Review Click Through Rate & Nearby Now DoorWay Pages

[cleverlyengaged]

I have a client that has used NearbyNow for 5 years and has thousands of reviews published on the platform. These could also be considered first party reviews.

In the past year, there were 60 reviews published on NearbyNow. Whereas the platform has helped request/generate 89 reviews on Google.

Do any of you have insights on the following for a service area business in the home service/contractor industry?
1. Google review click through rates for SMS and email (percentage of reviews requested from customers vs those that left a review)
Note that my client has a total review CTR of 15% on average for each month of 2023. The Google review CTR is lower, at 9.5%

2. Alternatives to NearbyNow that allow for 100% of review requests to be sent to Google.

3. NearbyNow also creates heat maps and location pages every time a review is earned in a small city. I have been concerned that these could be seen as doorway pages. Below are some stats on how effective these local service area pages are:

Service Area Landing Page Statistics:

• 52 pages out of 141 total have no conversions
• 35 pages have more than 30 visits for all of 2023

Ultimately, they are considering a different review generation platform.

 

[CianC]

In the past year, there were 60 reviews published on NearbyNow. Whereas the platform has helped request/generate 89 reviews on Google.

The Nearby Now review process is request based, so the volume of reviews received is governed by the number of requests sent. Your client may have tailed off in their engagement: a drop in requests would lead to a drop in reviews received. If you want to drill into the response rate, you can checkout the clients Review Requests and Completed Reviews report for this year, vs. past years, and see whether there has been a material drop off in response rate or a drop off in opportunities (what we call review requests).

2. Alternatives to NearbyNow that allow for 100% of review requests to be sent to Google.

Sending 100% to Google would end up with dropping motivated reviewers on the floor.

A customer that is both satisfied, and willing to take time from their day to say something about that in a review, is a very valuable asset. We've setup our review process with the option to send reviewers straight to Google, if the client wants to prioritize Google reviews *and* if the reviewer already has a Google identity they can review with, they are already logged in, and everything is lined up for them to leave a review without any friction.

The fact of the matter is, though, that some people are not setup to leave reviews on Google. Some choose not to do it even if they can. We would never recommended simply throwing away the opportunity to still get a review from people who, for whatever reason, can't or won't leave a review on Google.

We see a high response rate from those people. People who want to leave a review, but who can't or won't leave it on Google. We see valuable reviews coming from those folks that provide great information about the company and its services that can help inform people's decisions.

We've never thought it a good idea to corner people into one type of review, and to just turn them away if they can't or won't leave one there.

3. NearbyNow also creates heat maps and location pages every time a review is earned in a small city. I have been concerned that these could be seen as doorway pages.

Nearby Now doesn't have access to client sites, and doesn't create any pages on their sites. We do recommend city pages for the active cities where there are checkins (reflecting work done for actual customers, including optional photos or videos) and reviews (reflecting the customers thoughts about the service received). All wrapped up in compliant schema, including location schema that provides strong local search signals across the service area, not just stacked up on top of the verified business locations.

But ultimately, the pages are added by the client (or an agency acting on their behalf).

These aren't (and aren't perceived) as doorway pages because the content is just the type of content Google's policies have always sought to encourage. First person content created by the employees of the company, talking about the work performed. And created by the customers, describing their actual experiences with the company in question. Relevant content, because what could be more relevant about a company than the details of actual jobs done for actual customers. And real evaluations from the actual customers of the work performed. Local, representing (slightly obfuscated for privacy) the locations of actual work performed and actual customers served. Rich, including photos and videos of the work performed. And auditable, since every checkin is associated with a company user that the company can identify if needed, and every review comes as a result of a unique, one-time use request sent via an email address or cell phone number of the customer themselves.