Verified Google Places business owners can now publicly respond to user reviews on their businesses’ Place Page. This new feature further bridges the divide between Places and its biggest competitor, Yelp.
For business owners, the ability to publicly respond to reviews — positive or negative — can be a great way to engage with customers, correct or address certain issues, and, when necessary, set the record straight. Yelp(
) introduced a similar feature last year, and business owners and users have responded positively to the ability to interact.
In order to leave a response, owners first need to verify their identity with Google(
) by going to the Google Places main page and claiming their listing.
After that, owners can respond to comments following these instructions. Google has also put together a handy set of tips and guidelines for responding to reviewers.
The Yelp-ification of Google Places
Google continues to make iterative changes to Google Places and its overall Google Maps(
) ecosystem. In the process, it is building up a strong competitor to heavyweight Yelp. In addition to the new owners response feature, Google Maps for Android() is now more like Yelp on the mobile end, making it easier for users to find nearby venues in different categories and easily access things like phone numbers, hours of operation and user reviews.
As the two services approach parity in terms of features, community increasingly becomes the distinguishing factor. Although Google has millions upon millions of users, it hasn’t managed to build the sort of social relationships that has helped make Yelp such a success.
This is why it’s crucial that business owners can now respond to user reviews. Owners are going to be more likely to be plugged into the responses, and the community comments and reviews from Google Places, if they can respond and partake in conversations themselves.
Although a late entrant into the mobile business listings/review space, Google has remained agile and hasn’t been afraid to push out updates across its platform, both on the desktop and on mobile. We would love to see Google offer a mobile-optimized dashboard of sorts for business owners to track reviews, leave responses, and also post updates about specials or upcoming events directly to their Place Page.
Are you excited about the ability to respond or interact with business owners on Google Places? Do you think Google has a shot against Yelp?
Hat-Tip to Mashable.com
