Google Allowing SMB Response to Reviews

As I wrote over at SEL, Google is now permitting SMBs that have claimed their listings on Places to respond publicly to reviews that appear there — but only those reviews written by Google users.

Rather than “fairness,” as was the case with Yelp, my guess is that the objective here is higher engagement and to provide further incentives to sign up for Places and claim listings.

A nice aspect of all this is that Google offers some helpful advice to SMBs on how to respond to reviews — good and bad. For example:

1. Be polite and professional. You’re responding to one person, but the response is public. Keep your responses useful, readable, and courteous.
2. Keep it short and sweet. Users are looking for genuine responses, but not necessarily novels. Don’t say in twenty words what you can say in ten.
3. Be appropriate. Responses should comply with our local content policy.
4. Be thankful. A customer who has written a review has taken the time to invest in the success of your business.
   • Respond to happy reviewers when you have new or relevant information to share.You don’t need to thank every reviewer publicly. One response reaches to lots of customers, not just one.
   • Feedback is a chance to improve. If you’ve made a business improvement based on a review, thank the user and share the change. You don’t need to address every single complaint.
5. 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. Share a tip or something they might not know from their first visit.

One question is, to what degree business owners will discover the respond-to-reviews option and thus to what extent it will serve as a sign-up incentive (assuming my theory is correct). Clearly those already “registered” will get notification of the new capability.

In my mind this further makes the case for third party reputation tools that enable SMBs to efficiently see where people are writing reviews and to facilitate responses to those responses from a single “dashboard.”

Some of course see it as additional “evidence” that Google is “going after” Yelp. I don’t see this that way. I see it rather as a capability that Google believes will be useful and desirable to business owners.

Do you think SMBs will “care” and use this new feature of Google Places?