g.page/ Shortname URL Reviews Links No Longer Working

[Diogo Ordacowski]

UPDATE 09/26/2019 - g.page/[insert shortname]/review is still working. I was able to replicate the desired behavior with the link with a a few members in this forum and with a few members in my office. Thanks for the help everyone.

Anyone notice that GMB released shortnames and provided reviews link within the GMB UI (by using the shortnames), and then took away that functionality ? I no longer see those convenient links being generated within GMB's settings.

I can no longer construct the g.page/[insert shortname]/review urls and get the reviews prompt on Google to engage when accessing the link.

This is no bueno - particularly for anyone that may have used the g.page/ URL in reviews request/outreach email campaigns, or even worse, printed marketing material.

I guess it's back to using

https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=

[insert placeID]

I'd be curious to see if anyone else is seeing the same or has any internal updates from Google on whether this feature has been deprecated.

 

[djbaxter]

It still seems to be working for me. Note that the link does require you to sign in with your Google account and if you are the owner of that site you won't see the review option, just the previous reviews by others.

 

[djbaxter]

PM me your link and I'll try it from here.

 

[djbaxter]

Update: the link @Diogo Ordacowski sent to me worked fine for me.

 

[Ampere]

I have been checking mine all day and night after seeing this thread. If that link stops working I’m going to have to print out a lot of new material and change a lot of things online. That would be terrible.

 

[djbaxter]

As noted above, if you log into your Google account to check your own link, you will not see the "leave a review" option but others will.

 

[Ampere]

As noted above, if you log into your Google account to check your own link, you will not see the "leave a review" option but others will.

When I log in and go to my own g.page link, I see the 5 stars and empty review box that I left for my company.

 

[djbaxter]

Can you post a screenshot?

 

[Ampere]

Absolutely:

 

[djbaxter]

This is with you logged in as the owner of that account?

 

[Ampere]

Yes sir.

Maybe it is because I gave the star rating?

 

[djbaxter]

Rating your own business is not something I would recommend, especially if you used the same email address when you submitted the rating. We all have competitors. All it takes is one of those to report you and the consequences might be very unwelcome indeed.

Based on several of your posts and threads here, you seem to be putting a lot of time, energy, and even money into trying to game Google. If you put all that into improving the quality of your content and expanding into other areas to increase your branding (e.g., social media, videos), you would likely see a much better return for your efforts. Even the fact that you are paying people to write and poublicize content for you makes me wonder about the quality you're getting. Good content writers don't come cheap and the cheap ones don't generally write content anyone wants to read.

 

[Ampere]

Rating your own business is not something I would recommend, especially if you used the same email address when you submitted the rating. We all have competitors. All it takes is one of those to report you and the consequences might be very unwelcome indeed.

I did it a very long time ago when I first verified my business. Now that I know more about Google, SEO, and I have so many good reviews, I thought to remove it, but I worry that might affect me negatively.

Based on several of your posts and threads here, you seem to be putting a lot of time, energy, and even money into trying to game Google.

"Game Google"? Wow...

I thought I was just trying to optimize things to get better rankings. Isn't that what SEO and this forum is about?

If you put all that into improving the quality of your content and expanding into other areas to increase your branding (e.g., social media, videos), you would likely see a much better return for your efforts. Even the fact that you are paying people to write and poublicize content for you makes me wonder about the quality you're getting. Good content writers don't come cheap and the cheap ones don't generally write content anyone wants to read.

How does an electrician "improve the quality of his content"? I thought the best way to do that would be to hire a professional copyrighter to re-write my town based landing pages so that they were all unique. Up until right now I thought that was a good thing.

But apparently I'm just a grifter doing everything wrong...

 

[djbaxter]

Reputable SEO is a long-term endeavour. There are no quick fixes that work long-term, if at all.

Is your content guy a professional? Is he in fact writing quality content? I don't know. My point there was you get what you pay for in that business and if you pay someone $10 or $20 a month you're probably not getting quality.

How does an electrician "improve the quality of his content"?

Probably the best way is to answer questions that people want answers for. If you are generating blog pages, pick a common question and provide an answer based on what you could do to solve that person's problem.

Look at Google these days, especially in the age of Siri and Assistant: it's become a list of questions and answers. Start providing some of those answers to questions relevant to your business so that you can get some of that publicity.

 

[Diogo Ordacowski]

Update: the link @Diogo Ordacowski sent to me worked fine for me.

I stand corrected! g.page/[shorturl]/review is working. Something locally on my computer wasn't allowing the modal prompt to popup. I tested with a few others locally in my office and this IS in fact, still working.

 

[djbaxter]

As noted above, if you log into your Google account to check your own link, you will not see the "leave a review" option but others will.

I came back to correct this. It appears I was wrong, or partly wrong.

Today, I was copying the review link to send to a client and I clicked through from my website. Doing that, I got the popup asking me to leave a review, even though I was logged in with my usual Google account, the same one I use for GMB and Search Console.

I then went to a different tab and entered the same URL into the address box. This time I did NOT get the popup asking for a review.

So it seems that it depends on how you arrive at the page. Very odd.

Added: Even odder, I tried again and I could not replicate that in Firefox nor in Edge. But I can replicate it repeatedly if I use Chrome and click through from my website. If I enter the URL in the Chrome address bar, I do not get the option to leave a review. (I am logged into Google in all three browsers.)