How to Respond to a Google Review With No Comment

Since 2010, the average length of online reviews has dropped from 600 characters to merely over 200. Various reasons may explain why people are hesitant to provide an extensive review, such as their experience, a desire for privacy, or a lack of time.Despite this, Google Reviews, even those with no comment, remain an essential element in a hotel's online presence, which may influence prospective guests whether positively or negatively.

In this article, you will learn how to maximize the value of every review, even without comments. By doing so, you can turn any review, no matter how brief, into a useful tool to improve your online presence.

Why respond to every Google review?

Google has become the top online review website, with a search-and-book process determining almost 72% of the hotel booking these days. Because of this, boosting your Google visibility has been the topmost priority of major hotels – going as far as responding to ratings without comments.

Aside from this, it's no secret that Google indexes online assets through relevant keywords and content. While rating-only reviews are still shown to online users, they don't help boost your website's online searchability as they lack the content needed. However, your responses to those reviews with no comments are a great way to add relevant keywords to your Google profile.

In hindsight, replying to rating-only reviews demonstrates a profound level of appreciation and gratitude to customers. This degree of customer service is particularly crucial for the hotel and hospitality sector.

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Does a Google review with no comment damage your online reputation?

There's no definite way to measure how Google Reviews with comments affect your hotel's online reputation. Unlike a negative review that can significantly impact potential bookings, rating-only reviews primarily influence your overall rating positively or negatively. A low rating with no comment can quickly be shunned by guests, while an influx of high ratings with any content can also be suspicious to readers.

Either way, you can turn the uncertainty of your potential guests around by responding to each Google Review, even those without comment. This way, they would know that actual people attend to their guests' concerns, even after their stay.

How do you respond to a review with no comment?

Responding to Google Reviews with no comment is quite similar to how you should respond to reviews with content. You should still reply quickly, remain respectful, and keep up with your brand's name.

However, there are some unique factors that you should know about.

Acknowledge the areas mentioned in the review

Google allows guests to rate a specific hotel unit, such as your restaurant, customer service, and facilities. This will make responding easier, as you will know which area of your business has been addressed in the review. This is especially important for a 1-rating review with no comment, as it would allow you to address the specific issues implied in the review.

Don't use a generic template

Never use a generic template in responding to online reviews, even for those with no comments. A lot of positive ratings without supporting content could appear sketchy to some customers – it would become even more suspicious if matched with a repetitive response template. This may adversely affect your online reputation, deterring potential guests.

Personalize if possible

Despite not having content, a rating-only review would still have a name, or a username posted. Use it to personalize your response. This will give off an impression of politeness in your reply.

Ask for additional feedback

At times, customers may leave a low rating for faulty services. When this happens, it's best to ask them for additional feedback to know which areas of your services need improvement.

Use relevant keywords

Responding to rating-only reviews can also be used to SEO optimize your Google presence. Using category and location-based keywords in your replies can help you being found in relevant searches.

How to use AI Review Reply Assistant for Google reviews without comments?

Review reply generators have made writing engaging and well-crafted responses to reviews with and without comments a breeze. This way, you can save time without missing the opportunity to boost your online presence.

1. Set the rating

First, set the guest’s rating in your AI review reply generator.

2. Add subratings

As mentioned earlier, many review sites like Google allow guests to review specific areas of your hotel. Set the subratings to give the tool more context - this way the generated response will be more individual.

3. Ask for additional feedback

For low-rating reviews with no subratings, you can choose to ask your guests to provide additional feedback by emailing, calling your phone line, or messaging your social media accounts. When choosing this option, the system will ask the reviewer to provide additional feedback via the selected feedback channel. As feedback channel, a type (e.g., email or phone) and the associated contact information (e.g., email address or phone number) should be provided.

4. Choose the language

For local hotels, it is advised to translate the response into the customer's local language. This not only facilitates natural connection with the guests, but also optimizes local searchability.

How do you respond to a 5 star review without comments?

Here are some of the best examples of responses to a 5 star Google Review with no comment.

5 star Google review

In this example, the response employed hotel SEO keywords like "exceptional service and facilities". This ensures Google can index these words should people search for "hotel in Germany with exceptional service" or "hotel in Germany with outstanding amenities". Additionally, the response length expresses appreciation and gratitude despite receiving a rating-only review.

5 star Google review with subratings

The response pick up the positive subratings mentioned in the Google Review and added the phrases "excellent experience" and "exceed expectations." These phrases are considered "emotional copywriting words" , which is said to sway people's views towards a company. Reading this response would make people want to experience the "excellent experience" the reviewer had despite the lack of comment.

How do you respond to a 1 star review without comments?

Here are some of the best examples of responses to a 1 star Google Review with No Comment.

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1 star Google review

The response written by the AI reply assistant remained respectful despite the lack of constructive comments from the guest. Notice how the response also ended with a positive tone about improving their services in the future through the negative review they received.

1 star Google review with subratings

The response expressed gratitude for the honest review, while also highlighting the hotel's commitment to reviewing operational protocols to ensure guests receive quality service.

How do you respond to a 3 star review without comments?

In responding to a 3 star review without comments, you can’t automatically assume that a guest had a good or unsatisfactory experience with your hotel. Here’s how you can reply to a 3 star review without comments, according to an AI review reply assistant:

3 star Google review

The response focused on encouraging the guest to provide more information about their review. This will create an impression to potential guests that your brand is dedicated to finding a way how you can further improve your services.

3 star Google review with subratings

This Google review showed that the guest was satisfied with the service and location of the hotel but was unimpressed with the rooms. The response started by highlighting the positive areas of the review. However, most of the reply focused on creating a dialogue with the guest regarding their rooms.

Respond to Google reviews with no reviews swiftly and effortlessly with MARA.

Responding to online reviews can be a daunting task, especially when they lack any content. Fortunately, this task can be made easier with an AI Review Assistant like MARA. This intuitive tool is designed to streamline your Online Reputation Management process, making it more efficient, personalized, and time-saving. It offers the best and most personalized AI for responding to and analyzing your guest reviews.

Never miss a review with your Review Inbox

Reviews without comments can easily be overlooked, especially if you don’t have a streamlined Review Inbox that allows you to monitor all your customer reviews across your listings.

MARA’s Review Inbox makes responding to reviews as simple as hitting "Generate reply" and clicking "Send". The Review Inbox connects to multiple review sources, including Google, Booking.com, and Tripadvisor, giving you a panoramic view of all your reviews. You can even configure review response automation: Why not allow MARA to automatically respond to simple reviews, like 5-star Google reviews with no text, ensuring you never miss a review? Daily notifications about new reviews keep you updated and in control.

Review Automation for Google Reviews without comments

Setting up response automation for reviews that don’t have comments can cut up to 60% off your online reputation management process.
With MARA, you can even go on autopilot and create automation rules for Google Reviews without comments. This way, you can specify which reviews should be replied to by the AI directly with no additional approval. With the configuration below, all Google reviews with no text and a star rating of 4 and above are answered automatically.

AI-powered personalization

Reviews without comments can contribute to SEO ranking only if they have optimized responses. Fortunately, MARA's AI isn't just about efficiency; it's about personalization too.

The Brand Voice feature allows the AI to adapt to your tone, ensuring your responses sound authentically to you. Plus, with Smart Snippets, you can "teach" the AI how to respond to recurring praises or complaints. Your AI then incorporates this information into its responses, but always with different words, providing more personalized, relevant replies. These features will enable you to use targeted keywords regularly to help you become more visible in relevant searches without resorting to generic response templates.

This review response assistant has quickly become a game-changer for over 2000 customers. Its promising capacity to elevate your overall rating, amplify response rates, glean insights from customer feedback, and economize both time and money, is the reason behind its growing popularity.

Final Thought

Managing Google Reviews without comments doesn't need to be daunting. With the right software, you cannot only streamline the process but also tailor your responses to each review and gain valuable insights. Why hesitate to try our AI Review Assistant, MARA? It's free to test, requires no credit card, and can be up and running in less than five minutes. Don't miss out on the opportunity to enhance your review management effortlessly and effectively.

This article is part of our hero content series on “How to Use Online Reviews to Your Advantage – The Ultimate Guide" and “Mastering Google Reviews - A Complete Guide".