From Google: Customer Lobby 2.5x Better
September 22, 2011 By Ted PaffGoogle was asked to testify in a Senate Judiciary hearing that is looking into its possible anti-competitive practices. Although the substance of the charge is 
interesting (and I think mostly undeserved), a rare piece of data from the Googleplex was released that is very telling for local businesses.
From Google’s website (bold inserted by me):
” In fact, most of the click traffic (roughly two-thirds of clicks) from our local search result pages goes directly to small business websites, and review sites make up the next largest percentage (about a quarter of clicks). Less than 10% of clicks from our local results page go to Google Place Pages.”
2.5x More Important that Google Reviews
WHAT?? Google said that, although optimizing your Google place page is important so your business shows up on the search results, your Place page (and your Google reviews!) are 2.5 times less likely to get clicked on than your reviews from Customer Lobby.
Thanks Google!
October 2nd, 2011 at 9:36 pm
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October 28th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
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December 29th, 2011 at 7:33 am
[...] Haupt Tweet We’ve mentioned that even Google admitted that 3rd party reviews are read 2.5 times more than reviews posted on Google.* While that is important information that should make you consider a [...]
January 10th, 2012 at 1:55 pm
[...] Google Reviews: I was very aware that Google removed 3rd party reviews from its Place Pages. I was however surprised that Google reviews are not clicked on as often as 3rd party reviews. [...]
January 10th, 2012 at 10:20 pm
[...] Google Reviews: I was very aware that Google removed 3rd party reviews from its Place Pages. I was however surprised that Google reviews are not clicked on as often as 3rd party reviews. [...]
January 11th, 2012 at 3:50 pm
Yes, I was watching the Senate hearings and thought that statistic seemed a little odd. Based on our LIMITED empirical evidence with working with small business owners, I doubt it really is as low as 10%. Especially since you are forced to the Place page when using mobile search. And based on that Senate hearing, as much as 97% of ALL mobile searches are done using……GOOGLE! I guess if I was in front of a Senate committee, I might try to fudge the numbers a bit too!
January 11th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
@Local SEO
Lying to the US Senate can be very bad for your mobility. Its hard to imagine that Eric Schmidt would risk doing time in a federal pen just as he stepped down as CEO. I would bet that there were a lot of lawyers that looked very carefully at that the Senate testimony (it was mostly prepared ahead of time) before it was presented. That is why the number is so striking.
January 11th, 2012 at 6:48 pm
I agree with you, but I wonder how those numbers might have changed since Google went “grey” and hovering causes the red pin lighting up and to bring up the arrow bar. So now the preview shows up. Are you actively marketing for client in GP? Have you seen any changes in CTR since the update? Eric “eRock” Christopher
January 11th, 2012 at 7:43 pm
@Eric
We are seeing very little impact on CTR from the data we track.