Local Reviews & Reputation Management Survey 2014

[Linda Buquet]

Local Search experts such as Mike Blumenthal, Phil Rozek, Nyagoslav Zhekov, Darren Shaw, Andrew Shotland, and more weighed in on the BrightLocal survey below.

I bowed out because I no longer work directly with clients so don't actively work on any review strategies, so didn't feel like I could add much to the survey.

Read on to find out the results...

Local Review Survey: 55% say a review strategy is critical to local optimization

Most of us accept that ?Reviews? are an important signal which potential customers use when deciding which local business to contact. From last year?s Local Consumer Review Survey we know that:

73% of consumers say positive customer reviews make them trust a business more
65% of consumers more likely to use a business which has positive online reviews
79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations

Furthermore, review signals are said to account for 10.3% of all local search ranking signals according to Moz local search ranking factors study.

So if reviews are important to customers and are important ranking factors ? does this facilitate the need for a review strategy? Are reviews more important now than they have been at any other point? And how important are online reviews compared to links and citations?

To help us answer these questions (and more) we enlisted the help of 20 highly respected & knowledgeable local search experts. We asked them 12 questions all relating to Reviews & Reputation Management and the following charts show the findings of this expert survey.

We?d like to thank all 20 SEOs for taking part and generously sharing their time & knowhow with us ? we greatly appreciate your input!

Head over to read the rest.

What do you think?

 

[Myles Anderson]

Hi Linda. Thanks for posting this - much appreciated.

We have our annual Local Consumer Review Survey being done at present and will be released in May.

Let me know if anyone has any questions about this. Thanks.

 

[Will Dolezal]

Hey Myles,

Will there be a 2015 update to this survey?

There was lots of good info in the 2014 one.

Thanks!

Cheers ~ Will

 

[mborgelt]

I am curious about 2015 data as well, namely, what users' thoughts are on responses to negative reviews. I have a few clients who have gained business based on their responses to negative reviews.