Reading reviews is one of the key things that people do before deciding if a place is right for them. Whether it’s figuring out where to go to dinner, or deciding which wedding venue to book, reading about other people’s experiences tends to be a critical step in the process. That’s why we think it’s important to help users find the most useful reviews, and sources of reviews, from around the web.
Today, we’re announcing a new design for how reviews are displayed on Place pages. Now, when you look at a Place page for a business, you’ll see a section on the page called “Reviews from around the web.” This section highlights reviews from a variety of sources, and helps you identify the sites that have high-quality, relevant information about a particular place. In many cases, this newly formatted section also provides a quick summary of what you can expect to see, including the number of reviews from each source and the average star rating that reviewers on that site gave a place.
For example, when looking at the Place page for wd~50, you can see that Yelp has some reviews about this restaurant, another bunch are provided by Zagat, and still more are available on Citysearch. If you want to learn more about this place, you can just click through on yelp.com, zagat.com or citysearch.com and read what people on those sites had to say about their experiences there.
In the section called “Reviews from Google users,” you can also read the additional reviews that individuals have posted directly to Google Maps. And of course, you can write your own review to share your opinions about this place and help future potential customers decide if they want to eat here.
We hope these changes to the way reviews are organized help you discover the most useful information about the places you care about from a diverse set of sources and voices. Enjoy checking out the new and interesting places you find!
Posted by Jana Urban, Google Place Page Team
