{"id":741,"date":"2012-06-16T15:23:43","date_gmt":"2012-06-16T14:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/?p=741"},"modified":"2024-04-09T11:36:23","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T10:36:23","slug":"google-is-no-longer-optional-for-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/2012\/06\/google-is-no-longer-optional-for-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"Google + is No Longer Optional for Marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes : <\/span><\/span>

This article is no longer relevent as Google + accounts were discontinued in 2019 – it is here for historical purposes only.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was reading a blog at http:\/\/www.lawwebmarketing.com\/2012\/06\/google-is-no-longer-optional-for-law-firm-marketing-reviews-are-increasingly-important<\/a>\u00a0the other day that was reporting that people that leave reviews in Google local listings must now have a Google + account and be logged in when they are leaving the review.<\/p>\n

It struck me that while Google+ seems to be a common thing in the USA I can count on the fingers of one hand those people I know personally that have a + account. \u00a0Of course, being in the SEO field I know many people online that have one but the vast majority of those are not based in the UK (or even in Europe). \u00a0Once again this indicates that the changes to the search results are not always being thought through – yes, Google+ Local has replaced the well known Google Places listings but how many people are going to create an account just to leave a review?<\/p>\n

The problem for many small businesses is that, as our previous blog post on why testimonials count<\/a>,\u00a0 reviews and testimonials are important in convincing people to visit the site or to actually use the service or product that is being sold. \u00a0Get several good reviews and people will believe them and trust your business – for example I left a review for a local fimo supplier<\/a>\u00a0shop on \u00a0Qype recently and reading the reviews that others have given it seems that I’m not alone. \u00a0If you were looking for a craft shop would your views be infuenced when reading these reviews, especially if you then looked on their Google Local listing<\/a> and saw other reviews that were just as good?<\/p>\n

It’s interesting that the blog I referred to at the start of this article is aimed at Law Firms in the USA, I would say that much of the article also applies to any business with an online presence, and I fully endorse the comments and warnings about false reviews – people can often sense when something is false (and the search engines seem to be able to filter out false reviews) so these could well do you more harm than good when people see them.<\/p>\n

If you have an online business, or a business with a website, here in the UK I’d be interested in your answers to three questions :-<\/p>\n

1. \u00a0Do you ask for reviews from your customers \/ clients?<\/p>\n

2. If you get reviews do you display them on your website?<\/p>\n

3. Do you have a Google+ account yet?<\/p>\n

You can leave your answers in the comment box below – I’d love to hear from you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes : <\/span><\/span>This article is no longer relevent as Google + accounts were discontinued in 2019 – it is here for historical purposes only. I was reading a blog at http:\/\/www.lawwebmarketing.com\/2012\/06\/google-is-no-longer-optional-for-law-firm-marketing-reviews-are-increasingly-important\u00a0the other day that was reporting that people that leave reviews in Google local listings must now have a Google + account and be logged in when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-advice","category-marketing-2","category-seo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}