Are keywords in customer reviews a ranking factor for Local SEO?

[Aleksandar Micev]

I'm interested to find out whether the customer reviews and the keywords they use on Google are ranking factors for SEO?

 

[JoyHawkins]

I have heard some blackhats say they are, so I think it's possible. Any testing we've done on it didn't work. One example where we left keyword-rich reviews on a Google listing is here.

It's very difficult to actually test this because review velocity is definitely a ranking factor and as you're getting more keyword-rich reviews, you're actually getting more reviews period and so you'll see a ranking benefit from that by itself.

Unless you're buying reviews (which I clearly wouldn't condone), there isn't a practical way to get customers to leave keyword-rich reviews, so this isn't something I would focus on as an SEO.

 

[acharlton]

If you have a landing page where they choose a review site (Google, Yelp, etc.) you can prompt them. For example, for Away Clinic, we say "our favorite reviews say where they're going and what shots they got." Seems to work well so far. My main reason for using the landing page is that I'm always hoping that someone will choose Yelp, and they'll have a track record with Yelp, but nobody has yet. I just use Linktree for that.

 

[sd1111]

If you have a landing page where they choose a review site (Google, Yelp, etc.) you can prompt them. For example, for Away Clinic, we say "our favorite reviews say where they're going and what shots they got." Seems to work well so far. My main reason for using the landing page is that I'm always hoping that someone will choose Yelp, and they'll have a track record with Yelp, but nobody has yet. I just use Linktree for that.

I like this "our favorite reviews say" prompt! I might be borrowing that

 

[WilliamGMBE]

Yes, I think it help with ranking for trailing keyword.

We havent done conclusive testing for this, but it is sometimes obvious when using maps. Some trailing keywords from review does show up when searching for it. To give an example, for the same Toronto location I am doing two similar searches:

Search term: Jamaican patties

Search term: Fresh and hot jamaican patties

As you can see the business that ranked where different even though the location same and search was similar. Also, in this case, the branch of a business in a diffferent location ranked when we added 'fresh and hot' even though these business had same business website domain. We find this very common with normal search term.

In other words, keywords in review does helps with discoverability.

AI Searches(LLM searches):

We have also done a lot of testing with new kind of AI searches and we have found reviews to be very prominent 'answer ranking' factor. For example, before when we 'AI Overview' used to show GBP, you do find that one of the most prominent ranking factors is review, very highly prominent. The Google AI Overview sometimes directly quotes the review. So it does really help.

We had done some testing with other LLM's too and it does shows it takes reviews content into consideration.