If you’ve searched for your business or another business on Google in the last few weeks, you may have noticed an addition in your “Knowledge Panel”.
If you don’t know what the “Knowledge Panel” is, here’s an example (graphic):
Google is now showing “Reviews from the web” as part of your business listing. This is good news if you have great reviews from other places, such as Facebook, yp.com, TripAdvisor or sometimes even reviews on your own website (Yelp reviews are not included, which makes many businesses very happy). It’s not great news, however, if you have received poor reviews around the web.
What You Should Do Now: Claim and verify your business listings
This latest update from Google will give people an even more comprehensive picture of how you stack up against the competition. Deserved or not, the new composite of your reviews has already been shown to play a big role in influencing purchasing behavior, especially with local businesses.
If you haven’t claimed and verified your listings on relevant third-party review sites, now is the time to get busy. Doing this will allow you to edit and update your business information and respond to reviews you may have already gotten.
You should also ask for customer reviews, because getting more (and better) reviews will help your business’s indexing and become more prominent in Google searches.
If you have more questions or advice about the update to the Knowledge Panel, please comment!