New Option - Move Google Reviews

[Linda Buquet]

Happy to announce another positive new change for Google Local listings today. The team has been working on a new feature and Jade just announced, so I can share now.

As you guys know in the past if you moved locations or rebranded, you would usually lose all your reviews. They would stay attached to the old listing.

Now in certain cases you can ask Google to move reviews to the new listings. This just in from Jade.

Reviews associated with wrong listing? Ask us to move them

I'm happy to share that business owners can now submit requests for us to move reviews from one listing to another. We'll move reviews based on the following criteria:

Change of ownership

If you are the new owner or manager of an existing business that hasn't changed it's name, reviews will not be removed. You can use owner responses to respond to previous reviews and clarify any changes/improvements to the services your business is providing.

Change in name

If you are the new owner or manager of an existing business that has changed its name, reviews may be removed if your business meets specific criteria.

Rebrand: Reviews can be removed from the listing if there's been a significant change in well known, distinct brand name changes. Hotels or fast food establishment that switch franchise affiliations or car dealers that specialize in a different makes of cars would qualify for review removal.

Name changes related to change in underlying services: For instance, a business that switches from Jade’s Chinese Garden Restaurant to India Palace Restaurant, or Al’s Sporting Goods Store to Performance Bike Repair, would qualify for review removal

Partners or other business affiliations that disassociate: For example, if Perkins and Rogers, Attorneys at Law becomes Perkins, Attorney at Law because Rogers has left the practice to form his own, all reviews would be detached. Note that all reviews would be removed, not just the ones that refer to a particular practitioner
Name changes that don't reflect core changes to the business's services aren't eligible for review removal. For example, if Dasha’s Dry Cleaner becomes Dasha’s Super Dry Cleaner, or JFK Limo Service becomes Super JFK Limo, reviews will remain in place.

Out of business
If your business closes, reviews will remain attached to the closed listing.

Physical location (address) move
If your business moves from one location to another and keeps the same business name, Google will generally move the reviews to the new location. There are some exceptions for businesses heavily tied to their locations, like hotels, golf courses or scenic attractions.

Submit a request for us to move reviews using this form. Currently this is only available for users of the new Google Places for Business dashboard, but we expect to expand its availability soon. I will update this post when it is available more widely.

Thanks,

Jade

Again this option is currently only open to listings that are in the NEW dashboard.

But we're making progress! Google is just coming out with one improvement after the other.
I'm a little dizzy trying to keep up with it all, but appreciative of all the work the team is doing!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

This is great

 

[CodyBaird]

YES! YES! YES! Holy #$% I didn't think this would ever happen. Huge news. I know a handful of businesses that were early adopters for Google reviews that were essentially penalized when they grew and had to move to a larger location. People to call....

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Cody,

My original post above was from 5/13 so 2 years ago. I'm not sure that option is still in the same place since help docs and support options have changed so much.

But reviews are still and were always in a different database so can be moved.

If nothing else you can use phone support for help on something like this as well.

 

[CodyBaird]

Whoops. I've been trying to review and catch up. Probably should take 5 more often so that I notice important details like - dates. haha

Thanks for letting the air out my tire! ; )

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks for letting the air out my tire! ; )

Oh sorry, didn't mean to do that at all Cody. Just didn't want you to waste time or be confused if that option is no longer where it was at the time of that post. Don't have time to check and am not sure.

So just double check before telling clients.
Might need to go through a decision tree to get there now.

 

[CodyBaird]

Gotcha

 

[Linda Buquet]

Cody, if I had a dollar for every time I got excited about something over the years at various forums and posted in a 2 year old thread without noticing the date - I'd be one rich woman by now!

However it did not help matters that I still had this as a STICKY at the top of the forum.
So if you see a post on top that says "New Option" then easy to think it's a new option right?

Sorry about that. My bad. I fixed this post so it's not stuck at the top like it's new news. I'm sure I have a bunch of others like that in various sub-forums. Too much info and can't keep up with everything.

 

[CodyBaird]

Don't apologize. It's funny. I'm a spazz.