I work at a small, but busy law office in downtown Albany, New York. Albany is a small city with an overabundance of pizza shops, college kids, and lawyers. So, as is the case for many of you, our local reviews are very important for differentiating ourselves from competitors and attracting clients with a positive first impression. As a consumer, I know that one bad review can make me think twice about contacting an unfamiliar place of business. A string of convincing negative reviews will usually be enough to send me looking elsewhere.

Fortunately, we have been able to enjoy a competitive number of reviews for our market, with the majority of those being favorable, resulting in a 25/30 score under the new Google Plus Local system. Not bad. But, distracting from the kind words and compliments is a "warning" from a disgruntled former employee that, until Google Places recently became Google Plus Local, was buried deep in the timeline behind much more recent reviews (screenshot below).

That's because, as it turns out, Google engineers believe that Google Plus users are, 13 times out of 15, "Most Helpful" when compared to your average Google user or even Zagat reviewer. Under the new Google Plus Local system, reviews are sorted by default to display the "Most Helpful" as opposed to most recent, as they had been with Google Places. According to a recent field observation, this means that any review left by a verified Google Plus user is much more likely to be the first, and possibly only, review that your potential customer will read when searching on Google Local.

Observations

Obviously, I didn't pull the numbers 13 and 15 out of the sky (would be a weird choice). After Plus Local started replacing Places a few weeks back and I noticed the negative review that I mentioned take the top spot, I began poking around and decided to test my hunch that Google Plus reviewers would be given priority status in this new environment.

So I ran three local-type Google queries that I guessed would have a good number of reviews to sift through (with one I could relate to):

1. Bankruptcy lawyers in Los Angeles, CA
2. Pizza in New York City, NY
3. Salsa clubs in Miami, FL

I took detailed notes that I won't bore you with here (but I'll post up later if anyone wants), going through results "a" through "j" of all available Plus Local results for each search. What I found is that not every business had Google reviews (and those that did didn't always have reviews from Google Plus users) but, when they did, the reviews posted by Plus users were almost always first in line, and thus, "Most Helpful". In fact, out of the 15 local businesses that had at least one review by a Google Plus user, only twice did a Plus review not show up as the "Most Helpful" (In no case was a business' only review from a Plus user). And in both those instances (both these anomalies had several Plus reviews), the Plus reviews appeared lined up several in a row from the #2 spot on down.

It was also interesting that in most cases, the top-listed Plus reviews were neither the most recent nor seemed to be the most thorough, lengthy, or well-written. While trying to be unbiased, I found that in my personal opinion of the comments the Plus reviews listed as "Most Helpful" were generally not the most useful for helping me make a decision as a potential customer.

Conclusions

I know this is a tiny, ridiculous data set but something tells me, and please feel free to disagree if you've witnessed something different, that my observations will apply across all of Google Local, making Plus users "dangerous", in my opinion. I use the word dangerous not to be inflammatory or sensational, but because I really believe that they have the most power, pound-for-pound, to shape the reputation of your local business and perhaps directly influence sales - for good or bad.

In a Google internet, Plus users also have much less of a barrier to comment on your service and/or products. At the close of a case, I will often send clients an email asking for a kind review should they feel inclined to do so. The link I send always depends on the email provider the client is using. Gmail users get request for Google reviews, Yahoo users get requests for Yahoo reviews, etc. In a Places world, I would make the bet that a logged-in Gmail user would be much more likely to leave a Google review than a logged-in Yahoo Mail user simply because it was a lot less trouble, and many times that seemed to work out. Now that average Gmail users have to take the extra step to join Google Plus, they have also become less likely to leave feedback. For existing Plus users, accessibility isn't a problem. So, not only are their opinions positioned to be most-likely to influence, but they are also, in my humble opinion with no data to back this up at all, more likely than non-Plus'ers to have that opinion published in the first place.

The lesson then, if any, may be to court your Google Plus customers. Taking a second to make just the slightest better impression than usual or deliver the tiniest more excellent service than is the custom may pay dividends. Does this mean Google Plus users are now part of some special membership club entitled to preferential treatment and benefits? For the local business owner or marketers competing for that edge, it might mean exactly that.