Update: 21/06/2022 More changes for Hotels explained at the end of the post
What’s going on?
Have you recently reviewed a Hotel, a Restaurant or an Attraction in Google Maps recently? If that’s the case you probably found a new review form instead of the classic “stars and comment” super simplified form:
They have been seen for a while in Hotels specially in the United States, but looks like it’s being rolled out to EN users worldwide and expanded to more categories. As far as we are aware there are “expanded” forms for Hotels, Restaurants and Attractions but it’s possible they are being used in more categories.
These new forms try to get in few taps or clicks a little more context about the experience of the reviewer.
What are they used for?
Notice that these fields are not mandatory and they are labeled as “Beta”. In fact, everything labeled as “beta” is not being shown back to the user. For Hotels the ratings left for Rooms, Service and Location categories do get shown in the user’s review:
Apparently Google is mostly collecting the data and possibly holding it until a major new redesign comes in place. Anyway this indicates that Google keeps taking Google Maps and Google Business Profile seriously and keeps developing which is, most certainly, the most trusted reviews platform among consumers.
UPDATED June 15: Looks like that Google is starting to show individual data on the specific reviews
UPDATED June 21: More new developments. Google presenting a new design for Hotels with:
- Segmented score based on the type of user
- Search for reviews!
- New form design
- No more stars. Instead uses a x/5 format
Have you seen any more categories affected by these extended forms?
Let us know in the comments!
