Value of Citations That Pull on Google+ Local Page

[Colan Nielsen]

Has anyone done any testing lately on what type of impact citations have when they are actually appearing as a live link on a Google+ Local page under "Reviews from around the web"?

Would a business with a low number of citations, but has 3 of them pulling on their Google+ Local page have a better shot at ranking over a listing with a ton of citations but none are pulling on the Google+ Local page?

I'm going to keep a close eye on this.

What have you observed?

 

[Nyagoslav]

When Google adds links in the "Reviews from around the web" section, it means that it believes these pages feature some sort of review/feedback/opinion sentiment. This belief might be based on a number of factors, including (IMHO):

- Historic information about such sort of sentiment being expressed on a large number of similar type of pages of the same domain. For example, pages of the type http://www.domain.com/cityname/businessname have history of being review pages, so Google might easily assume that all pages of this type are such.

- Some sort of review HTML mark-up (not necessarily hReview or rich snippets).

- Just based on the word usage in the content (that's where the descriptive terms come from).

So overall, I don't think these have any special privileges in terms of how important of citations they are. However, as these have influence on the descriptive terms related to a listing, and descriptive terms have influence on the rankings of a listing, this potentially gives them some added importance.

Hope this helps

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Thanks Nyagoslav! I have been noticing that the majority of businesses I have observed that are ranking have 3rd party reviews pulling on the G+ Local page. That's why I asked in the first place.

Have you ever come across any tactics that a business owner could do to increase the chances of having some 3rd party reviews pull on the G+ Local page?

I guess the obvious one would be to ensure that your clients are reviewing your business all over the web and not just Google.

Awesome stuff!

 

[Nyagoslav]

Making sure your listings feature accurate information + encouraging reviews are the two most obvious and immediate ones. Encouraging people to express publicly their opinion about your products/services is a more broad one. This could include anything from an "@AwesomePartyPants offers the most awesome party pants in the world!!!" to a whole article covering the specialties in your menu. There are many cases of "Reviews from around the web" links pointing to blog articles, or even general content, which Google determined might feature some specific sentiment.