How to understand Manage Reviews within Reputation Manager

In this overview, we explain how to understand the 'Manage Reviews' report within Reputation Manager (RM).

If you prefer to learn by watching videos, check out our free course in BrightLocal Academy that shows you how to set up and understand a Reputation Manager report 👇

1. All Reviews

This section shows you a table of all your reviews, allowing you to filter the reviews you'd like to see. It also lets you manage them, so you can assign a status and take action for each one.

How to filter reviews

You can filter the list of reviews in the following ways:

‘All Sources’: By review sites
‘All Ratings’: By star rating
‘All time’: By dates

The reset button resets all of the filters you've added.

How to understand the Reviews table

Next, we’ll take a look at each column and explore what you can do with each one.

Date: This column displays the review date — you can use the arrows at the top to order by newest to oldest, or vice versa.

Source: This shows the website on which the review was left — if you click this, a new tab opens showing you the actual review on the website itself.

Rating: This shows the star rating of the review. You can use the arrows at the top to order by highest to lowest, or vice versa.

Review: Here, you will see the review text that has been left, along with the name of the person who provided it. The three dots can be clicked to reveal the rest of the text.

Status: You can select a status for each review to help you manage replies. The options include:

'Unread'
‘Action Required’
‘Do Not Respond’
'Manually Responded'
'Auto-Responded'
‘Pending Removal'
'Successfully Removed'
'Removal Failed'

Action: This shows a ‘View’ button that takes you to the review on the website where it was left.

At the top-right of 'Reviews' you’ll see the ‘CSV’ button, which allows you to download this table into a .csv file.

In the bottom right-hand corner, you can select how many reviews you’d like to see per page, or jump ahead to a specific page of reviews.

2. Viewing a review

When reviews have been pulled into 'Manage Reviews', you can find them in your 'Reviews' table. To navigate directly to the review on the source site, you can select the 'View' button. Here you can respond to the review.

After you've responded to a review, you can use the 'Status' drop-down to clearly indicate that action has been taken.

3. Reply templates

'Templates' and 'Auto-Replies' can only be applied to Google and Facebook reviews when these platforms are connected to the Location (see section 4. Connecting to Google or Facebook).

Templates can be created and applied to help respond to reviews quickly and autonomously, if set up correctly.

Select 'Templates' at the top of your 'Manage Reviews' report.

Here you can see all existing templates you have for this Location including the template name, message, ratin it can be applied to, and 'Actions'. Under 'Actions' you can 'Edit', 'Duplicate', or 'Delete' a template.

Creating a template

To create a new template, select 'Create Template'.

Here you can enter the text included in your reply template. To dynamically include the reviewer's first name in your response, select the 'Add First Name' tag. You can also also include your business's name in the reply by selecting the 'Add Business Name' tag.

Next give your template a name. If you create multiple templates it's a good idea to name it relevant to the nature of response, or the rating it is linked with.

(Optional) If you only want your template to be applied to reviews from a specific business, click the 'Link to Client' box and select the client group from the list that appears. For more information, see: How do I add or edit a Client within BrightLocal?

Lastly, you can use the 'Link to Rating' option to choose which reviews you want your template sent to. You can choose to apply it to all reviews, reviews with a specific star rating, or recommendation.

'Enable Auto-Reply' means that this template can be selected and used in 'Auto-Replies'. For more information on 'Auto-Replies', see: How to setup and manage Auto-Replies in Reputation Manager

4. Connecting to Google or Facebook

Once the report has run, if you haven’t yet connected Google or Facebook in the settings, you may see a notification at the top of your report. We need you to connect your Facebook and Google accounts to be able to pull in some information.

To connect, click the Google and Facebook icons at the top right of the page and follow these steps: