GBP Options for high schools? Q&A missing, no reviews, what else?

[TheRD]

Hi
I am helping a local high school (Kingswood Oxford School, West Hartford, CT) work on their online presence. My son is a student there and I've been a big fan of the school. We reclaimed their GBP listing and then started bumping into some odd items that differed from what I encounter with my business clients:

1). Reviews don't show up. After reading through multiple posts on this site, it seems like schools can't get reviews (since 2019?). So, their reviews and rating are frozen in time? Is that still true?

2). There is no section to enter Q&As...I haven't been able to find anything about this anywhere.

3). We have a description in place, but it is bumped lower down in the knowledge panel, taking a back seat to the Wikipedia entry (which isn't useful)

4). Looking for any best practices or advice on optimizing their GBP listing for a school - what to do, what not to do or waste my time on.

Thank you in advance!

Leland

 

[ElizabethRule]

1 + 2) I am not an expert on GBP for schools, but as far as I know they cannot receive reviews and I also don't think they have Q&A.

Schools have a hybrid GBP/knowledge panel, so all the features for a normal local business GBP are not available and other features of a knowledge panel are, like the mascot, year found, motto etc all that info is pulled in via Google's knowledge graph.

3) There is not much you can do to influence the description field getting moved up, as the Wiki field is being pulled in as part of the knowledge panel. You can change the Wiki page itself to influence what is showing up there.

4) The best thing you can do is optimize the site for your top keywords, as there is little you can do to the GBP itself. Working on the organic visibility of the site will help improve the maps visibility of the GBP listing. For example, I searched for "best private school Hartford, Connecticut" an the site is NOT ranking organically but the GBP is 2. The only way to get it from 2 to 1 would be onsite work.

@BrandonSchmidt works with schools and he is a brilliant SEO so he may have more insights!

 

[keyserholiday]

I know that Google won't allow UGC photos to be added as students were uploading funny photos as a prank.

 

[BrandonSchmidt]

Hi Leland,

Managing GBP listings for schools is pretty tricky - partly because as @ElizabethRule mentioned they get info from a bunch of sources and also because everything changes frequently without warning. I work more with colleges & trade schools than high schools, but there are some similarities.

1. I am unsure about reviews for high schools. I know new reviews can be written and show up on colleges. I just tested it on a high school but it didn't appear.

2-4. Since the school has more of a hybrid knowledge panel - pulling in data from Wikipedia and the website - you don't need to worry much about GBP stuff that doesn't show up - like Q&A. I would use time to ensure the information that is showing up is accurate. Just because it's on Wikipedia or pulling in from other sources doesn't mean it is true.

For schools, it's also helpful to create & claim any additional listings on the campus. I usually start with the public-facing facilities - sporting fields, gym, admissions office, or auditorium. Your campus map would be helpful in identifying the most important buildings.

Be on the lookout for any other GBP listings that appear on your campus. It's often that Google will create them based on events or other organizations - whether they are connected to your school or just using your campus. For example: Camp KO

And as Elizabeth had said, onsite work would definitely help. A quick look at the sitemap shows some pages that probably shouldn't be public - like this Sample Page.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

PS Thanks @ElizabethRule for the kind words and shoutout!

 

[Tony Wang]

@TheRD I have nothing to add but your topic caught my eye because I grew up in W. Hartford and know of K/O. Welcome to the forum!

 

[TheRD]

Hi Tony, Elizbeth & Brandon,
Tony - Hello from West Hartford! Small world .

Elizabeth and Brandon, great advice. I just started working with them and the SEO piece is underway as well. Great tip about the GBPs for other items like Camp KO. For the other facilities, do you just google each location on the campus to see if there is a GBP for it, or is there another way to see all the GBPs associated with a given geographic location - like a school campus - to make sure I don't miss anything?

All great tips...my first time working on a school so figuring out the rules has been interesting.

LJB

 

[PaulSteinbrueck]

We work with schools, and Google has told us flat out - no GBP reviews for schools. In the knowledge panel, however, they do show ratings and reviews from Great Schools, Facebook, and Niche. One school administrator has been raving to our team about how their enrollment has exploded, and she attributes it in large part to the reviews on those sites we've been helping them get.