smx west 2011 - ratings, reviews & reputation: their growing impact on search

REVIEW SIGNALS & TECHNIQUES

Rhea Drysdale

Co-Founder, Outspoken Media

@rhea

REVIEW SIGNALS

Known signals from public records:

• Reviewer location

• Frequency of reviews

• Reputation scores

• Social network of user

• Content aspects

• Sentiment-ish

Google Assigns Reputation Scores to:

Reviewers

AND

Reviews

Per Reviewer Rating patent:“…people, products, advertisers and merchants”

REPUTATION SCORE OF USER’S FRIENDS

USER PERSONALIZATION

USER’S REVIEW HISTORY

Versus…

Or…

REVIEW CONTENT

Preference given to those with summaries and/or descriptions

FRESHNESS

USER’S OWN SOCIAL NETWORKS

What drives social results?

Friends on:• Gmail (with Google profiles)• Twitter • Flickr • Quora• Yelp• Friend’s websites (not shared, profile pull)

Search social beta: &tbs=frim%3A1 (or sidebar)

Aspects

Early screenshots from Mike Blumenthal and Bill Slawski show aspects have been refined over time.

Common Aspects

Common Aspect Sources

• Yahoo.com

• Citysearch.com

• InsiderPages.com

• Judysbook.com

• Niche local sites

Sentiment Analysis FLAWED!

SENTIMENT

After DecorMyEyes update, Google said they took out:

“Extremely poor user experience”

No measurable result from the update.

Details:googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html

KEYWORDS?

Filtered from appearing on Place Page

FUTURE SIGNALS

• Improved sentiment analysis? Increased filtering of data sources and signals for irregularly high negative responses (DecorMyEyes)

• Transaction verification with services like Mint.com and SpendGo

QUESTIONS

Do you need reviews to rank in local?

No, but…

Reviews add relevant content and count as social indicators.

Google’s “Related places” on a review-free Place page will draw user’s eyes and potentially clicks drawn to:

Do you need to use hReview?

No, but…

Using hReview and structured markup helps Google correlate your pages with places mentioned.

Can also add rich snippets to the SERPs, which may improve conversions.

More on hReview microformat

What?

Open standard for distributed reviews.

Aims for simple properties common to multiple products, objects and services.

• More on hReview:microformats.org/wiki/hreview

• Implementing hReview with Wordpress:yoast.com/implement-hreview-wordpress-theme/

Ratings

• Use microdata, microformat or RDF markup.

• Google assumes 1 (worst) to 5 (best) rating scale by default.

• Can use anything to classify rating,

Test your rich snippets!

google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

More on reviews (go to the source):google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=146645

SOLICITING REVIEWS

According to Yelp on 3/8/11 @SMX!

• Talk about the site where you’d like a review, e.g. Yelp.

• Use that site’s services and offers to incentivize reviews.

• Create great content, services, products that users will want to review.

• Ta da!

Other methods…

Check with your ecommerce solution!

REVIEW SERVICES

CASE STUDY

ORM Problem Scope

• Very negative review appearing above the fold in the SERPs

• Negative source had optimized the page and built internal links to it

SEO Strategy1. Establish baseline

2. Audit existing reviews

3. Manage fake reviews & conflict of interests

4. Create a testimonials page and strengthen internal/external backlinks

5. Solicit testimonials through exit interviews

6. Develop and promote off-site content

7. Develop and publish video testimonials

8. Publish testimonials and bulk up directories

Results1. Website2. Website3. Website4. Website5. Niche directory6. Niche directory7. Citysearch8. Social profile9. Social profile10.Press mention

THANK YOU

Contact:rhea@outspokenmedia.com

Follow:@outspokenmedia | @rhea