We love working with restaurants and bars and cafes because they are places of leisure, fun, and love.  Those aspects are created from both ends of the transaction.  Restaurant owners and employees put love into their product and customers express joy and pleasure while consuming it.  They are places where strangers share stories and interests, friends share life updates and gossip, and families shares memories and reunion.

It just so happens that this weekend is Father’s Day!  If there’s one thing our experience has taught us about Fathers and their day it is that they enjoy a nice drink and meal with their family.  When you go to your father’s favorite restaurant or pub this weekend and are enjoying yourselves we just ask you to please leave a review of your experience.

Leave a restaurant review to help others out

Do reviews impact improve your search marketing? According to a study put out by BrightLocal (which we contribute to by the way!) they absolutely do. By reaching out to the local search community they were able to compile some findings as to how reviews and review ratings impact search marketing.

Brightlocal was able to find how review ratings impact Click-Through rates

BrightLocal is able to look at the impact of reviews on click through rates of search results.

Click-through Rate is the percentage of times your website link is shown in search results compared to the amount of times it’s clicked. For example, if your site is shown 100 times in a day and is clicked 3 times you have a click-trough rate (CTR) of 3%

These results are directly pulled from their study. They were able to find the following:

Listings with 5 stars earned 69% of clicks from the Local Pack
Listings with 4 stars earned 59% of clicks…
Listings with 3 stars earned 44% of clicks…
Listings with 1 or 2 stars earned less clicks than listings with no stars

Notice that a LOW RATING is WORSE than no rating.  This is a direct impact of how users tend to view bad ratings as a indication of actively bad service versus no stars which might mean a “hole in the wall” or “hidden gem” opportunity.

Finally, you’ll notice that you lose quite a bit of customer opportunity when your average ranking gets lower.  According to the study numbers above you lose about 10% of clicks per full star lower rating.

Reviews also help your rankings

In case we had to mention it again, leaving a review also helps your favorite Father’s Day eatery ranking higher in search engines. BrightLocal, aptly, points us to two studies by MOZ and Local SEO Guide that demonstrate that reviews are becoming more and more helpful to improving your search engine rankings.

“Two recent studies by Moz and The Local SEO Guide show the variety of ranking factors that influence local search rankings. Both of these studies show that online reviews influence where a business appears in Google’s Local 3-Pack results and in localized organic search results.” – BrightLocal.com

Our Restaurant Online Tools Help Generate Positive Reviews

We should also remind you that we help your favorite restaurant generate positive reviews and respond/correct negative reviews in pursuit of the benefits discussed above. With our tools food service business owners and employees are able to:

• Request reviews from customers
• Prevent negative reviews
• Respond to reviews easily
• Push reviews to your preferred site (including the business website)
• …and more!

This capability comes with the suite of tools we provide to help you manage and increase your local reputation and rankings and social presence. The best thing you could do is check these tools out for your own business or tell your favorite bartender about us… because you care and you want to share your enthusiasm with us so we can be a part of it as well!

Lastly, HAPPY FATHERS DAY EVERYONE!