This week on Local Search Tuesdays, I'm diving into why reviews are going away from school profiles, what it means for the rest of us, and what schools can do with the existing reviews.Enter your text here...

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays. This week, I’ve got some important news for schools - reviews are going away!

In some not-so-shocking news, starting tomorrow on April 30th, Google is going to remove reviews and ratings from all K-12 schools. If reviews or ratings already exist, they’ll be removed - and the option to leave a review will be removed as well.

This change only applies to elementary, middle, and high schools - preschools and universities will still have reviews and rating scores. The category this applies to is only “general education”.

Google says that there were simply too many unhelpful and potentially harmful reviews being left on these school profiles. This isn’t that surprising, Google has mostly blocked reviews on K-12 schools for a few years now. If you haven’t read them, these school reviews were mostly spam. There were tons of prank reviews and reviews from upset students trying to trash the school’s reputation.

If you’re one of the schools affected by this change, it’s probably a good idea to download or scrape your current reviews. You could still use them in any marketing or school collateral in the future. You’ll also want to shift your reputation management focus to other sites. The best options are Facebook, GreatSchools.org, Niche.com, and Yelp.

That’s it for this week’s episode, so you know what that means. Put your hand on the screen right here: We totally just high-fived ‘cause you learned something awesome. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next week for another episode of Local Search Tuesdays.