Google+ Local Reviews Now Pop Up As Overlay, Rather Than In New Page, In Google Search

If you search for a keyword phrase that triggers local listings in Google’s Web search results, such as searching for [barber], Google will show you Google Business listings. If you click on the reviews on one of those listings, instead of taking you to the Google Business Local page, Google will pop open a dynamic […]

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If you search for a keyword phrase that triggers local listings in Google’s Web search results, such as searching for [barber], Google will show you Google Business listings. If you click on the reviews on one of those listings, instead of taking you to the Google Business Local page, Google will pop open a dynamic overlay window on top of the web search results and show you those reviews for those listings.

Here is a screen shot I took on my Macbook using Chrome while signed in:

google-maps-reviews-pop

Then click on the reviews link and the overlay shows up, rather than a new page being loaded:

google-maps-reviews-overlay

  • Clicking on the main name of the business from the Web search results will still take you directly to the business local page in Google Local.
  • Clicking on the map pin will take you to the local listing in Google Maps
  • Clicking on the review will open the overlay window as illustrated above
  • Unfortunately, once you are in the overlay, the only way to do anything outside of read or write reviews is the close the window by clicking the X

We’ve emailed Google for a comment and have yet to hear back.

A hat tip goes to Andrew Shotland for spotting this first.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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