The value of valuing
reviews

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo, for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the infallible, the illustrious, I don't have any other adjectives, Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at Wix.

Crystal Carter:

Hello there SEOs and internet people and friends and colleagues and wonderful people listening to the podcast.

Mordy Oberstein:

I reversed it there. I put your name first and then your title.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, yes.

Mordy Oberstein:

On accident.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, okay. That's okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

I realized midway through, I'm like, "I forgot your title."

Crystal Carter:

Remix, that's all right.

Mordy Oberstein:

We're all about the titles.

Crystal Carter:

Yes, yes. No, we're talking about reviews today, not titles.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, my mistake.

Crystal Carter:

Different topic.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm looking at the wrong podcast deck.

Crystal Carter:

Different one.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm sorry.

Crystal Carter:

We'll talk about titles another time.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm with the program. I'm with the program.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, we'll be fine.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm with the program.

Crystal Carter:

Have you left a review of it?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, don't forget to leave a review because we're talking about reviews. But anyway, we're not there yet. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where we have an entire suite of amazing reporting insights from bot logs to blog traffic, to user behavior to eComm analytics. If you're using Wix and you're not digging into all that Wix Analytics has to offer you, then you're missing out and that's not a sales pitch, that's truth.

Crystal Carter:

It's just facts, people.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's just facts.

Crystal Carter:

Just facts.

Mordy Oberstein:

Anyway, great show for you. Today, as Crystal mentioned, we're talking about reviews. The wonderful, hard to garner user reviews and their role.

Crystal Carter:

That's right, that's right. I mean, five stars for you for that intro, Mordy, I would just like to say five star.

Mordy Oberstein:

Rate this intro. Thank you for rating this intro.

Crystal Carter:

I should rate every segment.

Mordy Oberstein:

I rank number one in the local pack for intros near me.

Anyway, we're talking about user reviews and their value in SEO, repurposing reviews, wear review snippets, show up in the Google ecosystem because they're kind of all over the place, plus BrightLocal's Claire Carlile stops by to share her strategy to get people to leave you those ever powerful reviews. We'll also dive deep into aggregate review pages. Thin, not thin. Great, not great. We got a deeper thought for you all about aggregate review pages and if they have any real value for your website. And as always, we have the snappiest of news for you and who you should be following on social or more SEO awesomeness. Episode 15 of the SERP's Up podcast is off the tarmac.

I like off the tarmac. It's good, right?

Crystal Carter:

Off the tarmac.

Mordy Oberstein:

I was writing that for the intro. It's like one of the only parts of this podcast, little behind the scenes that I script out. Off the tarmac, that's how we're going to do this.

Crystal Carter:

That's right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Leave a review for the end part of the intro there, off the tarmac. Five starts if you liked it.

Crystal Carter:

Four and a half.

Mordy Oberstein:

Four and a half. Okay. I feel, by the way, this is the episode we could shamelessly plug, please leave a review for the podcast, wherever you're listening.

Crystal Carter:

Oh my God. Please leave review. Please leave a review of the podcast. Wherever you enjoy podcasts, please leave us a review.

Mordy Oberstein:

I enjoy podcasts in my ears. Where do you enjoy them?

Crystal Carter:

Yes, that's true. Also ears, ears are good. Yes.

Mordy Oberstein:

Five star review for ears. This got off the rails already.

Crystal Carter:

Oh my gosh.

Mordy Oberstein:

User reviews. What are we talking about Crystal?

Crystal Carter:

Okay, so when we're talking about reviews, today we're talking about user rated reviews, getting them what we think about them, why they matter, why they're important. When Google talks about reviews, they also have their product review updates, which are not around user generated reviews. They're more about the content that people make when they say, "Oh, I've got this blog and I've reviewed this pair of headphones or something." That's a different kind of review. Today what we're talking about are user generated reviews and basically we're talking about how you can think about them. Now, Google gets really involved with user generated reviews in a few different ways. Probably the most relevant to most people who are listening to this podcast is in Google Business Profile. And Google Business Profile, they actually have some good information about how to manage user generated reviews. So they say, remind customers to leave reviews. Let them know that it's quick and easy to leave reviews. You shouldn't necessarily incentivize, but it's good to remind people that it's there.

So you can say, leave a link and at the bottom of your email that you send out to them after they've completed a transaction. Or you can say, leave a link at the bottom of your email footer, or you can put a little sticker on your door that says, review us on TripAdvisor, or review us on Google Business Profile, that sort of thing. Reply to reviews to build customer trust. That is absolutely great advice and it's a really good way to make sure that users know that if they leave a review that you are someone who's going to be engaging with them. They also say value all reviews. So again, not every review is going to be five stars. Some of them are going to be four and a half, some of them might be a little bit lower.

And basically, you just want to make sure that you're checking in on all of those reviews. One of the great things about reviews is that they show up not just in Google Business Profile, but they can also show up on products. They can also show up for your shop overall, for instance, if you're working on Google Merchant Center. And if you're using things like TripAdvisor or RevU or Trustpilot or things like that, you might also see reviews there. Facebook will also give you review information and things like that. But reviews offer a great amount of social proof for the value of your company and the value of your services. And so making sure that you're thinking about how you're getting those reviews and how you're managing those reviews can be really, really important to moving the needle both with ranking and also with building your brand.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's amazing. I don't know where to start with this first off. Yeah, the thing for me about reviews you've comprehensively covered in a minute, which is amazing in its own right, that gets a five star review right there too. You get a five star review and you get a five star review.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you.

Mordy Oberstein:

But reviews show up everywhere in the ecosystem. So we're probably going to get and talk about ranking factors and where that comes in to Google ranking you in local packs and the local finder and how reviews factor into all of that. But leave that aside just for a second. Reviews are so important obviously to your business because there's social proof that what you offer is good. By the way, great point that not all the reviews are going to be 100% five star reviews. And that's actually a good thing because when I see all five star reviews, I think fake reviews.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Exactly, exactly. And sometimes the one star reviews are nothing to do with whether or not something is good. Sometimes it's like, "Oh, I gave this laptop one star because I spilled yogurt all over it and it didn't work after that." It's like, I think that's user error. That they didn't necessarily-

Mordy Oberstein:

I was not happy with the quality of the packaging and wrapper. You know what I'm doing with the wrapper? I'm throwing it out anyway. So I don't really care.

Crystal Carter:

So I always check the top reviews and I always check the bottom reviews as well. And if the bottom reviews I'm like, ah, that's not going to apply to me, or oh, okay, I'll take that into account or whatever, then that's fine. But yeah, absolutely, pay attention to those.

Mordy Oberstein:

By the way, if you're looking like, oh, I do have negative reviews, if that's the negative review that you're getting and someone's going to look at it, which I do, I think everybody kind of does, if it's a nothing burger, it's a nothing burger. Don't fret. But reviews show up, they're in structured data markup, they're kind of everywhere. And it's one of the things that Google, because again, Google wants to show you that what you're getting is, as a user, is a quality result. And it's one of the easy ways that Google can clearly show the user that what we as in Google are offering you is great. So Google uses those reviews. So they're just everywhere.

Crystal Carter:

Right, absolutely. And if you look up your business and your business name, you'll often see multiple websites that are showing the reviews and you'll often see different things are either going there. And the point that Google was talking about, about responding to reviews is really important because it shows that you're present and that you're engaging with your customers. And even if there's a nothing burger review, even if you're like, "Thank you very much for your insights, we'll take that to the team" or something, that's better than nothing. I've seen conversations where a customer wasn't happy about something and the company came back and said, "Well, we've adjusted this or we've improved that." And the person said, "Oh, thank you." That can be really good and that can help build trust. And that can also show any potential customers that if something does go wrong, you're the kind of business that will help them to address it.

So I think that reviews are something that is really useful for businesses of all sizes. And certainly, as a reviewer, I've spoken a lot recently about how I am a level six Google Guide, now. I have stock. I'm just saying. Anyway, as a level six Google Guide, one of the things that I find really important is to make sure that I review businesses that I think are really, really valuable that I really enjoy. And even sometimes if I wasn't able to make a purchase at the place, but I had a great experience at the place, it's something that I really, really value. And I've seen with clients when I've been working client side that when they have more reviews, they seem to see more visibility on local pack. And this is something that's been a little bit of a debate amongst SEOs as to whether or not that affects Google Business Profile rankings.

But what I've seen from working with clients is that when they have more reviews, they get better traffic to their website. But what I've also seen is that sometimes, as a user, if I'm looking for something, sometimes the reviews will show up in the search. So if I'm searching for maybe vegan donuts and the website or the profile for the bakery doesn't have vegan donuts, but there's a review that says vegan donuts, sometimes it shows up on there. And again, there's some debate about whether or not that's something that there's some debate about whether or not other people have seen that. But I've definitely seen that in the wild.

Mordy Oberstein:

I've definitely seen the local pack pulling in reviews, snippets into the local pack. So Google is taking those snippets of reviews would mean like when we say reviews are everywhere, it's not the stars, it's actual the words that people are leaving and throwing it into the local pack. So curious if Google, another value of reviews is, does it give Google semantic understanding of what you do and who you are? I don't know. It's a little bit hard to do that because the reviewer doesn't necessarily leave that kind of wording in the review. It might say this was great. So that's not going to be semantically relevant. But many times they do.

Crystal Carter:

Well, what's interesting is as a Google Guide, this I think is really important that people think about and people engage with the Google Guide system. There are millions of people doing the Google Guide system. And basically what Google Guides does is when you leave a review, you get more points as a Google Guide. So you can move up to level seven if you have more words in your review. Also, if you add a photo to your review, they say, what is this? Is this a hamburger? Is this a hot dog? Is this a pizza? Which part of the menu is that? So Google Guides people, Google guides their Google Guides to leave the kinds of reviews that they expect to see, particularly in Google Business Profile reviews.

So I think that when you are thinking about the kinds of reviews you might be getting and you are thinking about the kinds of reviews, you might be... What did they say? They said recommending or reminding. Reminding people to leave. Then also you want to think about how Google is actually guiding people through that review process.

Sorry, if I can say one more thing. But during the last year I've been talking a lot about visual search and Google has been using a lot of the images from Google Guides for their visual search thing. So for instance, if you take a picture of a hamburger and you put near me, then Google will search their Google Guides photos and the reviews that they've had from Google Business Profile to surface content that's from businesses that serve that kind of thing. So thinking about making sure that you have things that are review worthy and you have imagery that is review worthy within your establishment can also help you to increase the kinds of reviews that you get for your business.

Mordy Oberstein:

Totally. And all of that information, whether it be simply because people are leaving that information other people are looking at, or Google is in the Symantec web, is using it to sort of contextualize and understand who you are, what you do and how well you do it is super important. You might want to think about when you're asking people to leave reviews, to sort formalize it in a way or construct it in a way where you're sort of guiding them towards leaving a more specific kind of review. So if let's say it's a restaurant, put it in, let us know what you thought of the restaurant, the service, what was your favorite dish? And then people will tell you, "Yeah, I really enjoyed this," whatever, whatever dish that you have. You're trying to nudge them along to be a little more specific in that review, which is a better quality to review and offers a little bit more teeth of semantically for Google to grab onto.

But I want to jump back really quickly to the whole ranking factor thing.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Our reviews are ranking factor. Now I know there's a bunch of debate as you mentioned about it. But on the side that says that reviews do, and just keep this in mind, the local pack when you search for pizza near me and there's a big box there and there's one, two, three businesses listed in there, is a separate algorithm than the normal Google algorithm. I want to say normal, the general Google algorithm. If indeed reviews are a part of that, that's a major thing because you're only talking about three listings in there.

And if reviews are a major factor, it's not something to ignore. Is it not, first off, what do you lose? Secondly, if it is, it's a major part of getting visibility online and it's not just random people saying reviews are a ranking fact. There's people like Darren Shaw who we'll talk about more later, Joy Hawkins. And there's studies. For example, Joy Hawkins recently did a study, we'll link to it in the show notes. I think Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable covered it, maybe on Search Engine Land showing that businesses that have more than 10 reviews tend to rank better than businesses less than 10 reviews in the local pack.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. And Darren Shaw shared, he has an article on the Wix SEO hub, why Google reviews are important for local businesses. And he shared a report from 2001 about local pack ranking factors and he found that reviews contributed 17% of the time to ranking in Google Business Profile.

Mordy Oberstein:

It seems like there's, not say a consensus, but there's a broad understanding by a lot of really smart local SEO folks that reviews factor in.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. And as you say, it's a good thing to do anyway.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes. It's like what do you lose? With that though, we did talk about how you actually encourage people to leave you those reviews because it's a little bit awkward. I don't want to ask them. How do you actually go about doing that? So for you, for your review health, we have local search expert over from BrightLocal who's one of the major local SEO platforms. She the one, she's the only Claire Carlile and she's here to help you understand how you can encourage people to write reviews. Take it away Claire.

Claire Carlile:

So we use reviews as consumers to help us decide which product, which service, which organization or which business to choose over another. So as a business or an organization, we're probably going to want to encourage people to leave reviews. So here are a few things to think about. First of all, ask yourselves, are you ready? Is your business ready to start to get an influx of reviews? Is your product or service ready? Are there any preexisting issues? Because it might be a good idea to iron those out before you start getting negative reviews based on those. So you can have a look at your existing review corpus. So say for example, you might look at Google Business Profile reviews, have a little look at the place topics that Google is pulling through for your business and then work out what those are saying about you.

If you've got phrases like professional service or very thorough, then that's great. If you have got place topics like disgusting or dirty, then you could probably do with having a little look at those and dealing with those before you get a big influx of reviews. And then you need to think about where you're actually needing those reviews. What type of reviews on what type of sites are you trying to target? So we can think about what shows in our Google Business Profile. Well, first of all, we've got Google Reviews. But secondly we also have sometimes reviews being pulled in from other platforms, say for example Facebook or it could be niche specific review sites in your vertical. So also have a little look for your brand name in Google and have a look to see what is on page one and page two in terms of reviews for your business. You might need to target reviews in those places as well.

And don't forget, we might want first party reviews, but we probably will, that we can use as testimonials across all sorts of pages on our website. We can use them on our marketing materials, our social channels, and we can use them to display in our bricks and mortar establishments. And if we're trying to get reviews for a particular product, if we get reviews just for that product, we can use them to mark up our product schema to get some nice visibility in the serp. So number three, what makes a good review? Well, in my mind, an ideal review is positive I sentiment because obviously that's what we would like and it's rich in terms of content. So it uses the name of the service or the product and it uses any of the attributes that you'd like to be associated with your business.

Ideally, it would have photos as well if possible. So number four, we actually need to ask for reviews. If you're going to leave it to chance, it's likely you're going to get fewer reviews. And also the ones that you do get could quite possibly be negative because it does seem to me that it's people that have an extreme experience of a product or service or business that tend to leave those reviews. So if you ask everyone, then you are more likely to get a fair balance of the reviews. Now, how and where? Well you need to make it easy and you need to offer options. It does depend on the type of service or product you're providing on the journey of the customer. So make sure that you're asking the right people at the right time and you should automate the process where possible. But try and incorporate some customer service feedback and input before you send out the review request.

So say for example, you have had lots of people staying at your hotel for the weekend, you know that perhaps some of them had some issues, then why don't you deal with that first before you blanket send out a generic email to all of those people. You need to make sure that those are personalized for the people that you are sending them out to.

And then finally, we need to monitor and reply because new and potential customers are going to read your review responses. So this is your chance to let them know that even if a review might be a bit negative in sentiment, that you are actually a good business and it's also your chance to turn an unhappy customer into a happier customer. And don't forget to use those reviews for business intelligence. Positive and negative themes, positive and negative sentiment can all be pulled out to help feed into your business to fix and improve your products and services. Don't just make the review process just ticking boxes.

And then bonus tip, monitor your competitor review corpus. The place topics are an easy place to monitor. What are the positives of people's experiences and what are the negatives and how can you use that information to help you plan your own product and service delivery as well as your marketing materials?

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much Claire. That was really amazing and I totally agree. You definitely want to make the process frictionless. You want to make this easy and smooth and fun, for lack of a better word. Don't offer them money or gifts and exchanges against Google guidelines, but you want to make it as nice of experience as possible.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, absolutely. I think yeah, add some joy to it. The other thing that she also talked about, which I think is something that I've definitely seen is display your reviews. So this is something I've seen in a few different ways and something I always recommend is there's an app for instance called Elfsight that allows you to show your reviews on your website. There's also, sometimes you can embed your TripAdvisor reviews or your Trustpilot reviews or whatever on your website. And very often, in my experience anyway, if you display your reviews on your website, you're much more likely to get more reviews for your website or your business when you do that. I highly advise making a reviews page where you showcase the collection of reviews of various different things.

Mordy Oberstein:

Which goes back to repurposing reviews. It's a great thing. I don't know if we actually mentioned it. We didn't, oh my goodness. But repurpose your reviews. Put them in tweets, put them on this page or that page, here, there and everywhere.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely. So yeah, Claire talks about displaying them in your business, online, all over the place. It's absolutely true. You should totally do that because sometimes it brings more reviews. Somebody says, "Mordy who is working at the register was super helpful to me the other day."

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, he was super helpful. He's a very helpful fellow.

Crystal Carter:

And somebody's like, "Yeah, he was really great."

Mordy Oberstein:

Handsome too. Reviews beget reviews. And speaking of reviews, ever get to a page that reviews a product? Say it reviews the best microwaves and it has heard just a quick list of various products i.e. microwaves, with maybe their price and star rating. Google seems to hate them these days, but do they have value? Here's a deep thought on aggregate product review pages. By the way, I feel like we're going to have a little bit of a debate here. So I'm just going to ring the bell right here, ding, ding, ding.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, it's on Mordy.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's on, because I hate these pages. I was talking to Rebecca Berbel from over at Oncrawl and we're like, "Yeah, we hate those kind of pages." I mentioned we're going to cover this. She's like, "Yeah, I hate." She's also a big content person. But you'll like them. So let's start with that.

Crystal Carter:

So I like these pages because I don't having to go to 25 different pages to see what's going on. I like a page where it's like best microwaves or something and then I can see 20 different microwaves and they're like review, no cost, et cetera. And I can compare them very, very quickly. I like that. I can get in, if I see the reviews, a general trend of the reviews and I can go off and get more details after I've made a short list.

Mordy Oberstein:

I get that and I get the idea, okay, you go to a page and say it again, best microwaves and all they have there is 20 of these boxes to have the name of the product, the picture of the product, the rating, and a whole bunch of affiliate links for themselves. So that to me, I guess is why part of the, I guess bias that I have against these pages. Because I know what's going on here. You're just trying to get your fund. I am all for affiliates. Do not take me the wrong way. I am all for affiliates earning their keep, but I also feel it should be value to the user and I understand why somebody will look at that as value. And I think the lesson we're going to walk away from this is different intents, different strokes for different folks. You have to know your audience and there might be an audience for this, although Google doesn't seem to think so. But anyway.

Crystal Carter:

Maybe I'm an army of one, who knows? But I think also maybe there's room for both. So maybe there's room for putting a TLDR of the reviews at the top in say a table for instance, and then maybe get into the details further on that sort of thing. Because for those of us with short patience, short attention spans, I want the Cliff notes.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm all for that. But as a content snob, I want to know that you put some kind of effort into this and you actually... Because, okay, what tells me that this rating that you put there is not just because that's the affiliate link giving you the most money. It's the content. You've contextualized that rating you went through and you told me all the great things and all the bad things and all the mediocre things about this microwave. And now I feel like, okay, I can trust that four star rating. So I challenge you. Crystal Carter, how do you know that that four star rating, five star rating is good unless you see some contextualization around it?

Crystal Carter:

Here's my question, here's my counter question. How is this different from the Google shopping page? You go to a Google shopping page and you type in best microwaves, they give you a list of a bunch of best microwaves, they give you a list of best ratings, they've got all the star ratings there and you can scan through all of those and those are all links going off to somewhere. And I'm just like, how is this different?

Mordy Oberstein:

Counterpoint. When you go to Google shopping, you're going to actually buy the thing. You've already researched the thing, you already know what you're doing. You just kind of need a general understanding of what you're looking at. When you're looking for best microwave, it's an informational commercial, whatever intent, you're looking to learn more. And you just listing the product and a picture with affiliate links and a rating doesn't teach me anything.

Crystal Carter:

I don't want to learn about microwaves, I just want hot food.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're missing out.

Crystal Carter:

I don't want to spend three years reading about the ins and outs of microwaves.

Mordy Oberstein:

That a good point, though. That I agree with you, right? Because a lot of these things that are ranking for best microwaves, these product review pages, they have buyer guides, they're really kind of prolific and they're really good. But sometimes, let's say I've already read one in those pages and I'm diving a little bit deeper. Now I just want to go back, I want to get a quick review of what I looked at or what was there. I don't want all of that. Maybe you make a good point in the sense that you ever go to a recipe page, you all have, and there's like 400 words, 4,000 pages to scrolls, folds, just to get to the recipe.

Crystal Carter:

I went for a walk in the park and the leaves were falling and the colors were amazing and there was a butterfly. And this butterfly really reminded me of my grandmother.

Mordy Oberstein:

Meat Loaf. It reminded me of Meat Loaf. Not the food, the musical artist. At one time in a meatloaf contest, I had a wonderful tuna sandwich. So here's my recipe for the best tuna fish a sandwich.

Crystal Carter:

I would do anything to get to the end of that review.

Mordy Oberstein:

Sometimes tuna fish sandwiches in the mirror may appear closer than they are. But I agree, there kind of needs to be a balance there. And I hope we don't get to that point. And I think perhaps there's different intents within best microwaves that maybe Google can do a better job of catering to.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

But I still hold dear to the truth that, or my truth at least, that as a whole, aggregate review pages don't offer much value except to a small minutia of people on this planet called Crystal.

Crystal Carter:

I think there's a place for both. And I think that Google's getting pretty good at being able to drill down into that. So for instance, if the deal breaker on the microwave is whether or not it's pops popcorn really well, for instance, if I want to know what is the best microwave for doing Orville Redenbacher for instance, because I don't like burnt popcorn, it's the worst.

Mordy Oberstein:

I love burnt popcorn.

Crystal Carter:

Burnt popcorn makes your whole house smell. I do not like that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Round two, ding, ding, ding.

Crystal Carter:

I like perfectly popped popcorn. And I don't wasting kernels either. So for instance, if that's something there, then if I Google best popcorn for not wasting kernels. Google is getting very good at catering to those of us who have a short attention span and to click and to get through things. They're very good at getting to the highlighter section. So they'll highlight the section, they'll highlight the text within a longer form review. Now you're not going to get that kind of detail about whether or not this particular microwave is really good at popping popcorn so that you don't have any kernels left, for instance, in one of those aggregate reviews. So I think Google's getting better at sort of addressing the needs of people who just want the TLDR, people who want to wax poetical about microwaves, whichever.

Mordy Oberstein:

I think this is a good case where, we talked about this before in the previous podcasts where we had George fill in for you, you were on vacation and we talked about multiple intents on one page. I think this is a good case where you can cater to multiple intents of one page. And you see the pages that do this well, they'll have a table up top where they'll go through all the information that you want. But underneath that, and I think it's important that the table's on top Google, if you're listening, hi John, to have the deeper information underneath it. Now, as a second point, I understand about the burnt popcorn and it does stink up the house. I am with you, but it tastes so much better. And sometimes I will freely admit I burn the popcorn on purpose just a tad. And I'm so like on eggshells, is my wife going to get angry at me that I made the entire house smell like burn popcorn. But I do it anyway.

Crystal Carter:

Honestly, Mrs. Oberstein, I don't know what you're having to go through these days.

Mordy Oberstein:

Sometimes I wait for her to be asleep to make popcorn just for no reason.

Crystal Carter:

Does the popping not wake her up?

Mordy Oberstein:

She sleeps through everything. I am on the opposite. I wake up at every single little noise. Okay, TMI, for all the listeners at this point, which brings us to our next segment. I'm just going to quickly pivot because I think there's no smoothness to this pivot. Do not rate this pivot. Let's get to the snappy news. Here's the snappy news.

Snappy News. Snappy News. Snappy News from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google Documents Search Ranking Updates As Systems, Labels Live Or Archived Notable Algorithms. In a nutshell, Google came out and released an official list of its ranking systems, emphasis on systems. Feel like William Shatner, systems. Versus algorithms as some of the things are pre or meta algorithm, for example. Google uses machine learning like BERT, to better understand what the heck it's looking at. That's meta-algorithmic. That sounds super snazzy. Meta-algorithmic. The better Google can understand something, the better can apply relevancy, which is a ranking factor, which is kind of by focusing on the ranking factors per se is not the way. This is not the way. If you look at the doc Google created, you can sort of see the split as specific algorithms like the one that shows local news content in the top stories carousel.

Those are called systems, as in the local news systems, or the helpful content system or the freshness system. Whereas, the properties that work at the metal level just have names, for example, BERT or MUM or neural matching. There's no system attached to the name. So little bit of a way for you to see the kind of split there and little trick there in my honest opinion. Anyway, we'll link link to both Barry's coverage and the actual doc from Google in the show notes is definitely worth giving it a read through if anything, but to refresh yourself. Refreshing. And that is it for this week's Snappy News.

Tis was the snappiest of news. Again, it's always great to keep up what's going on in the ins and outs of the SEO industry.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, you did that news like a bat out of hell.

Mordy Oberstein:

Back with the Meat Loaf. Love that. Wow, that was full 360 right there, Crystal. Five stars for you. You get a gold star, five gold stars.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're welcome. I was a former teacher. I'm not easy giving out the gold stars. Very hard to a gold star for Mr. Okay, mainly because I didn't buy stickers. Yeah, well. It's their loss, anyway. This brings us to our last little part of the show. We make sure that you have access to more great people where you can find more great information. And we mentioned him before, but he is the godfather of local SEO, in my opinion. He's Darren Shaw over at Whitespark, @DarrenShaw_ on Twitter, @D-A-R-R-E-N-S-H-A-W_ underscore on Twitter. And Darren is fabulous about local SEO information. He's considered one of the supreme authorities on local SEO.

Crystal Carter:

You come to me and you ask me about reviews near me.

Mordy Oberstein:

Come the day of the daily grand opening. That's why I'm not in the pack. It's a grand opening. No one knows you exists yet.

Crystal Carter:

My cannoli business is needing to be-

Mordy Oberstein:

I love cannolis. I love cannolis. I miss them so much.

Crystal Carter:

I love cannolis. I don't know why-

Mordy Oberstein:

What are we talking about, again? Oh, Darren.

Crystal Carter:

Darren. Not the Godfather. Well yes, the Godfather.

So Darren's amazing. He's written a really great article on the Wix SEO Hub. I mentioned it earlier, but you check it. He also writes some amazing articles just generally and normally does, I think he tends to do an annually, an annual report on local SEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, yeah. Where at Whitespark, they put out an annual report, I'm pretty sure it's annual, going through what matters on local SEO.

Crystal Carter:

Really valuable. I've spoken at Whitespark Local Search Summit, which is a great event and has some fantastic SEOs speaking at it, including myself. But also like lots of other people. So do check that out if you see it happening. And also, I think they have an archive around where you can look through some of the information there. So there's some great stuff there, talking about reviews, talking about other things that you could do for a local business to rank and perform and drive people both online and in store.

Mordy Oberstein:

His Twitter feed is just fabulous. He's obviously a great person, but he is also offering great SEO information on his feed. So definitely check out Darren Shaw, wherever he is. He's also on Mastadon, by the way. I should have looked it up. He is on Mastadon. If you are Mastadon, Darren Shaw is there. He helped me-

Crystal Carter:

He's also on LinkedIn.

Mordy Oberstein:

On LinkedIn, yes. I don't know about Facebook, having TikTok. But those are, Mastadon and LinkedIn and Twitter, he is there. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into the vital need for an all channels approach to SEO. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SER? Check on all the great content and webinars on the Wick SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. And very appropriate for this show, don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO.