google-roibot

The alarm bells were going off today for dealers using ROI-BOT alerts.  It looks like Google engineers made a change to the Google reviews “counter” that shows on Google+ Local listings and in SERPs.   The number of reviews, for dozens of car dealers, were cut in half.  This was a great example why having data monitoring tools for all your online assets and vendors should be in the arsenal of all marketing managers.

As you can see, from the ROI-BOT “Reviews Overview” widget,  just the other day Morrie’s Mazda had 64 reviews on their Google+ Local listing but today the counter dropped to 34.  This drop in reviews is now being reflected in SERPs which for this dealer are shown THOUSANDS of times a month.

morries-mazda

Google Reviews Roulette

The good news is that all 64 reviews can be found on Morrie’s Mazda Google+ Local page, if you scroll through list user comments.  The bad news is that the lowered counts will negatively impact traffic generated by Google+ Local.  The reviews have not been deleted, it just seems that the counter is messed up.

Stay tuned for updates on this very critical issue impacting all business owners.  If you would like more information on how to monitor all your vendor and website metrics from a single dashboard, give our team a call.

 

About the Author

Brian Pasch is the founder of PCG companies. PCG provides customized marketing and training solutions for businesses that are committed to dominate their local market.