Glad you found it helpful, Pushpendra. After you get everything all set up, I’d love to hear more about your Google Local experience with Explore and the new Maps app. Drop in and give us a status update if you think about it.

Thanks for reading, Andy. And extra thanks for the expert nod of approval.

Always good to know there’s more than one person in the room who knows what’s going on.

*both Linda and Phil (along with Mike Blumenthal and David Mihm) are regarded as “experts” with respect to Local search, and excellent resources should your readers want to keep absolutely up to date on Local search issues.

Glad you found it helpful, Katrina!

(and I am hoping you are a real person that I am talking to and not an enthusiastic spam robot..)

If you are a real person tap your head and rub your belly at the same time then report back!

:)

Got it! Thanks for the follow up, Phil.

Just to answer on Linda’s behalf (we know each other):

The 4-5 -star threshold for getting reviews doesn’t appear to be a policy that Google has written down anywhere; it’s just something we’ve noticed. I first pointed it out in a comment on this post by Mike Blumenthal, http://bit.ly/13FuoOr – which he then did a follow-up post on (http://bit.ly/12TbVxs).

As you probably know, it used to be the case that it only took 5 reviews for your “stars” to appear. It was only between May of 2012 and June of 2013 that Google required 10 reviews for your “Zagat” rating (i.e. those annoying ratings that were calculated 30-point scale) to show up in the search results.

Thanks for the comment — and thanks for writing a reference-worthy article! Always good to connect with other content-focused SEOs.

Thanks!