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Why I Love 1st-Party Reviews & Just Might Marry Them
When my children were in elementary school and I would say that I loved something like asparagus, they would respond with, what for them was clever, school yard repartee: "Why don’t you marry it?!?" [...]
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The Whacky World of Reviews: A 5 Star Spam Review “Attack”?
Online reviews and the world that swirls around them can often descend into the surreal. Two weeks ago the son of the business owner and his friends drove by the house of a negative reviewer and [...]
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GetFiveStars Is Now GatherUp
GetFiveStars is proud to announce that we are now GatherUp. When we started in 2013 our goal was simple. We wanted to help businesses request customer feedback and online reviews. Today, we have grown [...]
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August 2018 Customer Webinar
August's webinar wasn't short on discussion as we spent well over an hour on our planned content and attendee questions. We walked through the Conversion Pop-up now that it's released in the product [...]
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A Big Change To Facebook Reviews, 5-Star Reviews Are Now Recommendations
Last week we saw a big change to Facebook reviews as they moved to a new "recommendation" format and away from the standard 5-star rating. Here is the pop-up currently displayed on Facebook business [...]
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New Feature: Conversion Pop-up
We're very excited to announce our latest feature addition, designed to convert more of your website visitors into customers. Our Conversion Pop-up is an eye-catching rotation of your best and most [...]
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Improve Your Review Requests With Personalization
One of the many benefits of software is it's ability to automate tasks saving you valuable time and effort. The downfall to software and marketing automation is it can feel overly robotic and lack [...]
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Big Surveys Are A Big Mistake
Your customer's time is valuable, incredibly valuable. Many companies seem to forget this when it comes to capturing customer feedback using post experience surveys. When marketing to potential [...]
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July 2018 Customer Webinar Recap
Our latest addition to our reporting suite, the Success Report was the main topic of our July 2018 Webinar. Attendees also had a detailed sneak peek at our Conversion Pop-up, a feature that is [...]
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New Feature: Success Report
Today we roll out an addition to our reporting suite with our new Success Report. The focus of this report is to bring together all of your review data into one report for your entire account. So [...]
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6 Reasons Your Digital Agency Should White-label Our Review Management Solution
If you are working at or running a digital marketing agency then you are constantly looking to add services or products that help achieve the goals of your clients. Additionally you want these to [...]
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March 2018 Customer Webinar Recap
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June 2018 Customer Webinar Recap
In this month's webinar we showed the beta of our new Success Report - this report gives you the best view of your ratings and reviews success all in one place. We also answered questions about [...]
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Reviews & Lawsuits – You Can Win for Losing and You Can Lose for Winning
Several weeks ago two businesses were in the news having started lawsuits in regards to reviews. In one case, the suit makes all kinds of sense, even though they might lose. In the other, it makes [...]
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The Importance of Reviews And Feedback For A New Business
For the first time, you open the doors to your first customers. After all of the dreaming, planning, preparation and hundreds of other tasks big and small, your small business is now open for [...]
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When Asking for Reviews Is Just Too Much And Not Enough
It's a brave new world of online reviews. As a business owner you get that. You won't just wait for reviews to happen, but are going to implement processes that insure that your business will get its [...]
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May 2018 Customer Webinar Recap
Our May 2018 webinar reviews some big changes to a few areas that released the week prior into the platform. Our slides and recording of the webinar is embedded below so you can review the content [...]
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Our New Interface And Navigation Redesign
Our team is very excited to release our redesigned navigation menu today. The short version is that all of the sections, pages and names have stayed the same but the design and menu locations have [...]
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Combine WiseStamp With GetFiveStars For Great Looking Emails & Feedback
I love finding great tools that work incredibly well with our own customer feedback and reviews offering. The combo I'm outlining today will not only make your daily emails look better, it will add [...]
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Google to Notify Reviewers of Owner Responses
Google announced on the Google My Business Forum today that when owners respond to reviews, the reviewers will now receive notification of that response. From the post: We’re launching [...]
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Bolster Your Google Mobile Search Results
How your business appears in Google's mobile search results might make or break your next customer contacting you. While our service offers many components like Net Promoter Score, customer [...]
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April 2018 Customer Webinar Recap
Thanks to all of you who attended our April webinar! These webinars are a highlight for us - it's our chance to connect with you all directly, show what we're working on, and get your feedback, ideas [...]
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The Next Chapter: Aaron Weiche As CEO
I’m excited to announce some big changes for our company. As of March 15th, 2018, Aaron Weiche has been promoted to the role of Chief Executive Officer, and I have moved into a new role as Chairman [...]
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Google Write a Review Link Generator – Free Chrome Extension
Sometimes it’s the little things in life that slow us down. As an agency or digital marketer, one of those tasks that falls under the category of incredibly tedious is to find the Google Write a [...]
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March 2018 Customer Webinar Recap
Thanks to all of you who attended our March webinar! These webinars are a highlight for us - it's our chance to connect with you all directly, show what we're working on, and get your feedback, ideas [...]
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5 Reasons Customer Feedback Is Amazing
Getting inside the consumer's head has always been the goal of marketing. More than a few strategies and technologies exist to make this happen, many focused on customer feedback. Finding out [...]
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February 2018 Customer Webinar Recap
Our February webinar on the 27th focused on the release of our newly upgraded Review Widget. The biggest item of note is that you can now display 3rd-party reviews from Google, Facebook and [...]
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New Feature: Review Widget
We are excited to announce a big refresh and improvement to an existing feature in our platform. Displaying customer ratings and 1st-party reviews (testimonials) on your website is a big marketing [...]
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Webinar: The Ins & Out of Reviews & Reputation in 2018
With the start of the new year, our team members Aaron Weiche and Mile Blumenthal took part in a webinar looking at reviews and online reputation in 2018. The hour long session was hosted by Local [...]
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Customer Love
On this day of Valentines, we just wanted to take a minute to emphasize a few things. Number 1, we love our customers We are lucky, humbled and inspired to work with you and for you each day. It's [...]
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A “Reviews Only” Diet Makes Your Business Unhealthy
Reviews at 3rd-party sites like Google, Facebook and Trip Advisor are no doubt valuable to your business. Surveys have shown as many as 97% of consumers seek local reviews. Today's consumer often [...]
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5-Step Plan For Success With Google Q & A
This is the 3rd article in a 3-part series on Google Q&A. We started with an introduction to Q&A, then gave you a complete guide and now we will explore how to plan and execute winning with [...]
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The Big Guide To Google Questions And Answers (Q & A)
Update: Download our new eBook - GOOGLE QUESTIONS & ANSWERS - What you don't know can hurt you Our first post introduced you to Google Questions & Answers (Q&A), in our second article of [...]
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Google Q & A – Get To Know Google’s Latest Local Feature
This is the first post in a three part series on Google Q & A. Part 2 is a Big Guide To Google Q&A and the 3rd part is on how to manage it. Google has been on a mission to make Google search [...]
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2017 in Review – GetFiveStars Product Update
As we get ready for the new year, here's a quick look back at how GetFiveStars evolved in 2017. Ranging from SMS Feedback Requests, to a new Reporting engine, to new Feedback Modes, we were busy [...]
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Indiana Attorney General Sues Hotel for Deceptive Review Practices
In what goes down as one of the dumbest review policies and practices ever, a hotel in Indiana solicited reviews from consumers and would then charge them $350 if the guest left a bad review. No [...]
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November 2017 Customer Webinar – Feedback Modes Launch, Twitter Monitoring, and More…
Woohoo! We've launched our new Feedback Modes, with new email and landing page designs and I think you are going to like what you see. After refining the feedback and review flows, and redesigning [...]
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Huge Update: New Email Request Modes & Designs
Our team is extremely excited to announce the launch of our new feedback and review request modes that have been over 6 months in the making. There is a lot to cover with this update, but I promise [...]
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Feature Enhancement: Customer List Upload
With our platform having so many features, we often revisit specific ones to make sure it's the best it can be. We've now greatly upgraded our Customer List Upload function to make adding customers [...]
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New Feature: Twitter Monitoring
We are excited to announce we have added Twitter monitoring for our Pro, Pro Plus and Executive Plan customers. Basic Plan customers can take advantage of this new feature by upgrading to our Pro [...]
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The 2 Biggest Optimizations To Grow Your Online Reviews
Just about anything related to digital marketing can be optimized, it's a big part of why we love it. Over the decades of online interaction between businesses and consumers, marketers have looked [...]
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Customer Webinar October 2017 – New Feedback Flows, New Email and Landing Page Designs, and More…
In this month's webinar, we showed a whole bunch of new capabilities that we've added over the past month, and also unveiled the new Feedback Modes beta, which includes new email and landing page [...]
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A Google Combo That Works For Your Reputation
Google Posts is a very cool product that allows a business to tell their story directly in Google's search results. Google's Small Thanks product, allowing you to create a printed poster or graphic [...]
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GetFiveStars Release Notes for October 2017
Now that we're heading into fall, let's take a look at some of the capabilities we've been adding to GetFiveStars to help you build even better relationships with your customers. Thank you for all [...]
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Automate GatherUp With Zapier
We are very excited to share that GatherUp has an official Zapier app to help you automate your reputation management work with ease. Zapier is the fastest and easiest way to integrate GatherUp with [...]
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Review Monitoring Sites & Options Expanded
We are excited to announce we have added many new sites to our options for review monitoring. You have always been able to monitor for new reviews on the core review sites like Google, Facebook, [...]
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New Testimonial Widget, Rich Snippets + Speed = Real World Benefits
We're excited to announce that we updated our Testimonial Widget and Badges to a new javascript based format. The new code is both faster and is now compatible with many more hosting and CMS [...]
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Give Your Business the Edge By Scheduling a GetFiveStars Customer Success Demo
The goal of the Customer Success department at GetFiveStars is to ensure the success of your business. Two of the most powerful tools we offer are our pre-sales demo and concierge meeting. [...]
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The Consumer Review Fairness Act – You Can’t Use Agreements To Silence Your Customers
The internet has made customer reviews ubiquitous, and smart businesses not only recognize the importance of these reviews, they actively manage them. According to one HBS study, the researcher [...]
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Something Amazing Happened On The Way To A Google Review
For Barbara Oliver, of Barbara Oliver Jewelry, something amazing happened on the way to a Google review. She got answers to her Google Questions. But not just any answer. Google's Question & [...]
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Customer Webinar: August 2017 – New Feedback Flows, GMB Review Responses, and more
We've been busy this summer - and not just at BBQs and 4th of July parties! In this month's webinar we previewed some new capabilities that will be coming within the next few weeks. For example, we [...]
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Customer Webinar: June 2017 – Social Sharing, and Easy Integrations!
This month we talked about "point and click" integrations with GetFiveStars, and social sharing for your testimonials. We also had some great discussions as usual, and answered questions too. Watch [...]
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Google As the New Home Page – One Big Tactical Guide
Increasingly, consumers are getting in touch with your business directly from the Google search results and not clicking any of the links and local resources. A recent study by MOZ on Google [...]
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Cool Google SMB Review Marketing Tool
First noticed by Chris Barnard, the owner of 1LocalBusiness.com, Google is offering up this very slick way for a small business to leverage their Google reviews - a tool that allows them to print a [...]
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New Feature: Social Sharing
Getting a testimonial from a happy customer is a wonderful feeling. Why not tell the world about it? Our new social sharing feature makes it easy to spread the good word. With one click, you can [...]
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GetFiveStars Release Notes for July 2017
Kirsty TG Ah summertime. BBQs, hanging out at the beach, and coding up new features. That's what we've been doing - adding, refining and polishing GetFiveStars. If you are a customer of ours, you [...]
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How Willing Are Consumers to Leave Reviews Internationally?
Our previous survey results showed clearly that US Consumers have been increasingly embracing the idea of writing reviews not just reading them. As we saw the number of US consumers that never wrote [...]
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Why Won’t Happy Customers Write A Review?
Irene Abdou, a photographer, asked this question on a recent post about how willing folks are to leave a review. And it is a question that more than a few small business folks ask: "I’ve never [...]
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How Willing Are Consumers to Leave Reviews?
We all know that most consumers read reviews. But how many are willing to actually leave reviews? In the U.S., over the past 3 years of conducting our survey, consumers willingness to leave reviews [...]
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How Customers Can Build & Defend Your Online Reputation
Here is something you probably see daily online. An upset customer takes to the Internet to voice their disappointment with a business. More and more it's not just on review sites, it's in your [...]
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GetFiveStars Release Notes – June 2017
Every day, we start the morning excited to improve GetFiveStars with new features and capabilities. Our goal is to add value to the product every day, in ways that are meaningful to your business. [...]
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Customer Webinar: May 2017 – Tag Testimonial Widget and More New Features!
This month we showed the new Tag Testimonial Widget, which enables you to build out compelling content for your product, service, service area or staff pages which helps you in the search results for [...]
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New Feature: Tag Testimonial Widgets
Using GetFiveStars to collect customer feedback and testimonials provides a great way to understand customer sentiment and to build out content for a strong testimonial page or a location landing page [...]
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Google Upgrades Hotel Reviews With Granular Detail & Graphics
Google has recently update hotel reviews to include much more granular review detail by traveler type about any particular hotel. This was first spotted in testing by Sergey Alakov about a month ago [...]
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The Simple Guide To Net Promoter Score
I want to provide a simple guide to break down what Net Promoter Score is, the formula to calculate your score and why you need to use it for your business. This article will help you [...]
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GetFiveStars Release Notes – May 2017
One of our most important goals is to add value consistently - features and optimizations that make your life easier or deliver more value to you. We wake up every day excited to craft and refine [...]
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Creating Quarterly & Annual NPS Reports
The release of our new reporting engine has really created some fantastic opportunities to benefit from the data we collect and display. One of the big additions to reporting is the comparison [...]
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Just Launched! Our New Reporting Engine & New Reports
The GetFiveStars team is very excited to announce the launch of our new reporting engine and reports today. Our new reports have been redesigned focusing on strong visuals, new charting, increased [...]
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Customer Webinar: April 2017 – New Reports Sneak Peek
This month we provided a "sneak peek" into something we've been working very hard on - our new Reporting Engine, which will be available platform wide on May 1st. In the webinar, Don showed a demo of [...]
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Case Study: In Local Attribution Word of Mouth Dominates
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in local digital marketing are an indicator of your marketing success. But KPIs are most valuable of we can ascribe some attribution to them. How many actions [...]
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Case Study: Key Performance Indicators in Local Digital Marketing
Finding, tracking and collating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)* that demonstrate the performance of your online efforts has always been difficult in the local digital marketing space. But with [...]
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Build Personalization And Detail Into Your Customer Data Using Job ID
GetFiveStars lets you track more than just the customer’s name, email and phone. Taking advantage of the Job ID field can help you track and add personalization to your customer profiles. Let's [...]
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Facebook Reviews Bolster Facebook Recommendations
Since it's release last October, Facebook's Recommendations feature has been a mainstay in many Facebook feeds (mine included). The feature was a brilliant move by Facebook to augment and capitalize [...]
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Understanding Google Schema Guidelines: Review Snippets vs. Critic Reviews
We recently received this question via support: Google guidelines state the following: "Only include critic reviews that have been directly produced by your site, not reviews from third- party [...]
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GetFiveStars Customer Webinar: March 2017
2017 is shaping up to be a great year! In our customer webinar this month, Don shared some product updates on SMS Feedback Requests, our new Reporting release that is coming up in the next week, and [...]
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Basketball Referee Calls Lead To Death Threats & Fake Reviews
This story falls right into my sweet spot; the intersection of sports and reviews.1 [caption width="784" id="attachment_5576" align="aligncenter"] Aaron Weiche and I presented a basketball themed [...]
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Car Dealers Fined $3.6 Million For Fake Reviews & Deceptive Practices
Cars play a huge role in the local economy and a large part of every family’s budget. Because of that and the sometime shady practices in the industry, the FTC has, over the past few years fined a [...]
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5 Tips To Improve Your Customer Feedback Response
You've got the basics covered in using GetFiveStars. You are adding all of your customers into our platform and getting valuable feedback and reviews. When you set things up you were [...]
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Owning Customer Issues Keep Bad Reviews From Owning You
The best "magic" to having a great online reputation isn't a tool or a hack, but solid customer service. I wanted to share a recent customer experience that I had with FedEx and how it could have [...]
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GetFiveStars Customer Webinar: February 2017
This month we're excited to share the launch of our new SMS Feedback Requests! In the webinar, we showed this new capability to reach out to your customers, and answered questions too. Judging by the [...]
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New Feature: Request Feedback Via SMS Text Messages
After months of hard work the team is very excited to announce the release of SMS into our feedback request options. It's no secret that consumers (and all of us) live on our smartphones and every [...]
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Meet The Team In Seattle At MozCon Local 2017
A good part of the GetFiveStars team will be at MozCon Local 2017 in Seattle on February 27th & 28th as we have joined as a sponsor in addition to having our team presenting on both days. Our [...]
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Google Drops Review Star Threshold to 1 or 2 Reviews AND Stops Using Bayesian Average
Last week we reported the fact that Google had lowered the threshold for showing review stars in the search results from 5 to 3 total reviews. Over the weekend, numerous reports came in from Europe, [...]
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Google Lowers Local Pack Review Star Threshold to 3
Update: Google Drops Review Star Threshold to 1 or 2 Reviews AND Stops Using Bayesian Average A post at the Local Search Forum noted that a storage unit in Idaho showing review stars with only 3 [...]
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Can 5-Star Reviews Backfire?
In the new world of online reviews where users describe your products and services many customers will make up their mind about you solely based on the review content. Reviews are a powerful tool to [...]
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GetFiveStars Customer Webinar: January 2017
Welcome to 2017! In our first webinar of this year, Mike Blumenthal shared some of his research on the Google Knowledge Panel and how they are handling rich snippets. He then shared some great tips [...]
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GetFiveStars Release Notes – January 2017
We've been working on a number of smaller changes and edits in the platform of late, let's take a look under the hood. In addition to the items listed below, we've put a lot of time into a couple [...]
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Why Having Some Bad Reviews Is… Good?
What? Bad reviews are good? Ok, let me explain. Actually, let Angie Hicks, founder of Angie's List explain. In a recent NPR podcast she talks about the topic of bad online reviews and what they [...]
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Building Customer Feedback Into Customer Stories
The value of customer feedback is exponential. While many businesses look at customer feedback to pick out statements as testimonials or which customers to ask for online reviews, you can take it [...]
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Teaching Kids to Code – #hourofcode
"Hurry up - we only have a few more minutes!" The teacher just announced there were only three minutes left in the Hour of Code. It wasn't a race or a contest, rather an hour for kids to learn about [...]
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Reviews, Incentives and the Law
In an effort to gain visibility in Google search, some businesses have made a mad rush to solicit and acquire more online reviews. In fact, we frequently get asked by businesses how they might go [...]
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GetFiveStars Customer Webinar: November 2016
In our November webinar we talked about the importance of customer experience, and showed some new GetFiveStars features that allow you to customize your feedback flow in new and interesting ways. [...]
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Add A GetFiveStars Window Cling To Your Business
Do you want to make every attempt to let your customers know you care about their feedback? Great, let's put a window cling in your business! We had some GetFiveStars window clings made for you to [...]
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GetFiveStars Release Notes – November 2016
It's the middle of fall and football season and our team has been practicing hard getting some new plays ready for the next big game, helping you to win at customer feedback and reviews! Let's look [...]
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74% Of Consumers Prefer Surveys With 5 Questions Or Less
If you really want to know what your customer thinks, you'd be smart to give them a survey with an amount of questions they care to answer. You'll get more to opt-in to the feedback process and [...]
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Feature Update: We’ve Added 4 New Sites To Our Review Monitoring
I'm excited to share that we've expanded the online review sites that we monitor for your business locations beyond Google and Facebook by adding additional review sites. We now offer review [...]
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SURVEY: Where Do Customers Choose To Leave Reviews?
We recently set out to better understand where customers choose to leave reviews online by conducting a survey of over 2,000 consumers. With the emergence of Reviews from the web on Google and [...]
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New Feature: Copy / Paste Review Text
Many of you have asked us to let your customers copy the feedback they just left you, to use as a basis for an online review on Google, Facebook or other sites. This feature gives them just that! [...]
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How to Find the Google Review URL for Your Business
One of the most important things you can do is to make it easy for your customers to leave you online reviews. Google has changed its URL formats quite a bit, but seems to be settling in on a format [...]
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3 Examples Of Optimizing The Customer Experience
Excelling at every interaction in the customer experience (CX) is on the mind of a lot of companies these days. Executives and marketers are looking to create magic in the consumers end-to-end [...]
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