#101: Google's Anonymous Reviews

In this episode of the Dental Marketing Secrets Podcast, Mark Thackeray discusses the recent introduction of anonymous reviews by Google and its implications for the dental industry. 

He explores how this change may affect patient feedback, the potential for increased negative reviews, and the importance of managing online reputation. Additionally, he highlights the significance of reviews for SEO and conversion rates, emphasizing the need for dental practices to prioritize obtaining quality reviews to enhance their online presence and team morale.

Takeaways

• Google's new anonymous reviews could change patient feedback dynamics.
• Anonymity may encourage more honest but potentially negative reviews.
• Managing reviews is crucial for maintaining a positive online reputation.
• SEO rankings are heavily influenced by the quantity and quality of reviews.
• User-generated reviews serve as powerful signals to Google.
• Practices should prioritize obtaining reviews for better visibility.
• Positive reviews can boost team morale and reinforce purpose.
• Monitoring for fake reviews will be essential with this change.
• Encouraging patients to leave reviews is a best practice.
• Practices should be proactive in managing their online presence.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Google's Anonymous Reviews
02:57 Impact on Patient Reviews and Practice Reputation
05:47 SEO Implications of Reviews for Dental Practices
09:15 Best Practices for Managing Reviews
12:10 The Importance of Reviews for Patient Conversion and Team Morale

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To work with Mark and his team directly, please visit: www.MarkThackeray.com

Transcript

0:01

Alright you guys, welcome back to another episode of the Dental Marketing Secrets Podcast. I am your host Mark Thackeray and I'm excited to share a recent update that Google made that I think will have a pretty big implication or pretty big ramifications on the industry. And what we're talking about today is how Google has released these anonymous reviews. So it's allowing people to use a pseudo name essentially, a different username when they leave reviews. And so that's a change that you can make on your profile. And to be clear, it's not, I don't think it's out for everyone because I just checked my Google profile and clearly I'm not important enough to do this yet. But I'm guessing it just, they're rolling it out in stages. So, but what we're seeing is that now people will have the ability to go into their Google profile and select There's a little bit of there's a section there that will allow them to select use a custom name and picture for posting. And if they do that, it automatically allows them to create a custom name and that will change any contributions they've made. It could be a review. It could be a post. could be anything that they've made on Google at least will be updated to that pseudo name. So that's very interesting, right? I mean, especially when we're talking about the dental industry. because that is, we've seen that in terms of how that could affect patients leaving a review. There are many patients that I think would probably be a little bit more open with their review if they knew that that review was anonymous or they wouldn't be able to ascertain who the, or uncover the identity of the reviewer. And I think that's, so it's gonna be interesting, right? I mean, to see what we're gonna do, what practices can do. to ensure that we're still getting good quality reviews and that we're not, this anonymity isn't leading to greater uh spam reviews, greater fake reviews, greater negative, more just increased negative reviews all around. So yeah, it's a pretty simple change, but as far as for users to make, you do have to go in and manually do that. It doesn't do it automatically. And so I think that plays in our favor. you know, from a practice standpoint, tend to, you know, after reviewing this and thinking about this, I tend to lean on uh just keeping it the way we have it because I think patients uh are gonna be more likely to submit a negative review if they have that quote unquote protection of anonymity. We see that all the time online, right? I mean, when people don't have their actual name, they have a fake name or a different handle. then they're much more likely to be more critical and be more open about that. So I tend to, you know, as I'm thinking about this from a practice standpoint, I'm not necessarily gonna be pointing this out to patients that they should do this, just because I think it's good for them to continue in the way they've done it. You know, I mean, it's still leave a review and they know it's gonna be, it's gonna have their name attached to it. So they're gonna think twice about posting that review and just make sure that it's accurate. um So that's very, very interesting. It's gonna be, like I mentioned, we're have to keep an eye on how this impacts in review generation as a whole. You know, as more and more people adopt this approach, there's certainly gonna be plenty of people that will, then I think we could see more reviews in general. Now that could be a good thing and it could be a bad thing or it could just be a neutral thing, right? We could just see more reviews, both positive and negative. we could see an increase of negative reviews as I talked about before. My fear is that people are gonna hide behind that anonymity, it's a tongue twister sometimes for me, uh hide behind that protection, so to speak, and be much more outspoken in the review. uh So yes, you could get increased reviews, increased number of reviews, but I also fear that you might also get more negative reviews. So that will be very interesting to see. The other part of this too is the spam or the fake reviews. That's gonna be something that you'll definitely have to watch. As people are more able to hide behind a pseudo name, then there could be an increase in spam reviews as well. But it will be interesting just because our industry is, we have HIPAA obviously, and that's a big thing in terms of... making sure that everything stays private, but it still allows the patient the chance to express their personal feelings and experience. And so I think this is just a, it's a mixed bag in a lot of ways because yes, it's good to get that candid feedback that sometimes we don't always receive quite frankly, just because patients are worried about offending us or making us feel bad or just being critical in general. And so this could help uh increase the amount of candor, you know, in these reviews that are left, which is a good thing. I think that's definitely a good thing. If you're trying to make your practice the best it is, you need that honest and open feedback. So that's very important. But I do, you know, there's obviously that fear that they could be lead to more uh negative or fake reviews at the same time. So, but. But reviews, as we know, and I've talked about this on the show before, and we'll probably do another episode specifically on reviews here in the future, just because they're such an important factor when it comes to ranking uh in your local sphere. know, I mean, as a local business, it plays a huge signal back to Google that you're doing a good job. You know, mean, they just came out with the 2026 ranking factors. for local pack and maps and those are SEO, technical SEO terms to mean ranking specifically on the maps when you pull up Google Maps, for example, or when you type in Dennis Near Me, there's a local pack is what they call it. And it's a hybrid between the traditional search results, like just the hyperlinks and the headlines and the maps. So it's a little smaller map that features three businesses and sometimes four or five if they're including the sponsored results. uh So it's anyway, they came out with these ranking factors, long story short, ah and to really rank the most important factors to, you know, to showing up higher on these, on the local pack and on the maps and reviews plays a massive part. There's that, you know, the quantity of those reviews, how recently those reviews, you know, how frequently you're getting those reviews, the recency of those reviews, your overall quality review score. I mean, all those things play into how well you show up on Google or how high you show up on Google. So that's a big, big deal. And so this is why I wanted to share this because it has a major impact on how you're showing up on Google. And like I mentioned, Google is this, this is a huge signal back to them. If you're having, it's one thing if I stand up and say how great I am, but it's a completely different thing to have three or four or five or six, or in this case, 10 or 12 other people. in different areas, still in your local area, but in different spots that are are telling how telling Google how good you are. You know, I mean, those are powerful user generated signals that that's tell Google this is a great practice. This is a great result to show when people are searching for these types of things. You know, it just provides a lot of credibility for your practice. And it's great because you can kind of get your patients to be doing some of this SEO work for you. You know, and so that's why reviews matter so much. But that's why I think this is so fascinating what they've done recently. I'm not sure if we'll see how this, how this plays out. They have rolled out features like this before in the past and then pulled back on those because they didn't really pan out like they anticipated. So this will be very interesting to monitor as we go. So it's going to be important, I think, to as, as they see as they roll this out, almost a hundred percent, they're going to see more more fake reviews go up and so they're going to be fighting those and when they try and fight those what inevitably happens and some of you have already seen this is they unfortunately some of the legitimate reviews get caught up in that net and they get removed when they shouldn't be and so that's another thing at risk here as they roll this out and they're going to be combating against those fake or spammy reviews there's going to be some legitimate ones that get caught up in that as well and gets cut off basically or get removed from your profile. So it's gonna be, if you have the ability to uh download those reviews and save a copy, it's always, that's best practice, you know, because then you can go back to Google and say, hey, these were removed. ah Please reinstate those. ah They're legitimate. You know, these are patients that we have on record. So it's, yeah, that's a great practice to do. There are some tools out there. If you don't have the ability to do that, there are some tools. White Spark that I get a lot of resources from their terrific leader kind of thought leader in the space and the SEO space. They have some tools that you can do. I know there's some other ones out there too, but that's the first one that comes to mind. So that's an opportunity or that's a best practice that I recommend if you can. ah So those are kind of the biggest things for now. Like I said, it's a pretty, you know, they're rolling it out. It's not out to everyone just yet. but it's, it does require some manual effort on the part of the consumer. So I physically have to go in there and tap on my profile and go to edit profile. And then there's some verbiage that says, essentially, ah let me find it. It's, you know, use a custom. It's a, it's a check box, you know, can use a custom name and picture for posting. And then you fill out a new display name. You can even add a new picture. You can add a little kind of bio. Section as well. So so but it does require that manual effort. So that that is good I think a lot of patients a lot of people are just like me. They're not You know gonna go out of their way to do this uh Some of them will so yeah again It would be fascinating to see to watch and see how this pans out But wanted to just share that with you so that you're aware and as you start seeing Reviews come in you might see more and more of these pseudo names So if you're not alarmed or anything like that, you know what's kind of happening right now. uh But again, just as always, I encourage you to make a big push, make getting reviews a high priority in your practice just because of the impact it can have, both from an SEO standpoint, but also from two other important reasons. One is from a conversion standpoint. If I am a patient and I'm considering a new dental practice and I'm searching online, going through different practices, side-by-side comparisons, reading reviews, that could be the thing that tips me over. mean, that's that's common practice for a lot of people nowadays. we're, you know, say we're traveling, we're looking for a restaurant, we look at the reviews, we're kind of using those to guide our decision-making. It's a big, big influencer. And right now, it's those reviews, and I think it will be for a long time moving forward. So that's one reason is conversion helps people that are considering your practice convert into patients or convert enough to at least call and schedule an appointment, right? The other impact that it has is on your team. So internally, as you get those reviews and especially as patients, as you're sharing those, as how patients feedback on your team, especially the positive feedback, it reinforces why you're doing what you're doing. It really underlines the point that you're trying or the... the objective that you have, the mission, why you're doing this day in and day out. And it helps people feel much more connected to your vision. Instead of just being less like a job and more like a career, more like I have a purpose here. And that, it just energizes the whole team as you're able to see those reviews come in, to share those as a team and celebrate those victories ah as a team. It's very, very powerful. Again, make sure that you're doing all that you can to get those reviews. do have some resources coming out specifically on how to do those more easily. So I'm excited to share those. But so keep posted on those. But for now, just keep asking and make that a high priority and then be looking for this. And I'd love to hear your feedback if you see any changes on what you're seeing from a Google review standpoint, if you're getting more of these. custom names these pseudo names type of reviews or if you're seeing an increase in fake or spammy reviews Or if it's if it's business as usual, know, I'd love to hear your feedback on that Okay, and if you haven't yet and if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave me a review I love reviews and they again they're a great signal to those that are searching for a podcast with resources specifically to help in the marketing of their dental practice, so if you haven't So wherever you're listening to this episode, please take a minute and just leave me a quick review. That will help me tremendously. And until next time my friends, uh be good and we'll talk to you soon.