Heard a lawyer say Google reviews don't matter for Edmonton firms

A senior partner told me last fall that nobody reads reviews for legal services, so I stopped replying to client feedback for months. Turns out we dropped two spots in local search results right after that, and I had to scramble to catch up. Anyone else been given bad advice about ignoring something simple like this?

4 comments

4 Comments

wyatt_hernandez141mo ago

Man it's crazy how bad advice just spreads like that. I see it all the time with small businesses - someone tells you one thing and you run with it without checking, then you're stuck fixing the mess later. I've noticed it happens a ton with stuff people think they "know" about how Google works, like reviews don't matter or SEO is a scam, but those are the same people who wonder why their phone stops ringing. It's just one of those things where you gotta test stuff yourself instead of trusting some partner who probably hasn't looked at their own analytics in years.

murphy.mason1mo agoMost Upvoted

Yeah it's wild how fast bad info spreads. I've seen guys spend thousands on directory listings because someone told them that's all Google cares about. Meanwhile their actual website hasn't been updated in three years and they wonder why nobody finds them. Best thing I ever did was just open up Google Analytics and look at where my traffic was actually coming from. Turns out most of those old school tips were useless for my market. Now I tell people to just test one change at a time and see what happens. Way better than trusting some guru who's selling a course.

spencer_coleman1mo ago

Hard disagree. Some old school tips still work fine if you just show up consistently.

sean_cooper581mo ago

Yeah I gotta push back a little here. @wyatt_hernandez14 makes a solid point about testing stuff yourself, but I think the real issue is people don't know how to pick which old school tips are worth keeping. There's a difference between showing up consistently and just repeating the same broken strategies over and over. For example, claiming a Google Business profile or getting listed in a few local directories? That still works for a lot of businesses if you actually update the info. But the old "just blog every day" advice died years ago when Google started caring more about depth than quantity. The problem isn't the tips themselves, it's that nobody bothers to figure out which ones still apply to their specific situation. So yeah, consistency matters, but only if you're consistent with the right stuff.