YELP YELPS. GOOGLE SUSPENDS.

Yelp announces layoffs and furloughs last week as their advertising sales tank. 2,100 employees are effected. This a result of the coronavirus and their main advertiser, restaurants, cancelling their ads.

In addition, Google has announced the suspension of all new customer reviews until further notice.

What does this mean for your moving company’s sales? In brief:

1. Google Customer Reviews: Will not be updated on your Google My Business Page. You can still ask your customers to leave reviews, and the review box will function, the reviews just will not be posted to your page.
2. YELP! Reviews: The public can still leave reviews on Yelp and the general public will have little knowledge of any change. You just won’t be receiving calls to advertise as it looks like all those people have been separated for the time being. We would imagine their support will be effected too.
3. Customer Reviews Strategy: We know that Google algorithms give rank authority to their reviews and how many individual reviews your Google My Business Page has. Don’t let your staff let up on getting these reviews even if they are not posted immediately. In addition, we imagine that there will be some “astroturfing” of Yelp reviews as there will probably be little oversight at Yelp about fake reviews and whatnot. Many of you would argue there never was anyway, but that’s another story. Be sure to monitor your Yelp reviews and those of your competitors

Here’s another example of major disruptions to the typical business plans of two companies that effect your site’s page rank and effectiveness. They also greatly effect its engagement with your prospects. As we wrote last week, use this disruption to your advantage.

Onward and upward!