84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation

[Tim Colling]

Great new survey from BrightLocal regarding ORMM:

https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/local-consumer-review-survey/

Key 'Takeaways' From Online Review Survey Research

• 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation
• 7 out of 10 consumers will leave a review for a business if they're asked to
• 90% of consumers read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion about a business
• 54% of people will visit the website after reading positive reviews
• 73% of consumers think that reviews older than 3 months are no longer relevant
• 74% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more
• 58% of consumers say that the star rating of a business is most important

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Thanks for sharing Tim! I was fortunate enough to see Myles present these results earlier this month live at InboundCon in Toronto, Canada.

 

[JimFranco]

Thats unfortunate for anyone or your competitor can flame your business with no recourse on online reviews. I find it frustrating that I have one crazy lady that leaves me negatives because i filed a dmca on her after asking her to take down my content(she copied my entire page) and she would not. Then had her leave me negatives all over the web

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Thats unfortunate for anyone or your competitor can flame your business with no recourse on online reviews. I find it frustrating that I have one crazy lady that leaves me negatives because i filed a dmca on her after asking her to take down my content(she copied my entire page) and she would not. Then had her leave me negatives all over the web

You can't get those removed as she was not a previous customer? Google would remove those based on the content of the review being "off-topic".

 

[JimFranco]

she made up reviews about my company , so they told me they cant judge if review is real or not.

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

Hi Jim

Your story is very familiar, and I feel your pain. I have yet to see any company take these spurious cases seriously, and it is very frustrating for any of us who work or are touched by the reviews "industry".

Make sure you reply to those messages letting readers know and flag them wherever you can.
And focus on getting more reviews, make it part of your everyday processes. If you truly offer good or great service/products, then they should outweigh the negatives. And a few negatives actually improve the credibility of good reviews (pure 5-star ratings look contrived).

It's a big problem in the online reviews industry and I wish I knew the answer.

There's always the option for people in your situation is civil litigation, which most business owners won't do, due to the time, money, effort and distraction from running their business. And then there's the legal climate for your country / state for defamation, slander etc.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

she made up reviews about my company , so they told me they cant judge if review is real or not.

Fair enough. I thought she may have gone and explained what was actually going on. I didn't think she would falsify a review like that. Yeah, those are pretty hard to deal with.