Google to notify those who leave reviews when business owners respond

Google announced both on Twitter and in its forums that it will notify customers or users who leave reviews on Google Local results after owners respond to their reviews.

Reviewers will receive an email notification when a business responds. Google also plans to add mobile push notifications at a later date.

Marissa Nordahl, community manager at Google My Business, said:

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.

Note: The review response is published immediately on Search and Maps.

Here is a screen shot of the email notification:

If businesses are aware their responses to reviews will be seen by those who leave the review, it may impact the type of responses they leave.

Mike Blumenthal, a local SEO expert who covered this news, says that this is Google “positioning itself vis-a-vis Yelp and Facebook to become THE local platform of choice for both businesses AND users.”