• Convert Offline, Friday, December 14, 2007 1:45 PM

About two weeks ago, Blumenthal's blog posted one user's account of a possible shift in the way Google was displaying reviews and ratings for local businesses. The California florist noted that Google local had specifically deleted a number of her CitySearch reviews and removed her "star ranking" -- and that the changes were negatively affecting her traffic.

So the Local Search Hound dug into why Google might have scrapped those reviews, and came up with a possible theory -- that the search giant has begun applying a Quality Score-like grading system to reviews (and reviewers).

By analyzing the total number of reviews the florist had and where they'd come from, the Search Hound found that the reviews Google kept were written by reviewers who had more than one review (across multiple sites) under their belt.

To test this theory, the Search Hound examined a New York florist's reviews and found the same pattern. So while we can't be sure that Google is now attributing a Quality Score to reviews, it seems that the search giant is using the relative credibility of the reviewer (via review quantity) as a metric for whether the commentary should be included with a local business listing.

Read the whole story at Convert Offline »