Tag: Google

Realtor reviews from Yelp and Facebook now showing up in Google Business pages

We ran across an exciting addition to the Google Business Page boxes that appear in the upper right of Google page one search results for for businesses that have created or claimed their Google business page. You have heard me say, “If the largest search engine in the world has a review system, you should probably pay attention to it”.  This is why we promote the use of Google reviews as a primary source of your online reviews. Based on the image below, you will see in addition to the Google reviews, you will see Facebook and Yelp reviews are showing up in the Google business box section called “Reviews from the web”.

From a perspective of the importance of having online reviews, the fact Google has added Yelp and Facebook reviews to their business box is quite telling. From what we can tell, the reviews are being automatically pulled and placed in the Google business box and is not a direct feed based upon some official data pipeline between Yelp, Facebook, Google and others. Here is a short video I did explaining it.

In a prior blog post where I wrote about stats that came directly from Google regarding the fact 49% of your prospects want to trust you along with this latest addition of Yelp and Facebook reviews shows me now it’s more important then ever to take control of your online reviews. Please reach out to us for a free demo on how we can manage all of this for you.

 

Google says 49% of real estate consumers look for trust

In other posts I have written about the importance having a well rounded positive online reputation. Having a great online reputation increases the ROI of your marketing dollars.

Yesterday while I was attending the Real Estate Mastermind Summit, Tom Ferry was the speaker and he told us he was asked to attend an event at Google wherein the movers and shakers of real estate marketing came together to discuss strategies. Tom put up the following slide:

Google, using stats and surveys, determined what was most important to the consumer when selecting a real estate agent. It’s hard to see in my photo, but TRUST was number one at 49%. In second place was EXPERIENCE at 15% and so on down the list. TRUST represented half within this study.

So how do you get trust? Obviously direct referrals from their friends communicates THEY trust you. Some trust may come into play after meeting you. In 2014, Placester and T3Experts conducted research regarding online reviews. They found 85% of consumers use online reviews to evaluate local businesses and professionals. They also found 90% trusted peer recommendations like online reviews 6.5 times more then traditional advertising. The percentages of consumers looking to online reviews for Realtors is growing each year.

Your online snapshot is everything. Agent Reputation gives you the tools you need to get reviews where they count. Google, Yelp and Facebook

CJ Hays @area51testpilot

Realtors need to quit trying to manipulate Yelp

Referencing a blog post I wrote on Active Rain earlier this year, I continually see Realtors trying to manipulate their Yelp reviews. Enough real estate agents know about me and my company, Agent Reputation, that I am continually getting questions about how to get Yelp reviews to stick. Or maybe they think there is some kind of conspiracy that requires buying advertising from Yelp in order to get non-recommended reviews published or bad reviews removed.

  1. No conspiracy. There were some overzealous Yelp sales reps back in the day that may have inferred a relationship between reviews and ads but that was firmly dealt with. Anybody that claims different is misinformed.
  2. Yelp does not want you asking for reviews. They want “active” Yelpers to be motivated by the service you provide to leave organic reviews. As a real estate agent, you can have a Yelp presence on your website or reputation marketing program and the Yelpers who feel motivated will know what to do.
  3. DO NOT send out an e mail blast asking everyone you know to leave you a Yelp review. Yelp has an algorithm that tracks the review. If you send out a blast, Yelp will see red flags because too many reviews came in at once which is an indicator you sent out a blast asking for reviews. Secondly they track new Yelp users. They know when somebody signs up just to leave a review and depending on their future Yelp activity, this review will wind up under the line as a non-recommended review. This can also protect you because it will also push some of your bad reviews under the line. So basically if you went to the effort to ask a bunch of non-Yelpers to leave you a review, you just wasted their time when they could have been leaving you a review on Google, Facebook or Zillow.
  4. What is a Yelper? A Yelper signs up to participate in the online review community. They are interested in the reviews of other Yelpers and are motivated to leave their own reviews. Yelpers have a profile photo. They have downloaded the Yelp App to their phone. They check in from businesses they are visiting via the app. They write reviews from these businesses they have checked in from. They have Yelp friends and at the end of the day if these active Yelpers leave you a review, it will be above the line and credible.

Yelp should be embraced. I have real estate agent clients that have over 50 positive reviews with very few under the line. And in fact once these clients get their reviews up they are buying Yelp ads and are killing it.

CJ Hays – Follow me on Twitter

#CJ4marketing