Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Good, Andrew. A rep named Mike told me they'd be on the lookout for your tweet to them. Hope you hear back, and you're very welcome.

Good luck, John!

Great to hear, thanks Martijn.

Hey Mothner As Joy mentions, the best bet for getting targeted advice here would be to share the identity of this client and the precise search you're trying to rank for. Otherwise, we can only speculate. The possibilities could range from the Possum filter to whether you've got the right categories, to a lot of other things. If you're unable to mention the client, that's perfectly okay, but it does leave the community here guessing rather than investigating.

You can too disallow the link with this google link: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main So it will not hurt you

So glad to help, Gabe!

Thanks! But what about the same item with different prices? Apparently now I have those 3 options from safe to risky Chose just one material/price per product (the best seller). No risk of Google punishment. Create material-option products with material choice and display just one price (weird) Create single products each one with its own name, material and price with the risk of Google understand that we are duplicating products.

I'd agree with Oleg above; marking up as a product is likely your only option with regards to appearing in SERPs. One thing that you may want to look further in to is the schema for service, you can store data such as provider and rating, which may suit your needs further down the line.

FCBM's point about their experience is important: "I think that it was just a bad fit for our business." You have to really consider if Yelp is the right place people are searching for lawyers. In my opinion, Yelp is not the right starting place for people looking for a NEW lawyer to hire. It is more likely to be the right place for someone searching for reviews on a lawyer they are considering hiring. Big difference. The budget? $300/month? You should ask them what the competitor's CTR and CPC are. I just checked for a couple clients and their CPC (on paid ads) with yelp is between 1.3% and 1.6%. CPC is actually set AUTOMATICALLY by Yelp and varies by industry. I've seen $4 to $15 CPC, but no lawyer accounts to help you out with. Keep in mind - Yelp ad reps will send you an email that will seem very compelling, showing you competitor numbers. The problem is they don't break down the competition's organic vs. paid views (and they don't tell you who the competitor is). They did this to a client of ours and we were able to crunch the numbers to show that the competitor got 7 TIMES the amount of organic profile views. But the email made it seem like they got 7 times more views (and leads) because they SPEND MORE. I put together this blog post on Yelp advertising that outlines the all the numbers of this falsely framed email that Yelp will send to business owners. I also write about a client of ours that does extremely well with Yelp advertising and a potential scam that they put us through.

Just curious--did you end up responding to the reviews, and if you did did you get any feedback from the original reviewers?

Hi MissThumann, You've asked a good question, and I reached out to GetFiveStars' co-founder to be sure you were getting a good answer. Mike Blumenthal let me know that while you can add the GetFiveStars widget to the homepage, Google won't show the stars, and because of this, it's not really a recommended practice to use this widget on your homepage. That being said, you could definitely add it to any other page of the website. He also let me know that the widget includes business/org details in addition to aggregate reviews and a link to the testimonial page, so your webmaster does need to make sure there is no conflicting schema on any page you might add the widget to. It was very nice of Mike to get back to me so speedily, and I would encourage you to be sure you are making use of GetFiveStars' support options to be sure you're using their product to its maximum potential. Mike mentioned he has a draft manual he'd be happy to share with you if you reach out to the company's support.Hope this helps!

Hi there Linda! I agree with Oleg. I would sort through the reviews and see which service or product they mention, and then place the review on the page for that service or product! That way you're not just adding content to add it, but adding relevant content that could help convince people on the site.

Hi there! I suggest reading through this blog from Moz: https://moz.com/blog/are-coworking-offices-eligible-for-google-my-business-listings While the main topic of the article is coworking spaces, it also addresses virtual offices and how this impacts your chances of ranking in the local pack. In the article, it says: Virtual offices fail to meet Google guidelines, including: Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location. Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible. Provide your regular customer-facing hours of operation. If your business rents a temporary, "virtual" office at a different address from your primary business, do not create a page for that location unless it is staffed during your normal business hours. Hope this helps!

Hi Cory, At Blue Corona, we have a software that we use on our clients' websites cause ReviewUsNow. With the program, the company can send out emails to customers they've serviced over the past few days, week, etc. and ask them to leave them a review. The review then gets broken up by location and posted on their website. The customer is then prompted to share the review on additional platforms like Google, Yelp, etc. and all they have to do is press the copy button to copy everything that they wrote, and paste it into the additional platforms. We've found it to be very successful at building the number of reviews on our clients' profiles. Let me know if you have any additional questions!

Hi Paul! Would you be able to link our community to an example of Google results for which you're seeing these stars? I think it would help. Thanks!

I completely get it. It's frustrating. Though, I get lots of leads from Yelp because of the time I've invested in making it work for me, so I find the frustration mainly worthwhile. I teach Yelp classes for business here in Sacramento. I tell them "Yelp is like a report card, you're getting a grade whether you like it or not. If you want an A+, you have to do the Extra Credit work."

Hi There, I'm doing a search for 'internet lawyer ft lauderdale' and would recommend going through these in your search for a lawyer: https://www.google.com/search?q=internet+lawyer+ft+lauderdale&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=internet+lawyer+ft+lauderdale&rflfq=1&rlha=0&rllag=26186765,-80135356,3464&tbm=lcl&tbs=lf_msr:-1,lf_od:-1,lf_oh:-1,lf_pqs:EAE,lf:1,lf_ui:2&* I'm afraid I don't know what legal action would be appropriate (I have no legal background) but I'm hoping you'll be able to get one of these firms to call you back. Hopefully, with the documentation you've gathered, you'll be able to present the issue clearly to an attorney and get their qualified advice. Wishing you good luck!

Hi David! I think this might be the answer to what you're seeing: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-titles-and-descriptions-2016/163812/ Does that seem right?

It is up to Google Zack and there is never a guarantee that they will show, but you would like to think that they would be adopted at some point. What I would also suggest, is having a look on the Google forums for help as well. -Andy

Hi Jacob, Yes, unfortunately there is no strategy for overriding Possum if you are being affected by it due to sharing a building and category with a competitor. This is a completely separate issue from whether or not Google is displaying in-SERP stars for your industry. It's highly unlikely that the two things have anything to do with one another. While I don't know the complete details of your scenario, what you are describing regarding having to zoom on Maps to see yourself sounds very much like Possum, given your shared building/category with a competitor. Unless you can change your categories (which normally you wouldn't want to do) the effect you are experiencing is now being felt by numerous businesses in your same scenario. How are you doing in terms of competing with that competitor who is showing up at the non-zoomed level of the map? How are your citations (do you have a good set, are they accurate, free of duplicates)? How about review count and sentiment in Google? How strong is your website? Because Possum is still so new, I've yet to see many cases brought to light of how a given business is chosen over another one as the one Google is showing at the non-zoomed level, but I would expect ranking factors and user behavior have something to do with it. Sorry not to have an easy solution for you. I hope these thoughts are at least helpful.