Google Places Cuts Third-Party Reviews

“Against our pri­vacy.” “Un­prof­itable.” “Leaves us with lit­tle choice.”

These seem to be the is­sues that pushed Google ad­min­is­tra­tors to change Google Places’s con­tent and for­mat­ting and present a re­vamped Google Places last Thurs­day afternoon.

If you vis­ited Google Places on July 22, you have prob­a­bly al­ready no­ticed the difference—third-party re­views are com­pletely re­moved. This means that Google Place pages, which used to show snip­pet re­views from sites like Yelp and Tri­pAd­vi­sor, are now a lot cleaner in the sense that they hold a lot less information.

Over­all rat­ings are now based only on a few re­views and rat­ings left by Google users. Al­though they pro­vide in­sight, Google Places pages now seemed to be stripped of its for­mer value. Con­sid­er­ing it’s sup­posed to be users’ one-stop-shop for in­for­ma­tion, the move seems to be prov­ing the opposite.

It’s in line, of course, with my pre­dic­tion that Google will rely more and more on its own con­tent, and sig­nif­i­cantly re­duce ref­er­ences to other people’s con­tent. As odd as it sounds - it will even hap­pen on search re­sults pages!

Or­ga­ni­za­tions are ap­par­ently re­quest­ing fol­low­ers to leave re­views as well to reestab­lish their now rel­a­tively empty pages. This seems to be one of the con­tract­ing is­sues about the Google Places change. That is, while some think that they will get less ex­po­sure since Google Places usu­ally rank high in search en­gine re­sults pages, oth­ers think that the change is pro­vid­ing smaller and newer es­tab­lish­ments to get a head start.

Google Places now also put more em­pha­sis on en­cour­ag­ing vis­i­tors to give re­views. Whereas the “Write a Re­view” prompt is shown as mere link be­fore, it now stands out in a big red box that some­how screams “Re­view, please!” How­ever, it must be noted that for users to leave a re­view, they must first log in us­ing their Gmail accounts.

The Rea­son be­hind the Move

Now, you’re prob­a­bly won­der­ing: why ex­actly did Google Places have to take a dras­tic step? Aside from the fact that Google has been get­ting a lot of com­plaints from busi­ness own­ers say­ing that they’re get­ting noth­ing from Google Places, as sur­mised in the first few sen­tences of this news ar­ti­cle, Google is also try­ing to avoid hit­ting the wrong nerve.

A month ago, the Fed­eral Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) started a stricter anti-trust in­ves­ti­ga­tion of Google and its web ad­ver­tis­ing dom­i­nance. FTC is an in­de­pen­dent agency in the US that aims to pro­mote con­sumer pro­tec­tion, both of­fline and on­line, and its tasks in­clude in­ves­ti­gat­ing is­sues raised by re­ports from con­sumers and businesses—that’s why the change.

With the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion still hot on its heels af­ter com­plaints from Foun­dem, a Eu­ro­pean busi­ness, Google is prob­a­bly hop­ing not to dig its own grave. So while a lot of users have al­ready ex­pressed dis­ap­proval, Google Places is firm on its stance.

Some Hopes for the Future

It’s ob­vi­ous that most users are skep­ti­cal of the change in Google Places. Nev­er­the­less, there are some that see the brighter side. For one, some spec­u­late that this can be the start of a good con­nec­tion be­tween Google Places and Google+ wherein users can eas­ily leave re­views or find es­tab­lish­ments faster than through reg­u­lar search en­gine queries.

How about you? What do you think will this change in Google Places bring?

 

Sources:

Google Places Blog

Google Places News on CNet

Google un­der EU In­ves­ti­ga­tion: CNet News