to brigade certain businesses based on their opinions of the owners as well which is yet another thing that businesses are going to have to be cognizant of as they market their enterprises.
Photo: Thibault Adda
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Your business listing on Google Maps will now have a customer updates section that would show reviews from Local Guides and the like. This might be rather annoying for some businesses because it might show negative reviews and sometimes even completely random comments that a customer may have written. Clicking on this will show all of the other customer reviews which can help someone or the other get a more balanced view, but many customers often go on the very first thing that they see and if that is negative then they might not be willing to trust the business at all.
It can be difficult for companies to figure out how to deal with this. Some are saying that this should be incorporated into their overall SEO strategy, whereas others are claiming that this update is just harmful in general and should be reversed as quickly as possible.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that this is by no means a new phenomenon. Irrelevant customer comments and updates have been a plague for business owners for quite some time now, and this is just another representation of that. Most business owners need to figure out a way to reach out to customers that make these updates so that they can address whatever it is that they were trying to say.
Some people on social media are using this feature to brigade certain businesses based on their opinions of the owners as well which is yet another thing that businesses are going to have to be cognizant of as they market their enterprises.
Read next: Google Is Changing Gmail’s Interface To Allow Users The Ability To Switch Between The Google Mail, Spaces, Chat, and Meet Services