Our blog, D Brief, shares succint expert advice, trends, tips, and ideas for marketing communications tactics—focusing on print, Web, social media, and promotional products—from a corporate visual identity perspective. We welcome your thoughts so we can learn from each other.

Is Review Gating Allowed for Google Reviews?

Clients continually ask us for advice on best practices for getting customer reviews on their website. In addition, they need direction for getting customers to leave reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, Healthgrades, Angie’s List and more. Logically, businesses want to differentiate between “satisfied” and “not satisfied” customers. Companies want happy customers to visit public review sites and leave positive reviews. However, they prefer unhappy customers to visit internal webpages where grievances can be addressed. This practice is called review gating.

It makes sense that businesses do not want negative reviews building in the public eye. However, Google forbids the practice of review gating in their updated review policies. The policy itself states: “Don’t discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.”

Definition of Review Gating

Review gating is the process by which a review program previews a customer’s experience to find out if it was positive or negative. The program then only directs those with positive experiences to leave a review. Those with negative experiences receive a different call to action, such as a phone number or an email link to connect to the appropriate customer service representative.

How Does Google Penalize Review Gating?

For any business found to participate in review gating, Google will shut those reviews down. What does that mean exactly? If the company uses a 3^rd party review program that diverts people from leaving anything less than a 5-star review, Google will not count the reviews from that source. In some cases Google may remove all reviews, even those not collected through the 3rd party tool.

Why Is Google Taking A Strong Stance?

Google wants to protect consumer trust and authenticity. They want customers and potential customers to have access to truthful, unbiased information. Google feels that review gating infringes on the integrity of reviews.

Google believes that everyone comes out ahead by not allowing review gating. Firstly, businesses get authentic reviews to attract a customer base. Secondly, potential customers get reliable, truthful information to help select goods and services.

Maintain Your Reputation Management

While a business may want only 5-star reviews visible to potential customers, a few less than perfect reviews will not hurt your reputation. Why?

1. Authenticity – When a business has only 5-star reviews, readers suspect they are planted and not authentic customer experiences. No company is that good 100% of the time!
2. Responsiveness – When a company responds to a negative review quickly, and attempts to resolve the complaint professionally, that communicates responsiveness. It shows potential customers that your business cares and wants to make things right when something perceptively goes wrong.
3. Human – When a reader sees that the majority of reviews are 5-star, with only a few negative ones, they may think the problem lies with the negative reviewer, not the business. They often consider the reviewer to be confused, a complainer or have unreasonable expectations. If the company truly is at fault, but owns it and takes action, most readers are forgiving. We are all human after all.

At D Media, we offer a 3^rd party review program that minimizes review gating to improve your search engine results. As part of our SEO services, we guide your staff on best practices for building more reviews. As your business gets more reviews via the review tool, older reviews are pushed further down chronologically.

D Media’s SEO Services Help with Reviews

1. We monitor reviews on your Google My Business listing and help you reply to them quickly.
2. We contact you about any negative reviews to discuss appropriate responses and actions for minimizing their influence.
3. Furthermore, if a review is fake, inappropriate, or promotes a competitor, we can flag it to be reviewed by Google for removal. Only reviews that violate Google policy will be removed.

The Team at D Media Are Marketing Experts

We Help Companies with Blog and SEO Services

D Media provides Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) services to help your company with reviews. Not only do we strive to organically increase your business website’s search engine results, but we also implement marketing tools to help you improve the quantity of your reviews. Contact us to learn more about how we contribute to your Google traffic, find new customers and build your business.

Please follow and like us: