Google has announced both on Twitter and its forums that it shall notify users or customers who leave reviews o Google Local results after owners respond to them. Reviewers will receive an email notification once a business responds. Google is also planning to add mobile push notifications in the near future. Marissa Nordahl, community manager at Google My Business stated:

When businesses respond to or update responses to customer reviews, the customer now receives an email notification. The business’s response is published immediately and 5 minutes later, the notification is sent. This 5-minute delay allows time for the merchant to make any corrections to their response after submitting.

The notification email informs the customer of a reply to their review and contains a link to a page with the full owner response. Here is the notification’s screen shot-

If companies are aware that their replies to reviews will be seen by people who leave these reviews, it might have an impact on the type of responses that they leave. Mike Blumenthal, a local SEO expert who covered the news stated Google is positioning itself as compared to Facebook and Yelp to become the leading platform for businesses and users.

Author

Ritu from PageTraffic is a qualified Google Ads Professional and Content Head at PageTraffic. She has been the spear head for many successful Search Marketing Campaigns and currently oversees Content Marketing operations of PageTraffic in India.