How Does Google Choose Service Options in a Review?

[Harmony Huskinson]

Hello,

When you go to leave a review for a business, you get options to select "Applicable Services" under "What services did they perform?"

There are 13 services listed here from Google. On the listing's backend we have uploaded 73 services.

My question:
How does Google select which services to display here? Is it correlated with local rankings possibly? I'm going to investigate more and follow up, but if anyone has seen any trends, I'd appreciate your input. My client would like "Water Heater Repair" to show up here, which I had to add as a custom service.

Side note: I'm aware of Review Attribute categories and also these automated filters displayed on Google Maps.

Thanks for all and any input!

 

[Tim Kahlert]

I'm not 100% sure and can only guess but is it possible that Google uses only services aka job types from Google Local Service Ads?

 

[Phil Rozek]

@harmony, good question. My hunch is that it's a stew of (1) GMB "services, including custom services, (2) users' responses to Google's "know this place?" questions, (3) review-keyword filters (i.e. services reviewers mention repeatedly), and maybe (4) "this website mentions" terms.

But I'd love to hear if you find something more conclusive.

 

[Harmony Huskinson]

Ooooh I didn't think of the "know this place" factor. My client has 24 locations, I'm interested to look at which services are selected in the review space for each profile and correlate that with their rankings in Local Falcon, as well as Google's displayed info about filters, "this website mentions," etc

 

[TomW]

@harmony, unfortunately there's not much control of these currently. These are based on the categories of the business and not actually what you set as your specific services in the GMB dashboard. So if you're an HVAC contractor, for example, all of those will show as services you offer when a user leaves a review, even if you indicated you do not offer one or more of them. And any custom services you set will not appear.

So unfortunatley for your client, they're not going to have 'Repair water heater' as an applicable service option there unless they add the category of Plumber to their listing. And if they did that, every other service in the plumbing category would also appear there.

 

[Harmony Huskinson]

Hey Tom, thanks for the heads up on Custom Categories never appearing - that's really good to know!

I think what's interesting here is that our primary category is "Furnace Repair" but Google is displaying services beyond those listed under "Furnace Repair" - it appears to be picking and choosing services across our 10 core categories:

Categories
Furnace Repair Service
HVAC contractor
Central Heating service
Heating equipment supplier
Air conditioning contractor
Air conditioning repair shop
Air Conditioning System Supplier
Plumber
Air duct cleaning service
Hot water system supplier

Services
Install heating system
AC maintenance
Repair HVAC
Install thermostat
Clean ducts & vents
Repair ducts & vents
Heating maintenance
HVAC Maintenance
Repair heating system
Repair AC
Install AC
Ductless heating and AC services
Install Ducts & Vents
Repair thermostat

So I think it's probably based on the factors listed by Phil, but I also think there could be more to it, even just overall ranking signals from the larger client site - our client has historically seen growth for ducts just because they have more content for it as a niche service. They're also known for maintenance services - I wonder how much Google tries to align these services with its perception of the brand.

 

[TomW]

Yep, the default services are be based on all categories, and there is some overlap between categories. So HVAC contactor, Furnace repair service, Air conditioning contractor, etc will have shared services. What looks odd to me based on your category list is that there should be plumbing services present since Plumber is in there.

Maybe there are some differences based on the country? I'm guessing this listing is in Australia based on the category of "Central Heating service"?

Here's an example of what I'd typically see for 'applicable services' when leaving a review on a listing that has HVAC and plumbing categories. And note on this one, the business does not offer duct cleaning and does not have 'Clean ducts & vents' selected as a service they offer... but Google shows it here anyway.