Restaurateurs have come to understand the importance of online reviews since the emergence of Yelp, Citysearch, Zagat, TripAdvisor, Urbanspoon, Gayot, etc. But the reach of online reviews has gotten far greater – literally making them hard to avoid – since search engines now serve up reviews along with local listings. Google itself has gotten into online reviews, so Google Local search results display reviews and stars from Google users, and a click through to a restaurant’s Google Place Page provides access to reviews pulled from other sources, including OpenTable, TripAdvisor, Zagat, Urbanspoon, and Citysearch. Similarly, Bing Local search results contain links to third-party reviews on most of the same sites and include Yelp (which Google no longer does); Yahoo Local also displays reviews by its users. “Most local directories have become really big review tools,” acknowledges John Jantsch, small business expert and founder of Duct Tape Marketing. “Also, businesses that are coming up strongly in local searches in many cases have enhanced listings and a lot of reviews. The volume of reviews is important to search engine rankings, too; it’s all meaningful.” Search engines favor accurate and complete business listings (see Restaurant Briefing Nov/Dec 2011 for more) – including online reviews from multiple sources – because robust listings are considered more useful, relevant, and valuable to those searching, which impacts search rankings favorably.

“There’s a lot of value in telling customers that, good or bad, you want their online feedback. It shows authentic interest.” – Matt McGee, Small Business Search Marketing

John joins many experts in counseling restaurateurs to become proactive about acquiring, monitoring, and managing online reviews. The first step is to determine where your customers are leaving reviews and which sites matter most. “Yelp is still the biggest game in town, but Google has the advantage of being many people’s homepage,” says Randy Kirk, president, Page1Listings.com. “We tell our clients that all relevant sites – like Insider Pages, Citysearch, Urbanspoon, etc. – matter and have followings.” (And, per above, reviews on these sites are often captured by local search engines.) It’s important to monitor niche sites for the restaurant industry that include those previously mentioned, plus perhaps some regional, local, or specialized sites like menupages. Good ways to discover them are to search restaurant + review; search your keywords (e.g.: French brasserie) + your locale on Google; and/or search your locale + restaurant local directories to see relevant sites. Also, suggests Matt McGee, Small Business Search Marketing, “From your listing on Google, go to your Place Page and look at the third-party reviews that exist there. Since so much search happens on Google, the review sites that Google references are the sites you should keep an eye on.” Make sure to claim your listings with review sites that are also directories. It’s then important to monitor what’s being said about your restaurant. Google Alerts will inform you of mentions on the web via email; Yelp has tracking tools for listed businesses. You can subscribe to RSS feeds from individual review sites, or employ paid tracking services, such as Trackur. YourBuzz is a free app from American Express OPEN that gives businesses a consolidated view of what their customers are saying across CitySearch, Yelp, Facebook, and other popular sites.

Randy acknowledges that all of this can be a little overwhelming and that the stakes are high when each customer could be a reviewer with power. But, he adds, “It’s a potential goldmine if you can get your review rankings in a good place. Restaurateurs should be asking how they can get themselves on the top of the list on Google Places, for example – with 100, 200, 300 positive reviews.” Experts agree that to do so, it’s important to ask customers to participate and there are many strategies to do so – from encouraging online feedback via your website and emailing (promptly) customers who have been in recently (including links to review sites); to putting review links on business cards, table tents, and receipts; to posting signs at the hostess station and simply asking guests to pick up their mobile devices to post a review on the spot. (Learn the review sites’ policies – if any – about soliciting reviews before undertaking a campaign. Yelp, especially, frowns on the practice of providing incentives for reviewers.) Matt advises that it’s not about pressuring customers to stuff some kind of online ballot box in your favor, but rather to communicate that you sincerely want to know about their experiences through these channels. And, as Randy points out, “Most importantly, if you’re doing a decent job of providing a good experiences to customers, those reviews will be mostly positive – outweighing and pushing to the bottom those that might be negative.”