Everyone's always trying to second guess the search engines in order to position themselves higher and outfox the competition. There are many factors that we see are important but an area that we're starting to see some great movement is reputation. The search engines and in particular Google are staring to place an increasing amount of significance on reputation.

The reason for this is firstly, they see review sites as a possible threat to their search. So, bringing an element of reputation to a Google users experience would negate their need to search a review site directly and therefore put out a potential long term threat from the review sites.

We know that if you get over 40 reviews within a 12 month period on either trust pilot or the review centre then Google will show your star rating on your search listing.

What we also know is that click through rate (CTR) is not just important for Adwords but it’s also a factor on the natural rankings, if your listing has a star rating then your CTR will improve. Therefore, your reputation can have a direct impact on your natural rankings.
If you're a user of Adwords of course the star rating will also improve the CTR on your Ad thus driving down the cost per click, which is good news!

So, a good reputation is key. Real clients giving real feedback but how can you fend against bad reviews? We have the solution. We’re currently developing a new product called ‘positivity’ which we’re looking to roll it out over the summer, and the best bit? It will be available to our clients at no additional cost!