When Did the Google Review Stars Return to Local Search?

James Hansen sent me an email the other day asking “When did the stars return to local search?” Attached was a screen shot from a search done that very day:

While helping Mark Derrico, a local Chandler Insurance company with their online marketing, James had stumbled upon the lost gold stars treasure of local search! If you are like many people you may be recovering from being star struck by Google Places. Yes those five little gold stars we so easy to find before Google bought Zagat. Made searching for services and restaurants a lot easier. But alas, the golden review stars are dying out. So where did James find these beauties? The good old Apple iPad. Simply scroll down and click on “Classic”. Yep, back to the refreshing classic taste of Google. Mmmmmm. Love that classic stuff. Oh and if you are in New York at #SMX and can’t Handle a Big Gulp of that Classic Google taste try the mobile sized.

Places for Pest Control near Tempe, AZ

That view is achieved on the iPhone the same way, click on the “Classic” version. Sadly, I can not figure out how to make the stars reappear on my desktop computer. As a searcher, does anyone else miss the Google review stars? As a business do you miss them?

The Business Side of the Gold Review Stars

For those businesses that believe the gold stars had a value for their online marketing, Google agrees. In fact, they will gladly take your money and add the stars back onto your listing. Well, your PPC listing. Getting you local search stars for your google reviews back is as easy as clicking “go” on the fully automate Google Adwords Express campaign. Hopefully you will find the value equal to what Google says it’s worth. And some dentist office in Denver believes it is worth paying to have the stars.

And with a quick scan of that result where do your eyes fall? It’s almost enough to bug you isn’t it? Well don’t call me, I only deal in offline pest control.

Pest Control Guy - Thomas Ballantyne
🙂

-Thomas Ballantyne Director of Marketing for Bulwark Exterminating Follow me on Twitter —> @Thos003 Make it a great day!

Thomas Ballantyne  

3 thoughts on “When Did the Google Review Stars Return to Local Search?

  1. John Carter says:

    I didn’t know this before, but with site extensions on your Adwords ads you can give people several options to visit your page, or, just offer a bunch of different ad copy in the form of links that all point to the same place. Do you have sitelinks setup, and actively gaining impressions/clicks in your account? If that sounds tricky, it isn’t as difficult as you might imagine. You can get help by just giving Simon a ring, his number is 219-733-4687.

Leave a Reply to Organic SEO Services Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *