92 - 5 Star Google Reviews: How to Get Them, and Why It Matters So Much

92 - 5 Star Google Reviews: How to Get Them, and Why It Matters So Much

February 22, 2024 - 01:09:49

 

Show Summary:

In this episode hosted by Nicole McLaughlin, previous Marketing Director at R.O. Writer, special guest Jimmy Lea from the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence dives into one of the most powerful tools for shop owners: Google Reviews. With humor and insight, Jimmy explains how reviews influence Google rankings, how to handle negative feedback, avoid common pitfalls like incentivizing or gating, and use reviews to turn customers into raving fans. This engaging session covers strategies for responding to both praise and criticism while leveraging reviews to boost shop visibility and credibility. A must-listen for automotive professionals looking to grow their digital reputation the right way.

 

Contact(s):

Sadie McCann, Director of Marketing, R.O. Writer

 

Guest(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

 

Episode Highlights:

[00:08:44] Why Google Reviews Matter More Than You Think
Jimmy reveals how reviews impact Google rankings and why a 4.5 - 4.8 rating is the sweet spot.

[00:14:51] What Not to Do: Incentivizing & Review Gating
Learn why offering freebies for five-star reviews or gating feedback can backfire and fast.

[00:20:09] Every Review, Positive and Negative… They ALL Get a Response
From 0 to 5, Jimmy breaks down how to respond authentically to any type of google review.

[00:25:25] Make It Personal: Why You Should Respond to Reviews Yourself

Personally responding to reviews, not only shows genuine engagement with your customers, but also builds trust with Google, boosts SEO through natural keywords, and proves you're invested in the customer experience far beyond a copy-paste reply.

[00:40:44] Flagging and Removing Fake or Abusive Reviews
Step-by-step process for reporting, documenting, and getting harmful reviews taken down.

[00:46:04] The Risk of Review Attacks: What to Do When It Goes Viral
How to approach attacking reviews on Google Business Review Profile - Remain calm and relaxed. Report to Google.

[01:03:40] Google Rankings/Reviews - Using Keywords
Client-written keywords in Google reviews carry significant SEO value, so focus on authentic customer language rather than keyword stuffing to boost your shop's online ranking.

[01:04:01] Where to Spend Time: Google, Yelp & Facebook Review Strategy
Breakdown of where shop owners should focus their review response efforts.

 

In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry?

Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.

 

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://info.rowriter.com/blog/shop-management-tips/5-star-google-reviews/

Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!

 

Links & Resources: 

• Want to learn more? Click Here
• Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here
• See The Institute's events list: Click Here
• Want access to our online classes? Click Here

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Nicole McLaughlin: Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm going to give folks a couple minutes to trickle in. I see we have Adam. Hey, Adam, how's it going? Who else do we have? We have Dawn and Ed, Hugh. Thank you guys so much for joining us. When I say I'm excited to be here today, I mean, I'm excited to be here because our friends from the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence are back.

Nicole McLaughlin: So we have an exciting session today. But before I jump into that, my name is Nicole McLaughlin and I'm the Marketing Director here at R. O. Writer. Before I get to the good stuff, I do have a couple of housekeeping notes as always. So this presentation is a live broadcast. We will send you a copy of the slides and recording via email by the end of next week.

Nicole McLaughlin: So keep an eye out for those. There will be a follow up survey after the presentation, so if you like what you hear and you want to hear more from either R. O. Writer or the Institute, please let us know there. And then, rather than opening up the Q& A at the end, we do want to make this session as engaging and live and interactive as possible, so what you'll do is you'll drop your questions as we go, we'll address them right away and then we can, we can go from there.

Nicole McLaughlin: I see a couple of new faces on the line with us today, which is fantastic. So if you're not familiar with our writer, we are a comprehensive automotive repair shop management software built to help shop owners, just like you optimize every aspect of your business. So this includes service, writing, invoicing, customer communications, reporting, and so much more.

Nicole McLaughlin: And we've been in the business for over 30 years. So we're the trusted business partner you need. But let's get to the good stuff. So we're, this, this is exciting. Not only do we have my friend Jimmy Lee with us today, but Jimmy just celebrated a big birthday on Tuesday. So everyone helped me in welcoming Jimmy with a happy birthday note in the comments.

Nicole McLaughlin: Welcome, Jimmy. 

Jimmy Lea: Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Happy birthday. I'm now over 50. 

Nicole McLaughlin: You don't look it. 

Jimmy Lea: Thank you. I appreciate that. Yup. Thank you very much. Everybody's, are you dropping in happy birthdays? I have to look. 

Nicole McLaughlin: Adam wishes you a happy birthday. Both Adams wished you a happy birthday actually.  

Jimmy Lea: Thank you Adams.

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah. Awesome. Thanks guys. 

Jimmy Lea: Cool. 

Nicole McLaughlin: I'll hand it over to you to kick us off. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Okay. Well, if I click back and forth, my clicker stops clicking , so my God, we're gonna, we're gonna hit this ground running because we're, we are gonna talk about raving fans and about your Google reviews and how they're important, why you need them, how you need them, and what we can do to create more, and how you can convert that Google Review to become a raving fan, an an advocate for you.

Jimmy Lea: That is working for you 25 hours a day, 366 days a year. Do you know what I'm talking about? They're out there working for you all the time. So there's, this is, this is so much information that we're going to jam into this. And you would have never thought that we could talk about reviews for an hour or two hours or three hours or four hours.

Jimmy Lea: But I will tell you that there is so much that goes into. Google and Google reviews that it is definitely worth this look that we're going to take so you you've heard it said before Well, I you know, I have some negative Google reviews. I'll never be able to get rid of them You can't get rid of them.

Jimmy Lea: Well, the answer is actually yes, you can And it depends. So there's a 50, 50 chance. And there's three different phases to go through that you have a 50, 50 chance of getting it removed. So we're going to talk about those as well. But first of all, let's talk about Google. What is Google type that in the chat?

Jimmy Lea: What is Google? So as you are thinking of Google and their platform and the information that they provide, what is Google? Go ahead and put those in the chat and Nicole as people are typing those in. I'm not able to 

Nicole McLaughlin: see it on my side 

Jimmy Lea: So if you got any information, tell me what they're what people are typing in here for what is Google?

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah, I've got you I've got you. So we'll give people a couple minutes because there is a little bit of a lag Adam Adam who Adam Ford who wished you a happy birthday says is it a search engine question mark 

Jimmy Lea: search engine? Yes, it is a search engine, but it's more. What more is it? What? What is google? How does google make money?

Nicole McLaughlin: So matt matt is matt's on target here He says google is a for profit company. We're getting closer. We're getting closer. So what else do we have? Ed says It's the best internet search 

Jimmy Lea: You know, that's ed you're you're you're you're not wrong it is the godfather of the internet Google's able to track the sources of things.

Jimmy Lea: We know how much people are searching from Google. Depending on the report you read, it's anywhere from 66 percent to 74 percent of all internet searches are done through Google. So yeah, it is a great source of finding out information. 

Nicole McLaughlin: What else did you get? We got a couple of folks that are right on the money though.

Nicole McLaughlin: We have Steve saying search engine, AI, marketing. We have Hugh saying. Selling advertising. Chris saying a platform for marketing. I think we're right on the money. 

Jimmy Lea: Yep, Google makes money because they're a marketing company. They are a marketing company. So you as a shop owner, your currency that you have with Google is the trust they have in your shop or in your business to provide Their clients with the answers that the clients are searching for so the more confidence google has in your shop your business your website The more they promote you the more you get drawn to the top the higher your google ranking So their google gives us tips every once in a while They talk about what goes into a good website and what you can do as a shop owner we'll go over these three because well, but just very quickly because what we want to get to is Reviews reviews, Google draws back the curtain every once in a while, and they really open up to say what goes into your Google ranking.

Jimmy Lea: So let's talk. We're going to focus specifically on reviews today and what those reviews mean to you as a shop owner because we love reviews. Does everybody love reviews? Type in the chat. Do you love reviews? Yes or no. Give me a yes or no. Type it in the chat. Do you love reviews? Yes or no. In the chat, are they all yeses Nicole?

Nicole McLaughlin: Well, most of them are yeses, but People want the five star google reviews. They say yes if it's good and only if it's good 

Jimmy Lea: Yes, yes. Yes. Yes, and I love it. I love that you were all saying yes But I also understand that you're lying to us because we know that you also hate reviews. You hate reviews because there is this negative connotation, negative reviews.

Jimmy Lea: We're going to talk about what you need to do in both these situations. So when Google pulls back the curtain, what I'm showing you here, this comes from Moz. com. You've seen this for quite a few years. This is an accepted Iteration of what goes into your Google review and about 23, almost 24 percent of your Google ranking comes from the social cues.

Jimmy Lea: of your website, of your interaction with the public. So how does Google find this information? It's from all of the reviews that you're putting out there. As well, it comes from your social media. Totally different subject. We're not going to talk about social media today. We're going to focus on the reviews because the reviews become a very strong platform that you can stand on that shows The value of your shop and the value of your business, almost 24 percent in social cues.

Jimmy Lea: And it's almost 8% 8. 6 into your reviews. So this has a lot, a lot, a lot of weight. Google gives the reviews. You've got a one, two, three, four, five star ratings. Google analyze the automotive industry and what they discovered is interesting. Shops that have a 5. 0 rating, 5. 0 Google review rating, they didn't believe it anymore.

Jimmy Lea: And I can't argue with them. Do you believe a business that has a 5. 0 rating? If it's a 5. 0 rating, do you believe that? No, Google doesn't either. Shops that have a 5. 0 rating. No, no, we're human. We make mistakes, but there's a lot that goes into it. So the Google rating that you want to have is somewhere between a 4 and a 4.

Jimmy Lea: 8. And I'm going to say it's probably even better that it's between a 4. 5 and a 4. 8. This really shows the human side of where you're at. So if your Google ratings. And you're at that four, five to four, eight, chances are you're doing really well. Google analyzed it. You do want one stars, two stars, three stars, and four stars, and five stars.

Jimmy Lea: This all goes into your Google rating. Customers, clients can only leave a single Google review. So what do you do? You still want more information. Well, they can update their information. They can update their review. I've done this with my shop here in St. George, Utah. I think I have like 12 updates that I've put in for my Google review.

Jimmy Lea: Cause we keep adding cars to the family fleet. The family fleet has more than one car. So we take care of all those. So let's first dig into a little bit of abuse, Google review abuse. This is an interesting topic because it's not necessarily what you're going to look at on your shop and on your Google reviews.

Jimmy Lea: This is where you're looking at other people and seeing what they have or what they're doing. And this is where knowing what other people are doing, trying to boost their. Google review you want to make sure that you're not doing it for your account because this is flagged by Google and Potentially you could lose a tremendous amount of your Google reviews.

Jimmy Lea: So spotting some of this abuse It is coming from people that leave reviews all over the world Why? I don't know, but it, it is one of those things that Google looks at if a world traveler. Have they actually been to your shop? So that's, that's key there. Number one, trolls, trolls. This is quite interesting.

Jimmy Lea: There was a a profile that had gone in on one specific city and Negative reviewed every single automotive repair shop. Those trolls, you can flag that profile and get that deleted. Those trolls that are in there. It's a business practice that some review companies will try and implore to try and get you to buy their services.

Jimmy Lea: Don't fall for it. So those negative reviews. I'm going to show you how to get rid of those as well using stock images or stolen photographs that that don't belong to the person that posted it. Show you what this looks like reviews that are being left for the multiple locations. Even though they haven't been to all those locations.

Jimmy Lea: So if somebody's reviewing a business that has four, five, six different locations, but they haven't been to all six, they've only been to the one that is abuse of the Google review platform. And those can be flagged and removed also. And this is more common amongst attorneys. And what's the other one?

Jimmy Lea: Attorneys some dental practice where a friend or a colleague will go on and review you as a business to say, I've known Nicole for 15 years, and she's an awesome person, so you should definitely go and see her business and and have her work on your vehicle. I've never been to Nicole's shop. You can clearly see that from the review that it's just a friend or colleague giving a review.

Jimmy Lea: A positive review. So those, those are ones that you want to pay attention to. If they're on your website or on your Google business profile, there's a chance that might be deleted because that person hasn't been to the shop. Next is incentivizing five star reviews. This is a bad thing. This is a no, no.

Jimmy Lea: So I'm telling you this so that you go in and look at your pictures that are online in your Google business profile. Are there photographs and what you'll see even going in on. The, the the Google tour where people can come in and walk through your shop because somebody has come in with those three 60 cameras, go in and look and make sure that you don't have any placards or signs up that say, leave us a five star review and we'll give you a free set of wiper blades.

Jimmy Lea: Those types of incentives to get Google reviews is bad. And Google will take those down. And I've seen shops. Well, they will, it wasn't from. Incentive incentivizing reviews. It was more towards this last one, review gating. I'll save the story for when we get to review gating because they went from 440 reviews down to 85.

Jimmy Lea: Very dangerous. So we'll talk about that here in a minute. Nicole. 

Nicole McLaughlin: Hey Jimmy, I have a quick question for you. Is it, I guess, bad to incentivize, incentivize five star reviews, or can you incentivize reviews in general? Even if it's a one star, you're still gonna be the recipient of x. Or it's any incentive around reviews is a no no.

Jimmy Lea: Any incentives around reviews is a no no. Yep. And if you want to read the 14 pages of Google Review Terms and Conditions, feel free to read it. I've read it for you already. I'm telling you don't incentivize any sort of reviews, even if it's five stars or four stars, or even just saying, We'd love to here's free wiper blades for leaving us a review.

Jimmy Lea: No, you don't, don't, don't, don't go there. Don't do that. No raffles, no raffles for Xboxes or, or PlayStations or even teeth whitening kits. So a lot of dental practices got busted on this one because they were giving away teeth whitening kits for leaving five star reviews. In the automotive industry, a lot of shops will give away wiper blades for the five star reviews.

Jimmy Lea: So don't do that. Don't do that. We'll talk about what that looks like. So let's talk about stock images. Can you tell which one is the stock image? And the answer is yeah, absolutely. Nowhere here in North America are we wearing coveralls like that in the automotive shop. This is somewhere in Norway, Netherlands, the Netherlands.

Jimmy Lea: Professional photographer went in took a bunch of shop pictures. So anytime you see these guys in these blue coveralls, It's this guy and a professional photographer made all the images available to everyone. It's a good placeholder for your website, but as soon as you possibly can put on a picture of your shop, put on a picture of people in your shop, actually from your shop, not stock images.

Jimmy Lea: This is bad as a picture in a shop. So, so don't do this. Don't do this. You, you want the actual photograph of the inside of your shop. And that goes a long way because not only can you put pictures, but your guests, your clients, they can also put pictures of themselves in front of your shop in front of their vehicle, in front of your shop.

Jimmy Lea: So now you've got happy customers in front of. The vehicles you work on with your local logo and your branding in the background, super powerful and that they're posting the information away from the shop from a different IP address goes even further. It increases the value of that review. To your shop and to your website, to your Google business profile, that's so this is powerful.

Jimmy Lea: So if you're looking around and you're looking at your competition, are you looking at other shops and you do see some of these stock images, you could report it to Google as inappropriate as a stolen image or a stock image. And Google would go in and take it down. I don't know any of you who have enough time to be able to go and start trolling other companies.

Jimmy Lea: So I'm not worried about them. I am worried about you. I want to make sure that you're taking care of yourself so that you're not posting up these stock images because they could be taken away. Okay. Is it okay to have a review contest? Now, Nicole, this goes to your question. Is it okay? Can I put up? An incentive.

Jimmy Lea: Can I give a 200 visa gift card as a raffle? The answer is no, no, you can't. Well, Jimmy what if I go and buy some five star reviews? There's companies out there that will sell you five star reviews. No, no, no. This is also bad in the terms and conditions of the Google reviews. It, this is people that have been to your shop, been to your business, and this is the interaction that they have had with you at your shop.

Jimmy Lea: So don't buy them, no, this is bad, this is, and Google knows it, they'll, they'll catch onto it fairly quickly and they'll take them all down and, and you will be punished for it. As well, the raffles, the incentives, no, don't do it. Don't do it. Absolutely not. It's bad. And it's really bad. So let's go into the reviews.

Jimmy Lea: Now you're getting reviews. You are not incentivizing, but you are encouraging customers at the exit interview in a day or two or three or five, depending on your shop. You test this to know, is it best, do I get the best response at two days after the invoice or three days after the invoice is closed or five days after the invoice is closed.

Jimmy Lea: You want to send a link for your customers to be able to go in and leave a review on your Google review platform. And every time you get a review, you want to respond. So thank you. Craig's car care, Craig sale in Allen, Texas. He responds to every single review. And you can see that through here, every single review, both the positive and the negative, they all get a response.

Jimmy Lea: They all get a response. This is a long list. And they all get a response. Every review, positive and negative. They all get a response. Now why? Why is that important? What should I say? What should we say in these review responses? When the positive ones, it's super easy. Right? You know this, you get the positive reviews.

Jimmy Lea: You reply. Thank you so much, Nicole, for bringing in your Lexus 450. We love working on your vehicle, keeping your brakes and shocks and struts, everything up to safety standards. It's easy to respond to those positive. What about the negative reviews? What do you do on the negative reviews when you get that one star or that two star, what do you do?

Jimmy Lea: We're going to talk about that because it might just be that badge of honor that you earned it, you earned it. And I'm going to tell you what, there are two different types of. Bad reviews of one star reviews because it always seems that we're the one extreme or the other you either get a five star Review or you get a one star review.

Jimmy Lea: So let's say that this is a one star review. This is a badge of honor You earned it There's also the other side, which is the mayor of crazy town. Everybody can smell them coming. Oh my gosh, this is so wackadoodle. This is crazy. There's no, this is not a real review. We're going to talk about what you do with those, but let's first talk about the badge of honor.

Jimmy Lea: What does that look like? I want to tell you about Griffin muffler and break my good friend, Nanette Griffin. Was a 5. 0 star rating. And, and, oh man, now she's up to 189 and it's even better than that. She has sold the business. So this is a new owner that is taking over and the new owner is doing a great job.

Jimmy Lea: So I'm telling you a story that has years under the bridge. Nanette Griffin, five star shop. Nobody believes the five star shop, right? 49 five star reviews. I've been to Griffin, Muffler Brake. Phenomenal shop. And, and she does provide that five star experience. But she didn't have any one stars, twos, threes, nothing that would bring it out of that five star rating.

Jimmy Lea: Well, one day, Badge of Honor, they got a one star review and she's so excited. What do you do? Well, she went on and replied to the review and said, Oh, my gosh, this doesn't meet our experience that we try and provide for our clients. Here's my phone number. Give me a call. We want to make this right. Lucky for her, what happens?

Jimmy Lea: Lucky for her, client comes. And calls on the phone, client comes into the shop, brings the car back. What is it? Oh, it's smudges on the hood or something very, very, very minimal, but they take care of the client. They take care of the customer. They do a whole nother digital inspection on the vehicle. The customer's feeling really good about this experience.

Jimmy Lea: And on her way out of the shop, she pops her head into Nanette's office and says, Nanette, this is. Experience. Thank you so much. Customer service has never been. This is a stellar experience. All customer service should be trained the way that you have trained your staff and your people. This has been a wonderful experience.

Jimmy Lea: Thank you so much. I really appreciate this. I'm going to go change my five star review or my one star review to a five star review on Google. Oh, wait, wait, wait. What did Nanette say? Wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no. Hold on a second. No, no. I need that one star review because it's, I'm now a 4. 9 star shop.

Jimmy Lea: This is, this is perfect. This is what I need. Instead of changing the review, because clients see that. They see that out there. They see that one star review. When you go to a business. Do you sort it to look at those one star reviews? How old are they? How old are they? Nicole? What are we seeing? 

Nicole McLaughlin: I'm i'm back in but steve brought up a couple of good points to us It's it's a little bit long, but let me read it to you.

Nicole McLaughlin: So 

Jimmy Lea: Let's hear it 

Nicole McLaughlin: He says I coach my team to ask how their experience was and depending on the answer at the time We ask for a review while the customer is still in the store And in the event their experience was not great. It allows us the opportunity to basically fix that we have QR codes for Google that customers can scan to leave a review.

Nicole McLaughlin: But then he follows up with a question. And his question is, do you feel it is better to personally respond to reviews or use a service that monitors reviews to respond for you? 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's a good question, Steve. So phenomenal. And in fact, let's unpack this because Nicole, there is so much inside of this.

Jimmy Lea: Let's talk first to his first question, which was right at the very end. And now that I've said that, I forgot the question at the very end. 

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah, is it better to use a service service reviews or should he be doing it himself? 

Jimmy Lea: So Steve, my advice would be that you do it yourself. If you do hire a service to do it for you, make sure that they have 8, or 100 different responses that could be from you.

Jimmy Lea: So that it's not a copy and paste template on every review response gets the exact same information that shows that you as an owner are engaged with your clients and that's what Google wants to see. That's the currency that you're building with Google. Am I able to provide that additional value to my clients?

Jimmy Lea: So if you are going to hire a service. Make sure that they have 20, 30, 40, 100 different responses from you that could be thank you for coming in. We appreciate you and we're here for you when you need us. That's what I would do on that. In the personal response that you are able to give, I would always recommend that if the client doesn't leave in their response, or in their review, their vehicle, year make and model, the services that were performed, your response, your reply to them can contain that information.

Jimmy Lea: And what are you doing by doing that? Well, we're providing Google with some really good keywords. We're not keyword stuffing, but we're providing Google with some really good keywords about your shop working on 2012 Ford F 150s because you replaced the brakes, the shocks, the struts. The pads, the rotors, and you're taking care of Jimmy's Ford F 150.

Jimmy Lea: I love my truck. 

Nicole McLaughlin: And so say I have a Ford F 150 and I'm looking for somebody to service my Ford F 150 in the area, what's that gonna do, Jimmy? It's gonna pick up that truck, right? 

Jimmy Lea: Now when Nicole goes on and she types in Ford F 150 expert, Ford F 150 brakes, Ford F 150 rotors, Ford F 150 tires, Ford F 150 back axle, If those keywords are in my review, Google may queue that up and tee that up as an easy response to say, Hey, Nicole, I know you're looking for an F 150 expert.

Jimmy Lea: Here's somebody that had a really good experience with Jimmy's Super Shop. Maybe you want to go there because they're a Ford F 150 expert. Here's a five star review for you. 

Nicole McLaughlin: And I know we're probably going to get to it in a minute, Jimmy, but I wanted to drill down on the other aspect of his comment there about having a QR code to scan.

Nicole McLaughlin: Do you want me to save that for a little bit, or should we drill down now? 

Jimmy Lea: No, let's drill on that right now. So I love that you have the QR code. I love it and I hate it. I love that you're incentivizing people and you want 'em to come into it. There is a little bit of gating that you're doing. It can't be proven to Google.

Jimmy Lea: Probably not. It probably can't be proven. So what, what you're doing by that is, is, and, and I love that. You want to make sure that, to make it right. Because you may have a a bad experience with Mrs. Jones and her Mustang. So you definitely want to make that right before she leaves, goes home, and just unleashes wrath on, on a Google review.

Jimmy Lea: Okay, love and hate. Love it because the QR code there encourages them to leave a Google review. Here's my hate side, or my dislike side. I don't hate it. I dislike it. And for this reason, if they're leaving the review and Google knows the geo fencing, they know where that Mrs Jones is leaving that review.

Jimmy Lea: And if it's inside of your shop now, Google has to question. Okay, why are they leaving this review in the shop? Are they incentivizing? Are they giving a discount a dollar amount off? Are they giving free windshield wipers? Is there something nefarious happening here that we want to cut that review out of that shops, Google reviews.

Jimmy Lea: So now, now what happens, we'll go, we'll go into this in the, in the. Gating section, which is really cool because you, you, you want them to be at home or at the baseball field or at the grocery store or back at the office, leaving that review. So. Perhaps your QR code now goes on to the repair order or the invoice, or your QR code is a link that comes in a text or a link in an email requesting that review.

Jimmy Lea: So now they're away from the shop because it's two days later, or maybe it's still even that afternoon. One hour after the invoice closes, you're sending a request for a review. Why? Because they came in. My story. This is my story, Nicole. I brought my truck in for an oil service. 89. Synthetic oil. Getting the oil service.

Jimmy Lea: I get a call two hours later and, and they said, Hey, Jimmy, you know, we've got the truck in on the lift. We're getting ready to da, da, da, da. In our digital inspection. You remember, we've been watching these back breaks. You're down. It's now time. They definitely need to be replaced. So we did the pads the rotors pads and rotors pads and rotors Yes pads and rotors, so it's now 800 more so eight hundred eighty nine dollars Okay.

Jimmy Lea: Yes, you're right. Definitely get it done. We'd want to do it They call again in another two and a half hours and said hey jimmy you know, we've got the tires off We're into it. We're halfway through and we're seeing some seepage from your back axle We're halfway. We're almost do you want us to replace that seal now or do you want us to do it next time now?

Jimmy Lea: It's four hundred dollars for us to do it next time It's gonna be an additional eight hundred dollars because we have to pull everything off and get to this point where we are right Now do you want to do right now? I said, yep. Yep. Yep do it So my experience my oil change went from eighty nine dollars to eight hundred eighty nine dollars To 1, 289.

Jimmy Lea: Give me a minute to fall in love with my truck again. And by the way, driving down the street, I fell in love all over. It took me three minutes. I was in love again. The review request came the next day and I went on and gave him a raving review because they're helping to keep me safe on the road. And I really appreciate them doing that.

Jimmy Lea: What hurt was going from an 89 oil change to a 1, 200 invoice. But I, but listen to both sides of that story. I appreciate them keeping me safe on the road. 

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah, that's a good story. Thanks for sharing, Jimmy. But well, just as a takeaway, though, tell me you don't actually have a Ford, do you? 

Jimmy Lea: A Ford F 150?

Jimmy Lea: I do. Did. I just sold it. 

Nicole McLaughlin: I'm sad. Oh, good, good, good. I'm more of a Chev person myself. So that's why I was wondering, well, 

Jimmy Lea: you and your bow tie can go. 

Nicole McLaughlin: I mean, I do have a, I have a couple more questions coming in and then I'm sure all the Ford people I'm going to hear from the chat here in a minute. So, 

Jimmy Lea: and all the Chevy 

Jimmy Lea: supporting you.

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah, yeah, there we go. We have David chiming in. He's asking does asking for customers you helped to change a review, violate the Google terms and conditions. So asking them to, hey, can you, can you fix that from a one star to a three star? Was that a no no? 

Jimmy Lea: No, that, that's not wrong. That's not bad.

Jimmy Lea: Sometimes some people think, well, first place won, one star is the best. Oops. It's actually five star that's the best. So going back to Mrs. Smith and saying, hey, you know, thank you. We're glad you had a great experience when you leave a one star. That's actually the worst score you could give us. It would be great if you would change it to a five star and they would do that.

Jimmy Lea: If somebody had a bad experience and they did leave a one star and then they did get that one star or that experience was. rectified, the problem was fixed. There's no issue with you going to them and saying, Hey, you know, that you left a one star as an owner, you would go in and type out to say, Oh, thank you so much Mrs.

Jimmy Lea: Quinlan or Mr. Quinlan for bringing in your vehicle. We were, we're so glad that you brought it back to us so we could make everything right. And you list all the things that you made, right. Thank you so much for your experience. We're here for you when you need us. Keeping you safe on the road. So that response to their one star also helps Nicole when she comes and sees that the next time and Google sending out the Google bots.

Jimmy Lea: They crawl these reviews. They see that you made it right. So for you to go back to Mrs. Quinlan or Mr. Quinlan and say, Hey, you know, I'm glad that we had a good experience. Glad that if you feel it appropriate. You could go in and change the review from a one star to a five star. We would appreciate that.

Jimmy Lea: Or maybe you actually want the one star because it puts you in that sweet spot because of your reply. It's good. And it took you from a five Oh rating. Down to a 4. 9, which is giving you more credence and credibility with Google. So it's not necessarily a bad thing. 

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah, people can see that, right? So like, this example that you have up here is a good one.

Nicole McLaughlin: 189 reviews. If you're scrolling through, you can see they're all 5 star, 5 star, 5 star, 1 outlier. It's probably not going to break you, right? Like that, to your point, you want to be in that sweet spot. But I do have a question that lends itself to the topic as well, and then we'll keep moving. So Kim, I'm not really good at math, so I'm going to ask Jimmy the question, but I think I know the answer.

Nicole McLaughlin: Public math? It's not really math. At some point it says, please answer if our score goes down, how many five star reviews does it take to get back up? But you can never get back to a five star review. Can you, Jimmy, once you have that one that's brings it down.

Jimmy Lea: You can get, you can if all of your reviews are five stars, yeah, you could get, and then you got a one star and you got it changed or got it deleted and you went back up to a five.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. You could go back to a five. Oh, however, I wouldn't want to go back to a five. Oh, because Google has come out and said between a four point. Oh, and a four point eight is where you want to be. Chances are you want to keep that. One star, but now let's let's flip this, Nicole. Let's go down and say your shop is at a three.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, so you've got a lot of one star reviews. How do you get rid of those one star reviews? How do you show Google that? This is the mayor of crazy town. How do you show Google that this is a badge of honor? You went in and you made it right. You you do it with your responses question. 

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah, Kim chimed back in and I'm glad she did because it gives more specifics.

Nicole McLaughlin: So it says, we're not at a five star, we're at a 4. 7, but we want to get to a 4. 8. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, so to her question. 

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah. How many five stars do you need to get back up to? I think it depends on how many reviews are there, doesn't it? It 

Jimmy Lea: does. And the only true answer is nobody knows. There are companies trying to break this algorithm, trying to figure out this algorithm of Google Reviews.

Jimmy Lea: So follow me, follow me with this on, on this, this algorithm. And nobody knows the answer, by the way. Nobody knows it. If they tell you that they know it, they have a bridge to Hawaii. They want to sell you as well. It just, it just, it's not a thing. Your Google Reviews. You have longevity. So you have reviews that are older.

Jimmy Lea: Those reviews that are newer have a higher value than those that are older, but they're still both five star reviews. So, which one has the more value, the more current? You're, you have negative reviews that are in there as well. You have old negative reviews that don't have as much currency, but you have recent negative reviews.

Jimmy Lea: And maybe we don't call them negative. Yeah, recent one star reviews. Those have a different weight than the older ones. So to the question, how many five star reviews does it take current to get it from a four seven to a four eight? Nobody knows. Your shop might be 20, but Nicole's shop might be five.

Jimmy Lea: Pooja's shop might be 50. It depends on how many reviews you have. So the true answer is nobody knows. Nicole. 

Nicole McLaughlin: And I hate to get caught up in the questions, because I know you still have a lot to cover, but we do have some good questions coming in. So, Steve made a good point, and I guess I'm going to turn his comment into a question for you.

Nicole McLaughlin: But, he says that you can utilize a Google Review Calculator to input what your current rating is and how to get to the new one. I'm going to turn this into a question to say, how do you feel about Those calculators, Jimmy, are they accurate? Does anyone really know, et cetera? 

Jimmy Lea: According to Google, they're not accurate.

Jimmy Lea: According to and I'm, I'm basing a lot of this off of a company out of Canada called Sterling Sky. They are tier one, tier two and tier three support for Google. They subcontract with Google and they specifically specialize in Google reviews. So, Steve, I'd love to have a link to that calculator. I'd love to check it out.

Jimmy Lea: But to your point, are 

Nicole McLaughlin: there dates and different weights and to, like, the, the different criteria that you were mentioning, does that calculator take that into account? 

Jimmy Lea: That's the thing. Nobody knows. Yeah, they're all still trying to, to figure it out. Even Sterling Sky that's subcontracted with Google for providing those tiers of support even they don't know what the algorithm is.

Jimmy Lea: So there's people out there that will and, and with a pretty broad brush, they're getting close, but there's not anything that's exactly correct. That's probably the best answer for it, Steve. The Google Calculator will get you fairly close. But it's not going to give you the exact number and that's what I was trying to address is what's the exact number that I need and nobody knows 

Nicole McLaughlin: Steve's on it.

Nicole McLaughlin: He's 10 steps ahead. He's already pasted the URL. So I'll send that to you later on Jimmy. But I do have one more question before we keep moving on. And this one's from Chris. It's a really great question. How do you respond to a one star review that you are being left by people who are not customers but are leaving one star negative reviews based on encounterments by their friends of friends that they feel that they had a bad experience?

Jimmy Lea: Yes. Yes. This falls right into that abuse category, which is what we're going to go into here next as we talk about how do you respond or how do you reply to those? I, as an owner, I would reply to say, Hey, Joe, I don't know who you are. You haven't been into my shop. You haven't experienced here. We'd love for you to come in so we could make it right or so we, you could experience what it is here in our shop.

Jimmy Lea: But then also let's take it right over here to the next steps of reporting that Google review to Google. You go to the negative review, click on the three dots, and report it to Google. This is phase one. Now, this is phase one of three different phases. Click on the three dots, report it to Google.

Jimmy Lea: And there's a menu that'll come up. You mark it as inappropriate, or you can also mark it as spam, or you can, there's another one. There's like nine different options that come up when you do this. Inappropriate is the first one I would do. And you can ask your friends and your neighbors to also go in and mark it as inappropriate.

Jimmy Lea: Two or more, according to Google, two or more gets their attention. With 12 people going in, mark it as inappropriate. You definitely get even more attention from Google because there's more people coming in and marking it as inappropriate when you do this from your Google business profile, and we'll, we'll talk about this as well.

Jimmy Lea: This is on, on phase four here, or sorry, step four after three days. Google, they do send you a notification, they'll send you an email. If you do it from your Google business profile, they'll send you an email. You can now go to the Google business profile, Google, I did the wrong initials there. The Google business profile forum, you can go into the forum now and report it.

Jimmy Lea: Don't give away too much detail yet because you want a case number. As soon as you have a case number, then you've got a human on the other end, they can help you to get that removed. So first phase one is mark it as inappropriate, then take it to the Google business profile and have them go down the path.

Jimmy Lea: Chances are it's somebody from Sterling Sky that's helping you with your case. Once you get a case number, provide them as much detail and data and information as possible. Document, document, document. So if you look and it's Joe Smith that is leaving this negative, sorry, leaving a one star review. And you want it removed, you show in your database.

Jimmy Lea: Under all J. Smith, John Smith, Jason, Joe, Jacqueline, that there is no Joe, there's no Joseph, there's no J. Smith that drives that vehicle that is in my shop. So you're documenting and you're showing this to Google so that they will then remove it. That's phase two. You have a question before I go to phase three?

Nicole McLaughlin: I I don't have a question. I just have a quick comment from Philip, which is a good point. He says that he's had a tremendous amount of success when he gets his store managers to report the, the, Bat, the one star review, the, the spam, the whatever it is that same day. He says it's like as fast as you can get on it.

Nicole McLaughlin: That's the best 

Jimmy Lea: Yes. Totally agree. And get people from your church group, get them from the Cub Scout pack, get it from your technicians, your service advisors, their, their wives, anybody that's around you, anybody that you work with and associate with, as soon as you possibly can, get them on there to mark it as inappropriate.

Jimmy Lea: That'll get it removed fairly quickly. Yeah. Thank you. Was it Phillip? Thank you, Phillip, for that comment. Super awesome. All right. So, there's a couple different ways of reporting them. Google maps is one way as well. Google search, you can mark it as inappropriate. My favorite is going directly from the google business profile and marking it as inappropriate right there.

Jimmy Lea: I've, I've gone through and marked lots of different reviews as inappropriate because it was clearly The mayor of crazy town any questions there about phase one and phase two phase one is into Marking the review as inappropriate phase two is taking it to google and saying this is inappropriate Get a case number before you divulge a tremendous amount of information.

Jimmy Lea: Nicole. What do you have? 

Nicole McLaughlin: No questions for you, Jimmy, but I did just want to remind the audience, you don't need to jot it down like crazy. We will send you the slides, the recordings, some tips and tricks. So, if we fly through this last little bit quickly, it'll come your way later on. 

Jimmy Lea: Yep, yep, it's all coming to you.

Jimmy Lea: And, and this is the 14 pages of information. This is, I'm summarizing this for you to make it easy so that you can go in and report these as inappropriate. All right, and go to I'm going to skip past this because time permitting, this is coming to you. You can read over it. It's inclusive of all the information that you're looking for.

Jimmy Lea: Okay, on to remove by spam. Google automatically detects this. Now Google's not as good as Yelp and Facebook. So if somebody comes in as attacking and then it goes viral and then there's a, a firefly of, of things happening at your shop, Google will. Temporarily, they can pause your Google business profile from these attacks, but there are these attacks that can sometimes happen.

Jimmy Lea: And the question is, what do we do? How do we respond? Step one is to remain calm and relax reported to Google so that they can. Pause the account. So the, the specific scenario that happened here is River Bluff Dental. This gentleman, the doctor, the dentist, was on safari. He paid money to a safari company.

Jimmy Lea: They supposedly had all the right tickets, all the right information, all the right stuff for him to go out on a big game. Hunting safari and he went out and he shot a lion that he had a license. He thought he had a license for he thought everything was above board, but the attacks that came in were relentless against this dentist.

Jimmy Lea: He went from a 3. 8 Google reviews down to a 1. 8, there were over 6, 000. One star reviews that came in within 24 hours over 6, 000 BAM right on to and they keep getting these reviews And it's down to a 1. 1. Look at that right there 2711 reviews. This was in the early stages. They they such an uphill battle to go from this Because of this scenario where he had gone and killed Cecil, the line here's it.

Jimmy Lea: Here's here's the different phases that you go through in reporting the review. So you report the review. It gives you this drop down menu. The 9 different things. And you can mark it as spam. You can mark it as a conflict of interest. And all of these different ideas here is where you go to market as inappropriate for your business.

Jimmy Lea: So this clearly is not a customer that has been into the shop and this is online. This is right. You can go see this. I'm not pulling anything. I'm not making this up. This, this is a gentleman, Mr. Peter, that feels that he wants to bring this dentist to justice. 

Nicole McLaughlin: I'm glad you brought that up, Jimmy. Sorry, just to pause.

Nicole McLaughlin: Can we just go back one? Because we do have a question on that. So a couple of folks are looking for a quote unquote inappropriate and said that they don't see it. But there are, just to highlight, a couple of alternatives to inappropriate, whether that's bullying or profanity. So I believe you used the term inappropriate to summarize the majority of these.

Nicole McLaughlin: These points, correct? 

Jimmy Lea: Yes. Inappropriate is all seven of these or eight of these different options that you can select. The one that I use the most is a conflict of interest or off topic because it's somebody who clearly has not been into the shop. Conflict of interest. This is a competitor or this is somebody who's trying to bring the business down.

Jimmy Lea: Those are the two best ones that I've seen. Profanity, bullying. Discrimination or hate speech, while you would think these have a lot of really strong teeth to them, Google seems to think that there's a much broader definition of discrimination or hate speech, or even bullying or harassment. And to, so to the bullying and harassment, clearly this person lives down here in Iowa and they're trying to bring down a dentist that lives up in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Jimmy Lea: This is not, this is not somebody that should be reviewing this dentist. It just shouldn't be a thing. Same thing here with Jonathan. Oh, so I put this on here because when somebody, the hardest one star reviews to remove, the hardest ones are this one. Where there is no data, no information, no experience, nothing for you to Engage or, or, or try to prove as wrong.

Jimmy Lea: This one star review is the hardest to get removed from your Google business profile. So this is where you need to go in and document, document, document to show that Jonathan Calloway, you have no Jonathan Calloway in your point of sale system. You have no Jay Calloway. You have no Jonathan C. There's no, there's, you, this is where you're documenting this information to show Google.

Jimmy Lea: This is somebody who just really shouldn't be here. So that goes through phase one and phase two. Now let's go to phase three, which is, we can see that Jonathan clearly does not live up here in Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. From his profile, we can see where he is leaving reviews. So you can now go up here into Jonathan's account and under the profile.

Jimmy Lea: You can mark it as a inappropriate profile. You can get his entire profile shut down. So usually with the mayor of crazy town, and this is somebody who's marking every shop as a one star review that getting their profile shut down. Deletes all of their reviews. So not only are you doing a favor for yourself and your own shop You're probably helping a tremendous amount of other shops as well that don't even know you're there working for them Nicole you have another 

Nicole McLaughlin: comment We have quite a few questions coming in and they're all really great.

Nicole McLaughlin: So This, this first one here is what about on the opposite side of that spectrum, Jimmy? So how about if somebody leaves you a five star review, you have no idea who they are, they've never been to your shop before, and they don't exist in your database. Do you just leave it there, pretend? 

Jimmy Lea: I would. I would say very much, Stuart, for leaving us a five star review.

Jimmy Lea: Thank you. I mean, if it is a client, somebody that has been into your shop, they leave a five star review put in there the vehicle, the year, the make, the model, the services performed so that there's some collateral there for Google on the next review. If it is a five star review and you have no idea who it is, it could be a relative of somebody

Jimmy Lea: that went on and left it for him or a spouse or a partner or You You never know. So the five stars that you don't know, say thank you very much and carry on. 

Nicole McLaughlin: The person that asked this question is skeptical. They, they think that, I think they're going to get caught. They're, they're like, they're not trying to set us up for anything.

Nicole McLaughlin: Google isn't testing us, etc, etc. 

Jimmy Lea: No, Google's like, got other fish to fry. They're, they're, this is not a, a, a conspiracy theory on, on that one. 

Nicole McLaughlin: And then Chris, he, Chris is the, the gentleman that asked you earlier about the one star review and how you respond. So he's actually followed up with another question.

Nicole McLaughlin: So he says, when you receive a one star review from someone you did not do business with, Do you respond to that review? Like, even though you're reporting it, do you also respond to it and say, Hey, not sure who you are, love to make it right? 

Jimmy Lea: Yes, absolutely. Love to meet you. Love to shake your hand and say hello.

Jimmy Lea: Love to make this right. Here's my phone number, give me a call, let's make this right. 

Nicole McLaughlin: Absolutely. And then you follow it up with reporting it as well, just in the, in the case that Google's like, nope, I'm going to leave that up there. At least you've done your diligence, due diligence, and you, you've replied, you've replied.

Jimmy Lea: In hours, we talked about it before. Somebody said that, that when their service advisor or manager goes in and marks it as inappropriate, the same day, it has a better response. Same goes for your replies or your responses. To the one star reviews, the quicker you get them out there, the better it is. Even the five stars, the quicker you get your response out there, the better it is.

Jimmy Lea: So within the same day is really good within the same week. Yeah, that's, that's nice. That's good. Within the same month. Okay. You might want to actually allow somebody else to do it for you so that those replies have that additional Google review juice to really pump up your Google business profile. 

Nicole McLaughlin: And I hate to keep jumping in, Jimmy, but I know that I love it.

Nicole McLaughlin: This is 

Jimmy Lea: great. 

Nicole McLaughlin: I know that a tip or trick that we use is we do set up email notifications, right? So Google, Google My Business will actually say, Hey, you've just received a new review. And so you're not having to go check Google every single day, but you can, you can get those email notifications.

Jimmy Lea: And that helps, that helps tremendously. So when you get that email, don't ignore it. Don't delete it. Don't say, Oh, good, another five star review. Go in and reply to it. And call them out by name, name their vehicle, services performed, and, and chances are you know what that is because you have your point of sale system, you can look them up in our writer and say, Oh, yeah, we worked on the Ford F 150 or Nicole's Chevy.

Jimmy Lea: Super awesome. Okay. I'm showing you this because it is Yelp. Same thing happened within Yelp. And very quickly, Yelp was able to shut it down. Love them or hate them, Yelp is a thing. People use them and it's a thing. So you do have to pay attention to it. I would advise that as much as possible to not pay them for those services because you can have a free account.

Jimmy Lea: But once you start paying, you got to stay in there. So, the, the, the stars that you've got when there's unusual activity, Yelp will close down the account fairly quickly because they see that. unusual activity that's happening and, and calming it and making it stirring up all those negative reviews.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. So let's also talk about missing reviews. This does happen within your Google business profile within your Google platform. So every week log in and copy and paste your Google reviews into a word document, into a Google doc, have those in there because you can go back. To Google and say, look, I had 440 reviews, and now I only have 200 when Google goes in.

Jimmy Lea: Sometimes they change the rules and all of a sudden they're all gone. So if you can prove to Google that you had 440 reviews and they weren't removed because of you breaking the terms and conditions, Google will That's Google. Re re revitalize those and bring them back up. The way to get those back up is to document, document, document.

Jimmy Lea: Stage four there. How do you document? You screenshot your RO rider. You screenshot showing that that is a customer or not. Screenshot as much as possible. Nicole, another comment? 

Nicole McLaughlin: No, you just addressed it. It was how do you copy those reviews? 

Jimmy Lea: Copy the reviews into a Word doc. Absolutely paramount. But don't give that information or data to Google until you have a case number, a case file, that's when you've got a human on the other side that is going to assist you in, in documenting and bringing those reviews back up.

Jimmy Lea: Very important. All right, so let's talk about review gating. I think it was Steve talking about the the experience that exit interview. Google will never be able to prove that you are gating, but by definition, you're kind of gating. What does that mean? That means if it's a three or less, and, and this so I'm going to speak not to the exit interview, I'm speaking to your follow up afterwards.

Jimmy Lea: So when you're sending an email or a text message, how did we do? How would you rate us on a scale of one to five? Well, they give you a one to three. You're going to send them a Google form because you want to make that right. You want to correct that before it goes into a Google review. Well, if they're going to leave you a four or five, then you send them a link to your Google reviews.

Jimmy Lea: This is gating, this is gating, and this is where a shop went from 440. Reviews down to 85. So what happened? There's a, and there's an analysis that Google did. They went in and looked and said, okay, well from this point forward, everything was a five star review. They're going to delete them all. They deleted all those reviews and you will not get those back, even the legit ones, even though they are legit, the gating says that you have been steering those to a Google form, because it was a one, two or three, and those that were a four or five got the Google review link.

Jimmy Lea: I've seen this happen a lot, and it's not good. Don't do it. Some shops say, oh, you know what, Jimmy? I'm just gonna do it until I get caught. Okay. Good luck to you. I hope you don't get caught. Chances are you're gonna get caught. And when you do, you're going to lose all those reviews and it happens instantly.

Jimmy Lea: It happens overnight. And it, and it hurts. It just hurts because you have worked hard to make it right from the very beginning. So my advice to you is if you're going to go after Google reviews, be an open book. Have that open book experience with everybody and give them the opportunity of leaving you a one, two, three, four, or even a five star.

Jimmy Lea: Here's the link to our Google reviews, leave us a review. And there are some platforms that after a client has left a Google review, you can switch it to leave a review on Facebook or leave a review on Yelp or leave a review on the website. So after they have had multiple drops or multiple reviews with your shop, now, maybe you just put them all into the website.

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah. Is it possible to export the reviews from the business page or a simple copy and paste into a Word doc is what you're suggesting. 

Jimmy Lea: Copy and paste into a Word doc. There is no export function. It's a copy paste. So if ever you go to your website developer and say, Hey, look, I want all my reviews to be listed here on my website.

Jimmy Lea: It's called scraping. They can go out and scrape your Google business profile for reviews. They can scrape your Facebook for reviews, Yelp for reviews, SureCritic for reviews, Birdseye, Neighbor, Glassdoor. They can scrape all these different business platforms and bring all those reviews into one location.

Jimmy Lea: Which is where you'll see some shops have 1500 five star reviews on their website. But when you go to their Google business profile, they might have 500, 600, 700, 800, where where's all these other reviews coming from? They have scraped them from all these different areas and brought them into one big pile on their website.

Jimmy Lea: And there's tremendous value of having those on the website as well. So that's really good. But don't, gating because that becomes very bad. Google reviews. Oh my goodness, Nicole, we are. All right, everybody that's here, you're welcome to stay, but we've hit the hour point but I've got some great information.

Jimmy Lea: Let me drop this last story and then we'll, we'll put a period or a comma at the end of the sentence. Maybe we have to come back for a little bit more. 

Nicole McLaughlin: Well, that's what I was going to say, Jimmy, folks, folks can stay. We can keep going. If I have time, if you do, and if you have to drop off, like I said, we'll send you the recording and you won't miss a thing and you can watch it whenever you guys have time.

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah. Take your time, Jimmy. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay, so let's talk about Collins Automotive. This is a shop in Canada and this shop came to their website provider and said, Oh my gosh, you're, you're wasting our Google ad spend. You're optimizing us for transmissions. We don't work on transmissions. We don't do the R& R. We're not going to unbolt them and plug them back in.

Jimmy Lea: We just stay away from transmission. We don't do transmission work. Well, the website developer was not. Listing them for Google ads for transmission. They were not there. There was a change in Google's Rules and when we talk about Google says and what Google does isn't always congruent This is that scenario.

Jimmy Lea: They say that the Google reviews don't affect your Google ranking Well, in fact, they do this happened with this client And it took a lot of research to discover a review from 2018. It was like two years prior. The client mentioned the word transmission three times in the review. And this boosted them to the top.

Jimmy Lea: Even though there was a transmission shop right down the street, this shop showed up and they were getting eight to nine calls a week for transmission work. They're like, we don't do transmission work. We do transmission flush. We change transmission fluid. But we're not doing the transmission word. So, interesting scenario.

Jimmy Lea: The keywords that you're putting in there have a tremendous amount of value. Don't keyword stuff it. Don't make it look like you're stuffing it full of the word transmission. Client's words here, not the shop's words. Client's words carry a tremendous amount of value. to your Google ranking and to your Google reviews.

Jimmy Lea: So the question might come from you to say, all right, Jimmy, this is great information. There are so many review sites. Where should I spend my time, effort and energy? So depending on how much time you have set aside, whether it's a daily basis of 10 minutes or a weekly basis of an hour, whatever that scenario looks like, you want to spend the majority of your time in Google.

Jimmy Lea: About 50 to 75 percent of your time you want to spend in Google and the other 25 to 50 percent of time I would spend it in responding to Facebook or Yelp reviews. That's where we want to spend your time in working those reviews to be those raving fans for your shop. Nicole. 

Nicole McLaughlin: I'm back. And I know we're trying to get through this, but some great questions.

Nicole McLaughlin: This particular question says, does Google tell us when they make a change in their reporting methods? So like in their algorithm, basically, and if not, is there a resource where we can find the changes that have been made? Google doesn't make it easy. Google doesn't make it 

Jimmy Lea: easy. No, they don't. They really don't.

Jimmy Lea: And no, they don't really project it out there. They don't give a whole lot of warning or, hey, this is coming or, hey, this is happening. Now, there is one that's happening in March that Google has announced. Which is governing around using celebrities or celebrities as fish bait where you, the celebrity brings you in, but you're putting them into something else as well as AI, there's a big release in March, but to the Google reviews, no, there there's, there's no algorithm, there's no warning, they make the change.

Jimmy Lea: And then all of these companies. Come and work it in reverse, trying to figure out what is it that changed? What is the new rule coming from Google that has changed here in this situation? Because as you'll see, Google doesn't communicate a lot of what those changes are, nobody knows the algorithm, Google won't release what that algorithm is.

Jimmy Lea: I suspect it's because it's super complicated and it gives a lot of weight to recent reviews and not as much to older reviews. And yeah, I think there's a lot that goes into there that we just don't know about. Final questions, comments, concerns? Google reviews, I love them. It's such a love hate relationship because we love the positive, we hate the negative, but now hopefully you have some tools that help you to embrace that negative a little bit more.

Jimmy Lea: And let's not call it negative, let's call it a one star review. You can embrace those one star reviews, especially those badge of honor that you earned. To help the next person understand how you made it right. 

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah, thank you so much, Jimmy. While I'm waiting for any last minute comments, questions in the chat here I just want to remind the audience, once again, hate to sound like a broken record, but the slides and recording will be sent to you, so don't stress there.

Nicole McLaughlin: We'll try and get those to you by the end of next week. We do encourage you guys to complete the post webinar survey, so if you want to hear more from us, or if you want to give us feedback, topics for next time, we love the feedback, so we really appreciate it. And then one last point and an exciting point for our writer, but we have a brand new resource coming out in the next couple of weeks on hiring and retaining the best team in the business.

Nicole McLaughlin: So, if you're struggling to obtain new technicians, like a lot of folks in the industry. Let us know in the chat and we'll, we'll put you on the distribution list. You'll be the first in line to get that ebook. Like I said, a lot of stuff in there. We have a hiring checklist. Really get great resource.

Nicole McLaughlin: So we want to get your hands on that. We have a couple people, Hugh and Chris, just say thank you so much, Jimmy. They really, really appreciate it. Lots of great information there. So, I appreciate that, Jimmy. Any kind of final words to leave the audience with today? 

Jimmy Lea: Yes, I love your Google reviews. Love them.

Jimmy Lea: The one stars, two stars, three stars, four stars, and five stars. You love them all. Respond to all of them. Some you actually earn. And some are given to you as a gift and, and I'm, I am from the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. This QR code that you see here on the screen, if you want to scan that, we can have a conversation and really go into analyze your business, analyze your practice so that what are those areas that you might be blind to?

Jimmy Lea: What are those areas that you might need a little bit of assistance with some advice? We can push you or pull you or direct you in the right path to take, to become that best shop that you can possibly be. That business assessment, it's like a 6, 000 value. And we provide it to you pro bono for being here as part of this webinar and being part of the automotive industry.

Jimmy Lea: Our goal from the Institute is to help you build a better business so that you have a better life. And as collective, what's the net result? It's a better industry, better business, better life, better industry. 

Nicole McLaughlin: Yeah. Yeah. I, you couldn't have said it better. Thank you so much, Jimmy. Happy belated birthday.

Nicole McLaughlin: I hope you have so much fun at your party this weekend. Don't celebrate too hard. And a final thank you to our audience. You guys tuned in, you showed up, you asked questions. It was amazing. You're always engaged with the content. So until next time, we'll talk soon. Take care, everyone. Have a great day.

Nicole McLaughlin: Bye bye.