Google - forcing schools down the Ads route?

The best solution Google can come up with? We don't think so

We are back at the beginning of this century, and the biggest search engine on the planet - by far - decides that it would be helpful for all concerned if its users were allowed to post reviews of the businesses and services it listed. 

Helpful, no? Helpful for fellow consumers and helpful for the businesses and services under review. The best would stand out and the market would be made more efficient. Apparently not - certainly in the case of education. Three weeks ago Google quietly extended the patchy trial it had been rolling out in the US, whereby it deleted all existing reviews of educational establishments (but, somewhat bizarrely, only primary and secondary - you can still review pre-schools, colleges and universities) and denied users the ability to write future reviews.

Its reasoning? We'll let Google speak for itself, courtesy of today's piece in Schools Week.

The Guardian has this interesting comment...

So Google has turned off 'the first place parents turn when researching a school'.

At HelpHound, we get Google's reasoning, but we reject it, utterly and completely. The fact that schools have failed to engage with Google reviews is not entirely their own fault - even we have been known to describe Google reviews as akin to the Wild West on this blog. But for both to say 'we can't find a way to make Google reviews relevant' is a cop-out worthy of derision, in both cases: schools should have engaged with Google reviews by now, by asking parents to post them and responding to those posted. Google should have asked itself 'Why are educational reviews on our platform adding so little value?' Few would choose a lawyer or estate agent without - as the Guardian says above - reading their Google reviews, so what makes education an outlier?

HelpHound has openly stated in this blog, on more than one occasion, that Google owes it to its users - those who generate every cent of its $350 billion revenue - that's $350,000,000,000 - and $100 billion of profit, to clean up its act in relation to Google reviews. Specifically...

• the process of appealing against a factually incorrect, potentially misleading or just plain ridiculous review

Currently, it is effectively impossible for any entity receiving a Google review to successfully appeal against such a review unless 'it contravenes Google's Terms of Service'. Here they are.

At HelpHound we probably have more experience than any UK operator when it comes to advising on and drafting appeals on behalf of clients. Guess just how many of the 'factually inaccurate, potentially misleading or just plain ridiculous' reviews clients present us with do we advise them to appeal? Under 5%. Fortunately, few of our clients are subject to reviews that include 'Terrorist content', 'Violence and gore' or even 'sexually explicit content'. So we - and they - are left with the catch-alls: 'Misinformation' and 'Misrepresentation'. 

Of those where we advise there is a chance of a successful appeal (it helps if the reviewer has accused the business of theft, racism or any other kind of law-breaking) - and any outside chance whatsoever is clung to by most respectable businesses, as you can no doubt imagine - very few succeed. How so? Because Google is judge and jury - you get one chance at an appeal and Google's decision, delivered by email, is final. We also suspect that extremely 'Californian' notions of consumer rights are applied. Our impression - wrongly or rightly - is that the consumer is always right unless the business has cast-iron proof to the contrary. Very difficult when the reviewer is often unknown or unidentifiable because they have used an avatar - or even where they don't. We had a recent case where a French hotelier had a spat with a London-based doctor client of ours during their stay in Paris. The hotelier wrote a completely fictitious review on the practice's Google listing using his real name (and he was traceable with the minimum of searching to the hotel in question - information we provided to Google with the appeal). Guess what? The appeal against the demonstrably fake 1* review of the doctor's practice written by the French hotelier failed. The review stood.

Google's business model

These four schools are just a tiny part of Google's money-printing machine - up until now prospective parents could check out their reviews before clicking on the 'Sponsored' link. No longer. And 'sponsored'? Here's Google's own AI definition of the word 'sponsored': '"Sponsored" means something has been financially supported by a person or organization. The support could be for an event, program, or content. In exchange, the sponsor usually receives some type of recognition or promotion.' They used to get headed 'Ads'; maybe that was a more accurate definition? In our experience, the word 'sponsored', certainly in the context of schools has softer connotations.

It is 100% advertising driven. You don't for minute suppose that it is easier to sell advertising to a school if it has no reviews? We know for certain that we save our clients large 4 and even 5 figure sums by enabling them to shine in reviews so they don't need to pay for Google advertising. Just look at this example...

...it is many years since this client needed to pay for Google ads - can you imagine the howls if all its Google reviews vanished overnight?

Some will say 'Why should schools divert resources to manage their presence on Google, after all they are not commercial entities like estate agents?' Our response is 'If that were the case then simply exempt private schools from this new policy' although we still remain firmly of the opinion that reviews of all educational establishments should be subject to open review on Google; after all, it takes very little time to manage such engagement effectively. 

And finally...

Here's the most recent Google search on 'Eton College reviews'...

...more helpful than Google reviews? You decide.

We will keep an eye out for the next sector to have reviews 'turned off', and be sure to let you know when it happens.