I recently tried to get in touch with another agency member to discuss something outside of the typical tool setup. This person has been a huge help to me, but I actually had to join a completely different group just to send him a message. I really feel that networking between agencies is a big part of what makes a community like this work. Setting a requirement like level 9 just to start a conversation feels like a missed opportunity for all of us to grow together. I’m a big fan of Climbo and the group, so I was just curious why this rule is in place when most other groups allow open communication. Is there a particular reason for the level restriction? What do you think would it be helpful to have the possibility to chat with other agencies?

Hey Climbers, Over the last few days, there has been a lot of discussion around Google’s review policies, especially around review gating, employee mentions, incentives, QR codes, and how review requests should be handled. We have reviewed the policy carefully, and we want to make sure Climbo continues to help businesses collect genuine customer feedback in the safest and most compliant way possible. Google’s policy is very clear on a few key points: “Contributions to Google Maps should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business.” Google also states that merchants must not: “Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.” And when soliciting reviews, merchants should not: “Require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises, nor should they request that specific content be included.” This includes: “Merchants requesting that staff solicit reviews that include specific content, including content that identifies a staff member.” At the same time, Google also clearly says that merchants are allowed to: “Solicit or encourage the posting of content that does represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review.” So the goal is not to stop collecting reviews. The goal is to collect reviews in the right way: neutral, genuine, non-selective, and without incentives or pressure. Here is what we are changing. 1. Review Gating: Removing Sentiment-Based Filters We are removing review filtering based on sentiment. This means we will no longer support flows where the customer is first asked to choose a rating, stars, thumbs up/down, smiley face, or any other sentiment indicator, and then receives a different experience based on that response. For example, this type of flow is no longer considered safe: Happy customer → sent to Google Unhappy customer → sent to private feedback form That can be interpreted as selectively soliciting positive reviews and discouraging negative reviews.

Someone on the zoom call yesterday suggested a filter on the reviews for the website - To show all reviews! What you show on your website is your business and just because Google ask for no gating does not mean we have to show our clients reviews all of them( just like we may not want to show private feedback)! If you take any time to develop this - please have a toggle or slider to show only what you want to show! If they really want to go hunt negative review then they can check google or trustpilot!

As we conduct our full compliance clean up, one significant area remains incomplete. The website review widgets we currently use are not compliant. Because we filter these widgets to show only four and five star ratings, we must make several updates to meet strict transparency guidelines. We must clearly label the widget section to reflect that the content is curated. We need to use titles like Featured Testimonials or Selected Highlights instead of a generic Customer Reviews label . We must also provide a highly visible link immediately next to the widget. This link must allow visitors to access and read all of our unedited and unfiltered reviews.

Hi team, A few of you guys have reached out and asked what I've been cooking up with all the API requests I've been making in this group. Here's what I was working on. I wanted to have a tool where I can manage my clients easily and have a overall view of my climbo business. Climbo gives us all the features to run our Reputation Management business but it does lack in my opinion, features which will help me manage my clients. Again its my own opinion. I know Climbo team will be adding all those features later this year but I'm planning big and go all in on this. So I needed a tool which would help me out. I was building this tool internally for me and my team to manage my clients in Climbo. But then since I've had conversations with a few of you I realised that many people will benefit by a tool like this. I've decided to make it available to whoever would like a tool to manage their clients. I am happy to give some beta access to a few agencies, who can help test it out and help me figure out bugs if at all and give me feedback. If anyone of you are interested please go reach out or comment below. I've got 1 Agency helping with testing this out. But would love to have a few more. @Giacomo Chinellato I love the tool but just needed a few more things to make it work so I have built it. This is just to help other agencies to get started.