28⁰⁴
2016

Reviews:
All businesses should push their customers to help build a wealth of reviews for online viewing when potential customers are looking for organizations to use. Reviews help not only with reaching out to but with online page ranking of your website in an effort for Google to build a better profile when someone searches for you or within your industry. When it comes to reviews there are many different avenues with the top ones being through Google or Social Media outlets, i.e. Facebook.

Google Reviews:
In the past Google in essence forced users wanting to post reviews for companies to sign in and create an account, Google+, but now it seems that changes have been put into place. With these changes users who truly want to review a company can now easily place ratings for companies online in a simple step of finding the company, writing and submitting. This means that companies can more easily be using Google reviews as a way to attract new and keep old clients.

How Google Works For You:
While adding reviews has become much simpler and a Google+ account is not needed a Google account still is. This means that anyone who has a YouTube account, AdWords, Gmail or any Google related product already has a login that can be used to leave reviews and ratings towards companies. From a business point of view this is a positive step towards a better future online as it could help with measurement tracking in terms of client success rates and how to improve based on comments placed.

Google+ vs Google:
While Google+ is still trying to be phrased out it seems that Google does understand the need to have a separation from just having a Google account and a Google+ profile. This move has been slowly shifted over the last year and it is now reaching a point that works better for everyone. Google+, although not a bad product, has had its ups and downs causing a not so favorable move that Google had intended. They wanted more users to be engaged in the product itself which seems to have been a misfire.

Google Rankings:
With Google ranking algorithms always changing and updating we have seen a shift towards reviews and social as a better avenue to take for improved visibility. Reviews have started to become more important when it comes to gaining new clients but also being seen higher up on the ranking scale. With the new shift to make it easier for clients to review a company this also means that rankings are becoming more important and easier to compete with. This is why reviews are critical for the growth and success of organizations.