Chasing Google's Algorithm & Disappearing Reviews With Ben Fisher pt. 2

Madeleine

Hey Syncaster’s, it's Madeleine Synup’s content and community manager. Welcome back to the Syncast. This week's episode is Part 2 of my conversation with Ben Fisher. If you don't know him, he is a Google My Business diamond product expert, otherwise known as the Google Whisperer. Last week we covered Google's new dashboard, AKA the new web search view and how it's affecting businesses. This week, we'll be covering Google algorithm updates disappearing. Views and what it means to be a product expert. There's no need to listen to part one as a prequel, but I definitely recommend circling back to soak up all of Ben's sage wisdom. Now let's get into the Syncast. Yeah, I would. I would love to know. I know that while Google is making all these updates, there's a lot of issues with the algorithm changing and rankings changing. Like the spam filters kind of going wonky. Reviews are disappearing. What is your sage wisdom of how to handle it when Google stuff goes a little bit wonky?

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Ben fisher

Be prepared. That's a guess, the first thing I could say. Example. So we deal with a lot of suspensions and reinstatements at steady demand, right, or known as the world experts on it. And I had a client come to us just this week. And they couldn't get into their Google business profile. And so they wanted us to obviously help figure out, see where it was and what we could do. They had a marketing partner who had access to it at one point and they said, well, it's no longer in our dashboard. Is it yours? No. No, it's not ours. We've looked at all our e-mail addresses. Turns out it was deleted. Yeah, but the only way we were able to figure this out was because the marketing partner had documented the profile ID. Shocking number of people don't do this. I've been talking about it for five years. That you need to back up every single profile ID. If you have the dashboard, you will back up the dashboard URL, you know and there are ways to get it, but I mean it's not 100.

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Madeleine

Percent.

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Ben fisher

Exactly. It's like when you get a review, there's a link that actually goes back to your dashboard. So, but that's going to be changed too, so eventually I'm sure. So anyway, but yes, be prepared. You know, a huge thing right now going on is, we have a couple different review features. They're not bugs. Where new users, so the first one is called a new. What's I call a new review ghost? This is where somebody leaves you a review. They see it in their contributions to having maps, but you don't see it as the business owner. It doesn't show up. This is being filtered by Google as potentially spam, and so it's being held. And Google keeps everything basically. Usually I should say so, but if you do not have a screenshot of that review. It can't be recovered.

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Madeleine

Yeah.

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Ben fisher

And so a lot of business owners are like, well, I don't ask everybody for a screenshot of their review. It's like, well, maybe you should for the important ones. All the best.

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Madeleine

Customers.

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Ben fisher

Exactly right. You know, it's like or if you're a personal injury attorney, maybe you should get that screenshot. They're hard to get those reviews. And so then there's something which is called an old review ghost. This is when you have 100 reviews, let's say when you go to bed and you wake up and you have 97. Then you go to bed. You have 97, you wake up and you're at 90. They're just disappearing. And or if it's even worse, you go to bed at 100, you wake up and they're at 50.

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Madeleine

Yeah, not the best news to wake up to.

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Ben fisher

Not at all so, but that's because Google's review filter is going through your reviews and getting rid of anything that might violate their guidelines, basically. And with Google, there's something that's always called. It's called a mental test, but the mental test basically states that there will be X number of false positives if a test is working. And so it's always running in the background. So there's always going to be false positives. Again, we mentioned the fact that there are a huge number of businesses that are on maps right now. Amplify that by the number of reviews that are on maps.

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Madeleine

And you have a very large number.

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Ben fisher

Yes, exactly. I believe it's published out there, but it's like north of 10 billion or something. I don't know. It's some God's ungodly number. That's probably not 10 billion by the way, but it's probably more like a billion but. The fact is, it's a big number, and so with the big number you're going to have a big number of false positives.

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Madeleine

Of course.

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Ben fisher

So unfortunately there. The resource is very, very tiny. It's like you have to have a backup of all your reviews. In a very specific format.

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Madeleine

Yeah, which is not. I assume many people do not have that.

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Ben fisher

That is correct. So it's like we have a program internally that you know with our customers where we can help get them restored if they go missing. And so Google will restore again the ones that they find in line with their guidelines, you know, so it's like when a locksmith says, well, I lost 1000 reviews, I go, I'm sorry buddy. You probably didn't deserve those reviews anyway. Just saying. And I'm sorry, you spent 5 bucks on a review. Which is usually the case, yeah. So. And so anyway, I mean and we look at this. We have to look at it through a very specific lens, and that is that, you know, sometimes Google's doing the right thing. And so there were, there was a review. Bug that was occurring a couple of weeks ago and it was causing a lot of reviews to go missing on a regular basis. I think it was like a daily fact. Some research was done and it was figured out that guess what most of these people were buying reviews.

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Madeleine

Of course ,

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Ben fisher

Course so it was functioning as intended. You know and.

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Madeleine

People don't like to get called out.

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Ben fisher

Exactly. I hear it all the time. When we're doing reinstatements. I'm not violating the guidelines at all when you take a look at it. Oh, then how come you were renting a desk at Regis? Yeah, you're not violating anything, that's for sure. So yeah.

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Madeleine

I saw someone on Reddit who I'm clearly prowling the Google My Business Reddit a little bit too much but and just trying to learn. Just trying to learn and someone had said Ohh my business got suspended and I think it's because my dad bought me a bunch of reviews for my birthday even though I told him not to.

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Ben fisher

Which?

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Madeleine

Seemed like a.

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Ben fisher

Yeah, suspension by the.

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Madeleine

Way. Yeah, it was. It was funny. I was like, I don't think your dad bought them without your permission. It's a weird birthday gift for sure. This is.

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Ben fisher

Funny, but yeah. It's my birthday, yeah.

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Madeleine

Yeah, I feel like. I feel like that usually happens where it's like a new restriction or a new filtering program is released by Google or by another like listing site. And then there'll be all these posts of people kind of being upset. Like, this happened to me, my account got suspended. And then an expert will come in and say, oh, I did testing on these ten websites who complained that they got there like their rankings got dinged. Because they were fake, like bad content or, you know, whatever reason. Yeah, that's not. And then she was like, I think of this one specific post I saw and she was like, oh, they got, they were complaining because they didn't have like, authenticated backlinks. But I checked their backlinks and none of them are from authentic websites. Like they paid for all of their backlinks. So it's not that surprising.

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Ben fisher

Yeah, regarding Google algorithm updates, we're in that time of year. November and December is historically when Google does a ton of updates.

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Madeleine

That's interesting. Why do they choose this time of year, do you think?

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Ben fisher

So I've been doing this for 30 years by the way. OK. My theory does come with a tinfoil hat.

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Madeleine

It's good to have a little bit of tinfoil.

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Ben fisher

Yeah, yeah. And unfortunately I've seen this one enough years to probably make sure it's not tinfoil. And I usually don't go down the conspiracy theory line of thought. But, but, but I hate to say it, it's the holidays.

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Madeleine

Oh.

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Ben fisher

Interesting. Better. What is a better way to get people to spend money?

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Madeleine

Yeah.

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Ben fisher

Just saying. You know. Your ranking goes down, you've got to buy AdWords, and that is the only time you'll ever hear me say anything like that.

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Madeleine

That's crafty. I mean, it's true. You. That's the worst time of the year for you. For your rankings to be volatile and for your website to not be doing as well, that's a good point.

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Ben fisher

But if you look at the patterns, you know if you just look at the pattern, basically you'll see every November in December, there's always big core updates. You know it did not happen. During COVID, by the way, if you go back and look at the algorithm updates, they didn't occur in November. In December, right? Exactly so. But almost every single year it's like clockwork. So you give people complaining and you know. But anyway, I don't know. Like the thing that people are kinder than that, but it might not be the case here.

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Madeleine

Who knows? Some people are not always the nicest if they're hiding behind the Internet.

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Ben fisher

Yeah, right, right. Exactly. So. But yeah, so be prepared is really what it comes down to, right? And when it comes to algorithm updates, I mean, it's like I always say, focus, do SEO like it was the 1990s.

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Madeleine

Yeah, interesting. It's safe. Do a little classics.

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Ben fisher

Exactly. I mean, things have not changed. In that classical sense, it hasn't changed. It's still about building great content. It's still about attracting users with content. It's still about getting links for traffic, not for ranking for traffic. You know, I mean, that's how we did it back in the 90s, you know, it was, there was nothing magical to it, you know, and in that sense now it's got more difficult because spammers and all the things that Google has had to do to combat spammers, right. Of course, you know, yes, there's a lot of technical things that have that. We evolved over the years. Tons of technical things I should say. Yes, right. But you know, sometimes even the simplest of pages can rank and there's a reason for that and that is because it's using older techniques, I guess you could say tried and true techniques. So just be prepared, you know? And what I'd also like to say is that, you know, it's like getting a health check, you go to a doctor once a year, right, hopefully. And you know that.

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Madeleine

Same for your websites.

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Ben fisher

Do the same for your website. Get an audit. You know it does not hurt. The worst case scenario is the audit comes back. And nothing's wrong. Yeah, I've never seen that, by the way, but.

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Madeleine

Just saying it's possible. It's always a few problems out there. I am curious if someone wants to become one. Best friends with Google become a product expert. How would they get started?

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Ben fisher

I get asked that question a lot. So yeah, I am actually a product expert mentor. So if I actually, I won an award for that two years ago.

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Madeleine

OK.

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Ben fisher

So you have the line around here somewhere.

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Madeleine

You're many product expert children. Thank you.

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Ben fisher

Somewhere around here I don't know but.

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Madeleine

That's awesome.

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Ben fisher

But yeah, so, but, you know, so I mentor about 10 to 15 people a year. Only maybe one makes it. So, yeah.

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Madeleine

It's that cutthroat.

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Ben fisher

Cutthroat, most people don't have the wherewithal. Most people look at it. It's like a shiny object. Then when they get into it, they're like, oh, I don't wanna do that.

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Madeleine

Yeah, not interested in a little bit too much work for the shiny object.

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Ben fisher

So, like, wait a minute, I think that that looked cool, but geez, damn. No, no, no, I'm not doing it. So anyway, so I mean but to answer your question, get a mentor 1. You know your mentor should. What Is the best way to put this? Your mentor should encourage you to do what you need to do, but not tell you what to do. Umm. And so and encourage you, but not watch you. Per se anyway. Anyway, the best way to get started is to go to the community for Google business profiles and start answering questions. Start helping people. Like I said, that's how I got started, you know? So then it's about patience. Just have patience. Just if you're doing it for the right reason. You'll be coming up, you'll become an expert, you'll become a product expert. But the right reason really is helping people. And if you're not doing it to help people. So a lot of the people that come to me to be mentored, they want to do it because they want to increase their business. You know, they want to get a promotion at work, they want to move on and do something else, and they want to leave their job. So they look at it as a career path. Sorry. It is not a career path. So, and I'll give you a great example of this, I said there were two diamond product experts in the United States, right? I'm one of them. The other gentleman. He doesn't even work in the Google business profile, he's an IT guy. He fixes computers and networks. Great guy, by the way. Awesome dude. But like I said, it's, you know, for him, it's not a career, it's just for his own knowledge and it's because he likes to help businesses.

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Madeleine

Who is the other diamond product expert? 

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Ben fisher

First dream came, James Clemens. I think it is. So. Yeah. I mean, so basically it's really about helping people and, you know, doing it and selflessly doing it. You know, there are a lot of unsung heroes that are product experts and that do things well behind the scenes, and they just don't put their name on it. You know, a news article might come out. You have no idea who the source was behind it, you know, and so. So, yeah, I mean and it might be like trying to force a change or something like that that's going on, but, but yeah, so, but that's how you get started really. And like I said, it's not for everybody and nine out of 10 people just won't make it. They can't do it.

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Madeleine

Well, I mean, you obviously still kind of feel the same passion for it as you did at the beginning. It seems like you're really. Yeah, that's amazing.

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Ben fisher

Yeah, I look forward to every single Friday we meet with Google. So.

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Madeleine

Wow. Every week? That makes sense. You are the inside scoop for them.

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Ben fisher

Every single week we meet with them, we get all sorts of information. It's fun , you could say. So yeah, no, I still love doing it every single day.

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Madeleine

That's awesome.

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Ben fisher

Yeah.

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Madeleine

Are your mentees this year looking promising? I hope they don't listen to this podcast.

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Ben fisher

They're doing OK, They're holding their own. So, you know, one of them just got upskilled into becoming a silver product expert, so just getting started on their journey.

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Madeleine

That's awesome. So it sounds like it is promising.

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Ben fisher

It is. It is definitely yes.

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Madeleine

Yeah, I mean I think that's all. The Google gossip that I wanted to talk about.

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Ben fisher

Alright, sounds good, sounds good. Well, I'm glad I could help with the maiden voyage of your sign up.

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Madeleine

Cast. Yeah, this was great to talk to you. I feel like I learned so much and I am much less angry about the new updates.

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Ben fisher

So you should put that out as a tweet, right?

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Madeleine

It's the same with Ben fisher. And now I am.

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Ben fisher

Filled with.

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Madeleine

Much less.

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Ben fisher

Rage. Yes, exactly. My rage meter is now 20%. Yeah.

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Madeleine

It's definitely gone down. It's definitely gone down. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like. I feel like it's tough if you don't know the reasoning why things change and then they change and you don't, you don't know. I feel like but like where does the average, where is the average business owner get the news about the updates? Like they are.

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Ben fisher

They don't. So it just happens. What I would say is this is that if you want any information about what's going on with Google business profiles or maps or something like that, just the main places that you can go is 1 Twitter. OK just come on and follow us local people if you want to follow me at the social dude on Twitter is where I'm at. It's at Ben Fisher on Mastodon. So we have a I think it's. CEO Community dot social I think is what it is and so I guess I live on both platforms at the moment and. So that's a good way to keep up with the news, right? It's like that's pretty much all I publish is I publish news items and so sorry, no spinning cats, just I'm just not doing that.

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Madeleine

Disappointing.

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Ben fisher

After this, I'm going to do a spinning hat. No, but you know, so that's one place. The other place, if you want to get it from the horse's mouth, is again the Google business profile community, which is support.google.com/business/community. And there's official communications that come out from Google there. They're cleansed. They're, they're, they're very, very cleansed. They don't say much. You know, so. But they are artificial.

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Madeleine

Yeah, yeah. I I feel like, I feel like it's great. I feel like it's nice to have the product experts and to have all these places to have these conversations because it's only better for the business owners if they're more involved in the updates and like knowing what's going on. Umm, yeah. So I hope more people come to appreciate the new stuff.

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Ben fisher

Exactly. And it's Google. It's always going to change. So just the only thing you can do is adapt.

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Madeleine

Of course.

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Ben fisher

Or suggest features.

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Madeleine

Yeah, you can do that too. DM Ben on Twitter.

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Ben fisher

Exactly.

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Madeleine

Yes.

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Ben fisher

Exactly, exactly. So well, cool. Well, thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun.

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Madeleine

Yeah, this is so much fun. Thank you so much again for coming on the first episode of the sign cast. There will be much more in the future. Created if.

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Ben fisher

Anybody, everybody needs to reach me again. You can find me on Twitter, the social dude, or Ben fisher on Amazon. You can also, of course, always reach me at www.steady steady demand.com.

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Madeleine

That's been the podcast.

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