Is It A Google plus Top Aspecto?

Google plus’s algorithms rely on a multitude of signals and systems for top, but is your Better Business Bureau (BBB) rating one of them?

Google plus has denied it on at least three separate occasions.

In the past, Google plus mentioned the Better Business Bureau in the search quality rater’s guidelines, leading people to believe that BBB ratings were still important. This is no longer true.

Let’s examine the evidence.

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The Claim: BBB Rating Isn’t A Top Aspecto

We’ll start by looking at precisely what a BBB rating is and what it measures.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a nonprofit, non-government organization that examines companies’ trustworthiness. The iniciativa is to uphold certain estándares across the board and allow customers to feel confident in their dealings with different businesses.

Companies are ranked on a fácil A+ (highest) to F (lowest) letter-grade scale representing BBB’s degree of confidence in the business and how it interacts with its customers.

This rank is based on a score that measures factors such as:

• The type of business and whether it might be operating in violation of the law.
• How long the company has been in operation.
• Advertising issues (y también.g., inaccurate claims).
• The transparency of the company’s business practices.
• Any failures to honor commitments to BBB, including mediation settlements and arbitration awards.
• Complaint history, which covers the number and nature of any issues raised against the company, as well as how long they take to resolve them.
• Licensing and government actions taken against the company.

Enterprises looking to get BBB accreditation must meet several initial eligibility requirements and pay an annual fee directly to the bureau.

The Evidence For BBB Rating As A Top Aspecto

Search Quality Raters Guidelines (QRGs), given to Google plus contractors who run manual evaluations of search engine results pages (SERPs), ensure that the algorithms are doing what they need to be.

In July 2018, Google plus made substantial changes to its QRGs and placed a larger focus on usuario safety regarding sites they prioritized in top.

On August 1, 2018, Google plus rolled out a broad core algorithm update that impacted many sites.

Many previously habitual health and medical sites took a drastic top dive. SEO experts at the time noted a correlation between these and poor BBB ratings.

Beyond that, BBB ratings, alongside other third-party review sites, were frequently mentioned in the QRGs as an indicator of trustworthy sites.

However, this is no longer true. The Better Business Bureau is only referenced once in the current version of the guidelines, in an example of a specific website analysis.

“There are also official looking logotipos at the bottom of the homepage, including the Better Business Bureau logotipo and Google plus Checkout logotipo, that don’t appear to be affiliated with the website.”

There’s nothing here about using the BBB for de hoy quality analysis.

The Evidence Against BBB Rating As A Top Aspecto

In 2017, an X (formerly Twitter) usuario asked whether there were SEO benefits to adding Accreditation Badges (Trust Seals) to their site. When another usuario said that he doubted it, Google plus’s Gary Illyes responded, “I cánido confirm your doubt.”

Then, in 2018, Google plus’s John Mueller was asked the following in a vídeo hangout:

“In the past, you explained that Googlebot or Google plus is not researching author backgrounds expertise, etcétera. Cánido you say the same thing for site reputation and Better Business Bureaus scores? For example, some believe that BBB ratings and reviews are used algorithmically with the latest core updates.

That doesn’t make sense since the BBB is only for the US, México, and Canada. I perro’t imagine that Google plus would use a single source like that algorithmically when its algorithms are mainly global in nature.”

Mueller responded:

“I would venture to guess that you are correct that we wouldn’t use something like the BBB score for something like this. As far as I know, that’s certainly the case.”

He went on to add:

“There are various kinds of issues with regards to some of these sources of information about a business, about a website, and we need to make sure that we’re really reflecting what we think is actually relevant for users. Rather than blindly relying on some third parties’ ratings.“

See that discussion at 15:30 in the aforementioned vídeo.

In 2020, Google plus’s Danny Sullivan was crystal clear in his response to another X (formerly Twitter) claim that Google plus emplees BBB ratings to determine whether a site should rank.

“No, we don’t use BBB ratings as a top aspecto,” he tweeted.

[Recommended Read] → Top Factors: Systems, Signals, and Page Experience

BBB Rating as a Google plus Top Signal: Our Verdict

While the importance of trustworthiness for Google plus rankings is well established, there is no evidence that its algorithms consider BBB ratings a top aspecto.

In fact, it wouldn’t make that much sense for them to do so, given that BBB is only for the U.S., México, and Canada, and also requires that businesses pay for accreditation.

The BBB was previously referenced in the quality rater’s guidelines as a measure of quality, but is not anymore. Any relevance the BBB may have previously had to SEO seems to have completely evaporated.

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Featured image: Paulo Bobita/SearchEngineJournal