A little confusion over the impact of ratings and reviews stirred up SEM professionals and got Yahoo's attention as well. Matt McGee of Small Business SEM talked about the Yahoo Shortcut, where three business listings appear alongside a map and appear in the regular Yahoo search results.
McGee cited a Yahoo spokesperson as saying reviews and ratings have no impact on which businesses appear in the Yahoo Shortcut. When that got picked up by Greg Sterling and generated more discussion, Yahoo contacted Sterling to clarify the situation:
1. Ratings (stars) always matter and factor into the presentation of ranked local results in Shortcuts/Direct Display and Yahoo! Local.
2. Most of the time the local results presented in search results and in Yahoo! Local will be identical (top three) but not 100% of the time.
3. Reviews/review text don’t factor as a weighted variable in the algorithm for the presentation of local results via Shortcuts but may, on occasion, play a part in the ordering of results on Yahoo! Local.
For small businesses, the lesson here is customer satisfaction. One probably won't know if a given person will be someone who actively rates businesses on Yahoo or elsewhere. Give everyone a good customer experience, or at least try as hard as possible, and the ratings they yield should reflect the service they received.
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