Google: Mentioning Tech Names in Reviews is Now a No-No. What to Do Right Now.

Within the past few weeks, Google quietly announced changes to how businesses are allowed to gather reviews via two key updates to its “Rating Manipulation” policy. These changes address some common practices that many businesses engage in, so home services businesses need to familiarize themselves with them and overhaul their in-house practices.

The short version: Google is putting more pressure on businesses that require or incentivize employees to collect reviews in a specific way.

That includes asking staff to hit review quotas or asking customers to include specific content in their reviews, including the name of a technician or employee and prewritten review content. Read on to learn what changed, why it matters, and what to do now to remain compliant.

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What Changed?

In Google’s Rating Manipulation policy, Google now says prohibited behavior includes:

• “Merchants requesting that staff solicit a certain number of reviews”
• “Merchants requesting that staff solicit reviews that include specific content, including content that identifies a staff member.”

Google does still allow businesses to ask for reviews, as long as the review reflects a genuine customer experience. According to the same guidelines, “We do allow merchants to: Solicit or encourage the posting of content that does represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review.”

What This Means for Businesses

This has several ramifications. The first of which being that Google might potentially remove or filter reviews that are deemed to be in violation of this policy.

Second, some local SEO professionals are reporting that reviews with named technicians may not be carrying the same visibility impact as reviews without employee names. So even if you have a 4.8 and 1200 reviews, if a lot of those reviews are mentioning technicians, you might be getting outranked by the guy across town with a 4.3 and 800 reviews if he doesn’t have a lot of reviews with tech names being included. In other words, you could still lose ground in the local map pack to a competitor with a lower rating and fewer reviews if Google is discounting a meaningful portion of your review profile.

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Is this fair or even reasonable on the part of Google? Not exactly.

Customers naturally mention employees by name when they have a great experience. They also do it when they have a bad one. But Google is not just looking at one review in isolation. Its main goal over the years has become to fight the prolific amount of spam in the Google local map pack (particularly in the home services industry, which has experienced a significant amount of fraud over the years).

At the end of the day, it’s looking for patterns. If a business has hundreds of reviews that mention technicians by name in a similar way, that can start to look less like normal customer behavior and more like a manipulated review program. That is the part businesses need to take seriously.

What to Do Now

If you’re engaging in any review-gathering practices, these are the things your business needs to do right now:

1. Remove “mention my name” scripts 86 any kind of script your technicians may be using in the home to gather reviews that ask the homeowner to mention them by name. Mentioning that a homeowner should leave a review (either for good or bad service) is still allowable, but any kind of “make sure you mention my name” discussion is off limits. Any pre-written or provided scripts also need to be discontinued.
2. Stop review quotas, contests, and incentives: Discontinue any kind of review incentives or gathering requirements or contests. Providing a great customer experience should still be a KPI for your team, but you’ll need to engage in other ways of measuring this outside of named mentions in reviews. Running CSAT surveys or other “after the call” satisfaction rating mechanisms should become the new norm for this.
3. Audit review request templates: Review any SMS, email, CRM template, dispatch software prompt, and in-app message your business may be using to request reviews. Remove any wording that asks customers to name their technician, reference a specific service, use certain keywords, or leave a specific rating.

Our Take: Focus on a Quality Customer Experience

Using review contests, quotas, and technician-name scripts has always been a band-aid for businesses. They may have worked for a while, but they also created risk, not only with platforms like Google or Yelp, but also with federal entites like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice.

Strive to provide a best-in-class customer experience and reviews will happen organically and in a way that that does not need to be gamed. Deliver strong customer service, show up on time and do what you say you’ll do, stand by your work and focus on quality, make it easy for customers to leave honest feedback, and measure service quality through channels your business actually controls.

That approach is safer for Google, safer for Yelp, and safer from an FTC/DOJ standpoint. It also builds a review profile that looks like what it should be: real customers describing real experiences. When all is said and done, reviews should reflect real customer experiences, not internal pressure campaigns.

Need Help Cleaning Up Your Review Management Strategy?

At Mediagistic, we help HVAC and home services businesses improve their digital marketing, local visibility, and online reputation without relying on tactics that can create problems later. If your review process needs a second look, get in touch with our team today.

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Eddie Childs is the VP of Growth Marketing for Mediagistic. His writing has been published by a range of websites and publications including Copypress.com, Jambase.com, NFLSoup.com, FootballNation.com, and Boating World, KnowAtlanta, Men’s Book, Cobb in Focus, TCL, Blush, Charged Electric Vehicles, Business to Business, and Catalyst magazines. Follow him on Twitter and connect with him on Linkedin.

Featured image via iStock