Does anyone know of a free (non subscription) way of embedding Google Reviews into websites? One of my clients spends boatloads of money per year to have Reputation.com manage their reviews - and they provide an easy way to embed reviews into their sites. But, failing that, the only solution I’ve found are companies that provide a JS code that’ll do it for free…or pay them a subscription (~$120/year) to remove their branding.
Not sure if your clients realises this, but anyone, ANYONE, can leave a review for any business on Google. Don’t need to be a customer, don’t need to even have ever had contact with the business, they can just rock up on Google and leave a review.
Proper review sites work with the business to send out unique emails to customers encouraging them to leave reviews, so only actual customers can leave a review, that’s why most charge well for the service.
No business should go near Google for reviews. They shouldn’t encourage reviews on Google and certainly not embed reviews into their website.
Unless Google have changed things in the last year or two.
I know when I owned retail businesses I spent a stupid amount of time getting bad reviews that had been left by people who’d never used the store, pulled.
Google reviews should be removed. It’s a shocking system, absolutely no moderation or control and to get malicious reviews removed is near impossible. I’ve seen peoples businesses decimated by Google reviews.
Nope, Google hasn’t changed anything. In fact, they make it clear that they make it difficult to get reviews removed. But, it’s worked very well for one of my clients with dozens of locations, and I have another client who has a solid five-star rating with Google reviews - so they’d like them on their site. Key word is “their” site. I’m just the guy doing the coding on their behalf. Still, I tend to agree with your sentiment.
Sorry, wasn’t trying to preach there, came across that way a bit, just thought they were looking to Google to save paying a proper review company.
It’ll end in tears ;-)
I don’t disagree. ;-)
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