Google decided to recent Google+ Local back on May 30th. It’s been just over a month now and I can definitively say CTR’s (click thru rates) and phone calls are WAY down for a lot of local businesses since they have moved from the five start rating system to their new Zagat review rating system.
Not only have I noticed it, my clients have noticed it and other people too across the world have noticed a CTR decrease and phone call decrease since migration from old review rating system to this new one. One Doctor in the Google Places Help forum states:
“Google+ is destroying my business. I know for a fact that I am not the only one that feels this way as I have talked to others who have also experienced the same problem. Everything about Google+ seems to be fine if not better than Google Places except for the removal of the stars. Ever since they removed the star ratings, my actions or clicks went from 30 – 60 or more a day to 0 – 5. I am still on the first page of Google for relevant search terms and in most cases I am also the first listing, I am also receiving the same amount of impressions as before, but the absence of the stars has caused an obvious hit on my Google Business Listing effectiveness. Injunction with that, I have seen a drastic decline in business. Is there not a way to compromise and use the Zagat reviews as well as the stars?”
CTR’s Rates Trending Downwards
I think this is been a very major shake up for a lot small businesses. I also found Aaron Wall’s recent post on the major reduction of organic search results pages in the search results pages in Google over time and the increase of “paid inclusion“. Matt Magee also posted an interesting blog post about 8 months ago on how CTR’s rates have been trending down for quite some time now.
What Can a Small Business Do About It?
Paid Search
If you have a small business, I’d suggest maybe exploring using Google Adwords Express to get those Golden Stars back next to your paid ADs. If you sell products, get involved in Google Products and participate in Google Checkout so you can get those golden stars next to your ADs. Man, I miss having golden stars next to your local listing. All you needed was 5 or more listings and call volumes would skyrocket overnight.
Organic Search
For organic search, I’d suggest making sure you have your author markup set-up right so that you can have your image associated next to your listings. Of course, continue to keep encouraging you clients/customers to leave reviews.
What Are Your Thoughts on Your Phone Calls and CTRs Since Zagat Update?
Do you have a small businesses or are you a local SEO’er? Let us know your thoughts on this matter in the comment section below.
Matt, my personal thought – it is ALL about making paid results more prominent… From all the small-scale researches I’ve done, and everything I’ve seen, it has been pretty obvious that the stars are boosting the CTR by at least double digits. Google has no doubt spotted that as well. Why would they then change the layout only of the organic results, but not of the paid ones?
Think about how the last year they removed the Google Places photos from the organic search results. Then think about how they removed the meta descriptions. It will not be unexpectable if Google adds the author photos next to the paid results in the very near future, too.
Nyagoslav, yeah interesting. Author mark-up for adwords. Hmmmm. Might happen.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, Google has well known that the golden stars engender higher click through rates. This is really about advertising revenue as you suggested, “Paid Ads”. The changes are designed to specifically get more local businesses to just pay for first page placement through adwords. Google isn’t a search engine any longer they are a paid advertising platform and they are going to make whatever changes they deem fit to force more people to pay for ads to get on the front page. Bing and Yahoo here I come!
Russ, it certainly is starting to feel much more like a paid search engine, isn’t it. There is no surprises why Google has all these anti-trust lawsuits. I think sometimes the biggest message (as consumers) is we need to start using Bing and Yahoo more. I wish there were some other search engines to compete too.
I just wrote a blog on this and I found that businesses with 5-9 reviews are definitely experiencing a drop in clicks but businesses with 10+ mostly had an increase since the switch-over.
Personally, I liked the gold stars MUCH better but it was interesting to see that the new Zagat display actually increased most of the “clicks for more info” on the businesses I looked at.
Joy, thanks for stopping by and sharing. Interesting you found a boost for once they got 10 or more so the score markup shows up. Guess the new number to get in reviews is 10 as opposed to the old 5-star system of it only being 5 reviews.
Yeah, that’s IF you can get Google to even post your clients reviews. Since they updated to that stupid Google + Local, their spam filters have magically killed every review that doesn’t come from a Google+ user as “spam”. Except the bad reviews, since who would ever put out negative spam? Oh, and add to that the fact that Google no longer posts 3rd party reviews.
And you suggest we pay these folks for AdWords now?
Oh Marissa Mayers! I have your first new marketing strategy for Yahoo!!!!!