Google Review Attributes Expand To New Categories

Update 6/17/20: GatherUp Launches Google Review Attributes Monitoring

Recently we started seeing Google “review attributes” (What do you like about this place?) being asked for and displayed in new categories including lawyers, accountants, financial planners, architects, salons, car repair and dry cleaning. Review attributes are now showing more broadly on industries typically classified as Other Services and Professional/Technical Services in the NAICS coding system. (h/t to KHarris08 at the LocalSearchForum who spotted the expansion).

Google review attributes

Positive & Negative Review Attributes

Late last fall we started seeing Google asking for additional positive and negative attributes about a business when leaving a review in most service area businesses (plumbing, hvac etc).

These new attributes show at the top of the review with the wording “Positive” or “Critical” and then all that were selected by the user. These are currently visible in organic search via the business profile but are not visible yet for the same listing within Maps.

Here is an example of a Google review where the review selected four positive attributes when writing their review.

positive Google review attributes
Example of a Google review with positive attributes.
negative google review with negative attributes
Example of a Google review with critical attributes

How Google Asks The Reviewer For Attributes

The ability to be asked for and add these attributes is available in Google search and Google Maps on the desktop but is only an option (on iOS) from search and not from iOS Maps.

When leaving these new attributes, you are presented with negative attributes based on the star rating you have selected. Let’s take a look at how the rating affects what you are asked and presented with for attributes.

If you select 1 or 2 stars then “critical” attributes are presented as you are asked “What do you not like about this business?”

If you select a 3-star rating for your review, then no attributes are presented for selection.

If you select 4 or 5-stars for your review, you are then asked “What do you like about this business” and can select the positive attributes.

Google review attributes

When a Google review is left for in-home service providers, users are presented the same attributes as salons and lawyers for quality, value, professionalism, and responsiveness. But an additional attribute is added for timeliness.

Google review 1 star attributes

Why Are Google Review Attributes Important?

It allows those users that just want to leave a rating, a quick way to criticize or compliment one or more areas of your business. Instead of just a “rating only” review of 2-stars of 5-stars and no explanation, comment or context, reviews can now add that in a couple of clicks. It’s not hard to see that this bolsters each Google review without any typing by the consumer.

Once blank or “rating-only” reviews now have some context and content to them with attributes.

It can provide users with more nuanced reviews that will allow them to distinguish between one 4.2 rated provider and the next.

And perhaps more importantly this new data provides Google with significantly more structured AND consistent data about the quality of your business, perhaps allowing them to return the best of class practitioners not just the most prominent one.

We are exploring how we might show these results within GatherUp and our review monitoring services. As of now, it does not appear that even Google is surfacing the data in their API.

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