Reviewers will receive an email notification when a business responds. Google also plans to add mobile push notifications at a later date.
Marissa Nordahl, community manager at Google My Business, said:
When businesses respond to, or update responses to customer reviews, the customer now receives an email notification. The business’s response is published immediately and 5 minutes later, the notification is sent. This 5 minute delay allows time for the merchant to make any corrections to their response after submitting.
The notification email informs the customer of a reply to their review, and contains a link to a page with the full owner response.
Note: The review response is published immediately on Search and Maps.
Here is a screen shot of the email notification:
If businesses are aware their responses to reviews will be seen by those who leave the review, it may impact the type of responses they leave.
Mike Blumenthal, a local SEO expert who covered this news, says that this is Google “positioning itself vis-a-vis Yelp and Facebook to become THE local platform of choice for both businesses AND users.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”orange” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-external-link”]This article was originally posted at Search Engine Land by Barry Schwartz on May 14, 2018.[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row][/vc_section]