Leave That Google Review Alone!

Your business is adored by its customers – but be careful with sharing their Google reviews.

Picture this…

Your business receives a glowing review from one of your adoring customers, so good in fact that as you sit atop your building overlooking the city below, you think to yourself – you couldn’t have written it any better.  The suns warming rays are shining thru a double-rainbow, trees are dancing, and the animals are all your friends now… you are in a very happy place indeed.

So after a few hours of basking in your glorious self, you scrape that review from Google and paste it to your website so everyone else can see your awesomeness.

Yep – I’ve been here before too.  No doubt, it’s a good place to be.

You should be proud that your customers thought enough about your business to slow themselves down and share their experience as a Google review.  This is certainly worthy of celebration!

However, did you know that you just diluted the marketing potential of that review by posting it on your website?  Yep – you did.  Moreover, if (when) Google sees that it has been duplicated on your website, they just might remove it from their index.

“Duplicate” being the operative word here.

While the practice of repurposing your wickedness (Wicked in a good way – it’s a New England thing) has been the standard for years, Google recently (last week actually) made the statement that duplication of their reviews would constitute “duplicate content” (See what Google has to say about it here) – for which they assess penalties, like reducing your ranking on their search engine.

So in effect – you just innocently broke the rules.  Don’t beat yourself up about it though; it’s not easy to keep up with Google’s twice-a-day changes to their algorithm – admittedly, even for the pros.

I suggest you take a good look at the testimonials and reviews you have shared on your website and think long and hard about the ones shared from Google.  Sometimes it’s best not to share…

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