Google tells everyone to stop cherry-picking reviews! But, just what does it exactly mean anyway?

Google added a new policy in its existing list of seldom-enforced policies related to reviews on its Google Maps platform. The policy contained two very important things.

One, customers should never be discouraged or even prohibited by review-seekers from leaving negative reviews.

Two, customers should never be selected purposely based on their decision to leave a positive review.

Joy Hawkins identified this as the review-gating policy of Google. She mentioned in her post that, by convention, review-seekers send an email template to all customers. The template will first ask if the customer had a positive or a negative experience. If the customer answers in the positive, he or she is directed to leave a positive review. If the customer answers in the negative, he or she is directed to leave his or her negative feedback on a private channel.

This is plain and simple, cherry-picking. Perhaps some of us are guilty of this and we don’t even know it. Personally, I know how important it is to obtain positive reviews from customers. This means we’re doing good in our tasks. But, we might also be incurring the ire of Google and that is something we clearly don’t want.

So how do we interpret this new rule from Google?

First, I think Google is telling us that it doesn’t really care how we approach our review-seeking endeavors so long as it is clear on our customers that they can leave a negative review if they honestly think they have to. Google doesn’t even care exactly how we are going to ask our customers to leave a review. What matters to Google is that we’re making an effort to communicate the right of everyone to be heard, even if it is a negative review of our services or products.

Second, Google doesn’t want you to become fixated with the star rating left by your reviewers or even what they leave in their reviews. Honestly, I think we’re all guilty of this. Most of us would want a reviewer to always give us a 5-star rating. If not, we’re not going to publish his or her review without getting in touch with us first.

Third, Google wants you to employ an ‘all-or-nothing’ law when it comes to seeking reviews. If you are going to ask for a review, then so be it. A better way to go about this is to look at reviews as reviews. Detach the positive and negative. A review is a review, be it positive or negative.

Fourth, Google is saying that you should not prohibit or discourage reviews just because they’re negative or selectively solicit only the positive ones for the simple reason that Google is compelled to spell out these rules for you. How you wish to interpret it is definitely up to you.

With or without Google’s no-cherry-picking, no-review-gating policy, I think we owe it to our customers to have a voice in the very same platform we’re using to advance our aims. Don’t get fixated with 5 stars. Don’t put words into your customers’ mouths. Always, always seek an honest feedback.

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