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Hi Steve, I'm sorry to hear about the trouble your company has had with this. First, I want to clarify that the actual sentiment in your reviews is unlikely to be the primary cause ranking failures. In fact, there have been famous cases like that of the dentist who shot a lion in which hundreds of people left him scathingly negative reviews which, unfortunately, led to him ranking highly for his query (though Google might now have adjusted for this). In other words, negative sentiment in reviews may/may not be the cause of ranking problems you are having (there are believed to be several hundred factors that contribute to local rank) but I can totally see how they would impact conversions for your business. So, what I think your decision here is whether you need to start your business from scratch, completely re-branding the business and starting with a fresh brand, fresh website, fresh citations and fresh reviews, or, whether the company can overcome its past reputation. The answer to this is going to lie in how extreme you feel the negative effects of these reviews are on your bottom line and the ability of the business to have a future. The answer is really going to vary, depending on the situation, and without being able to evaluate your unique situation, the community here can only give general thoughts on this. You might want to consider consulting with a good agency with whom you can share the full details of the company's history. Things to consider: If the complaints refer to mere inconveniences or annoyances the customers experienced, then it may be possible to keep your brand and, by implementing a very active review acquisition strategy, to balance out and eventually surpass the number of old negative reviews with new positive ones. But, if the complaints refer to something severe, like accusations of illegal business practices, then no amount of better reviews may suffice to remedy the problem, and you might be justified in wanting to start over. I recommend consulting with a reputable agency with whom you can share your company history in private so that you can get advice that is specific to your scenario.

Thanks Ria and Patrick...thumbs up for you both. Definitely seems worth doing. Hadn't thought of it from a fresh content perspective. Totally relate to not buying a product without looking at reviews first, good ratings are very powerful.

genius

Yeah, Google used to scrape Yelp but was under investigation by the FTC for doing so. I don't think they still do though some of the older data (like 2011, 2012) may still be there. I can't imagine they're still doing it.

Hi Peter Nikolow, Did you find something from the URL provided by me? Thanks!

Oops! Looks like there's a typo in your thread title. I'm positive you meant customers 'can't' leave reviews Please pop over to this thread, where you'll find some good links on this topic: https://moz.com/community/q/with-new-google-layout-are-the-google-direct-review-links-ending-in-hl-en-review-1-not-working

Hi, Webmasters Search Console is showing structured data is implemented on 60 pages with 0 error. Just waiting to see rich snippets in SERP.

Currently the forum is holding the top 2 positions. Awesome point to make that they will only give rankings to one or two spots, and that creating a new thread might replace one of those positions. As a follow up, I've reached out to the forum to discuss sponsorship opportunities. We have already positively responded to the negative thread so the only opportunity now is to move forward and create a more positive presence within the forum. I've thought about creating a thread for exact match 'xyz reviews' and within that forum letting the community give their feedback on the product and how it might be improved in the future. Then create that content piece you guys have mentioned on how we can improve. Maybe taking the Buffer transparency rule here and creating content that says along the lines of here's how we failed you and how that has made us better.

So glad this helped!

It's my pleasure, and good luck with this, Silkstream!

My pleasure, Robert! I liked your answer, too

Hey There! If the helmets are actually 3 different styles (rather than just colors) then these really are 3 different products that might have differences in terms of comfort, durability, design and customer satisfaction. Given this, I would not recommend showing the reviews of Style 1 on the the page for Style 2. It's not just a matter of whether or not you should duplicate content here, but rather, ensuring that your customer is being shown reviews that speak to the exact product they are considering buying. After all, what if a customer who purchased Style 1 writes that they they really appreciate the nylon comfort lining in the helmet, but Style 2 doesn't have this comfort lining? If a customer reads the reviews of Style 1 on the page for Style 2 and is misled about that comfort lining, they will be disappointed in the product. So, a better path here would be to form a strategy for increasing the reviews of the actual products, rather than trying to make the reviews of one product serve as testimonial for others. I think it can be helpful to put yourself in the customer's shoes here. When you're looking for a product, you'd certainly want to read reviews about it, rather than reviews of a different product, right? In the online world, where we can't see/hold/examine an item in person, our best option is to glean information from product descriptions and reviews, and we wouldn't appreciate a mixup of customer sentiment being posted with the wrong product. Hope these thoughts are helpful!

Hi Rob, This is one of those issues where I have mixed feelings. Google's John Mu definitely stated that Google views testimonials and reviews as different, and here is some discussion surrounding his comments about this: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/wY1vF2RRos4/discussion http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local/26385-say-what-google-says-dont-add-review-markup-your-customer-reviews.html https://plus.google.com/+JoyHawkins/posts/J6772rFU1VG So, where do I personally fall in on this? Seeing John Mu recommend removal of markup is a pretty strong recommendation and as I always advise complying with Google's guidelines, I would typically agree with this, but at this point, the grey area for me is that I've not seen this become an official guideline, so there's some uncertainty on this. I know I am still seeing local business sites with testimonial markup and I would be surprised if they are actually being penalized for this, but, at the same time, John's comment has mostly called into question whether there is any value at all in making this effort to markup testimonials. It simply may not be worth it, but I say that with the proviso that it will not surprise me one little bit to see Google change their stance again on this next week, next month, next year.  So, that's pretty much where I am with this. Hopefully reading the above discussions will help you form an educated opinion.

Unfortunately, there is no way to disable the reviews on a Google+ local page. You may see some pages that do not have a reviews section, but this is because they have a brand page and not a local page. Is there any particular reason why you wish to remove the reviews feature?

Hello, I will add to Oleg's answer in that deletion is not a likely result on Indeed.com. We had a client that asked for this and we were unable to delete reviews left by an individual bent on hurting the company. We could respond to the posts but unless you can provide quality answers that debunk any negativity on the part of the user in the eyes of other users, this is a time-intensive, un-rewarding exercise. What we were told when we reached out is that they do not arbitrate on behalf of either businesses or users on their website, and that we should attempt to sort out our differences without their input. A better idea is to improve customer experience with your company/client's company and attempt to improve the positive reviews you receive. It's an uphill battle as people are more likely to complain than congratulate by a ratio of 33:1 online. The response approach might be the best one if your negative reviews are relatively scattered and not directly targeted at causing damage. Hope this helps, Rob

Hi Ruben, Back in 2014, Google stated that they don't want markup on testimonials on your website. You can read about this here and figure out how you'd like to proceed, given this policy: http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local/26385-say-what-google-says-dont-add-review-markup-your-customer-reviews.html This caused quite a bit of talk at the time, and I don't believe all sites are complying, but important to know. Regarding third party reviews you are republishing on your site, I have not seen individual reviews coming up with stars on them for some time, but this seems to change so frequently. For example, up until recently, I was seeing Facebook listings coming up in Google's SERPs with stars on them. Now, that appears to have changed. So, I'm not sure what, if anything, you could do right now to get individual reviews posted on your website to show up with stars in the SERPs. If anyone has seen a different pattern, please do share with Ruben!

Hi David, EGOL is right in that you first need to discover the policy of the 3rd party review site regarding reusing their content. If they allow this, they may have some type of widget you can just add in-page to showcase your reviews there, but if republishing their reviews isn't allowed, you could run into problems. Regarding Google, they do not want testimonials marked up with rich snippets, but I'm not 100% sure how they feel about 3rd party reviews that you are republishing on your website. I've not seen any word from them on this.

Still having some issues with this. Would anyone be able to help?

Hi Gayane! Thanks for your kind note. As this question is on a totally different topic than the original question, I want to advise you to please start a brand new question for this. This way, you'll get feedback from the community as well as staff. I promise, I'll pop into your thread once you start a new one

Hi Dmitri The percentage decrease is the same across each location, and the biggest hit is in the UK which hasnt recovered much. Redirects are consistent each day. I'll drop you a line and give you access to my GA, any insight would be appreciated