Why you should care about Google Five Star Ratings

Have you noticed that when you do a search, you pay more attention to the companies that have a higher rating?

It is a great edge to show a lot of high reviews when consumers are trying to determine what business they are going to choose when making buying decisions.

How can you easily increase your ratings?

What would happen if you could give your customers a link that would automatically allow them to give you a five-star review?

I’m in a networking group called The Go To Network, and it’s founder, Anton Cipri, provided this short little video to make it easy to capture a Five Star Rating from Google.

Google doesn’t show ratings on their search pages until you have five or more people that have given your business a rating. So it is critical to get cooperation from your customers to enhance the chance of you being chosen for a closer look by the consumer.

When you get the five 5-star ratings needed, don’t be alarmed if you show up as 4.8, as Google adjusts until you have 10 reviews.

Here are some tips from Google for responding to reviews:

Tips for responding to reviews

Business owner responses allow you to build relationships with customers, but they’re also public. When replying to your customers, keep the following guidelines in mind:

1. Be nice and don’t get personal. This isn’t just a guideline—it’s also a good idea as a business owner. It’s difficult to win an argument with a frustrated customer, and you want to avoid burning bridges. Keep your responses useful, readable, and courteous. In addition, responses should comply with our local content policy.
2. Keep it short and sweet. Users are looking for useful and genuine responses, but they can easily be overwhelmed by a long response.
3. Thank your reviewers. Respond to happy reviewers when you have new or relevant information to share. You don’t need to thank every reviewer publicly, since each response reaches lots of customers.
4. Be a friend, not a salesperson. Your reviewers are already customers, so there’s no need to offer incentives or advertisements. Tell reviewers something new about your business, or share something they might not have learned from their first visit.

If you believe that a Google review violates the posting guidelines, you can flag it as inappropriate by placing your cursor over the review and clicking the flag icon . Complete the form on the next page and click Submit.