How Restaurants Can Get Better Reviews + Free Webinar

takeaways from a viral restaurant reviewer

February 26, 2026

Every local SEO who works with restaurants should know who Marilyn Hagerty is if they want their clients to earn the best reviews possible. Here’s why:

Marilyn Hagerty is an award-winning restaurant reviewer who rose to fame after her review of Olive Garden went viral. Her book Grand Forks (published by the great Anthony Bourdain, btw) holds all the secrets to great customer reviews.

In her new blog post, Miriam Ellis shares her biggest local SEO takeaways from Marilyn’s book. Here’s one:

Every one of Marilyn’s reviews hit on these topics:

  • What she ate

  • Satisfaction sentiment

  • Price

  • Atmosphere

  • Service quality

  • Wait times

  • Cleanliness

These attributes happen to be some of the key elements featured on restaurant Google Business Profiles. This is also the exact kind of content Google is now scraping for its new AI-driven “Ask a Question” feature.

What does this mean for restauranteurs and local SEOs who work with restaurants? Read Miriam’s full blog post to find out 👇️

Also, I’ll be joining the brilliant Ben Fisher and Will Scott in a free live webinar all about AI and local SEO next week.

What you’ll learn:

  • How to future-proof your local strategy, pricing, and workflows

  • How AI is changing local KPIs, rankings, and zero-click behavior

  • The content, schema, and entity signals that matter most for AI-mode grounding

  • Practical automations, tools, and AI workflows you can implement right away

  • The risks, misconceptions, and ethical pitfalls agencies need to avoid

When and where?

Next Wednesday, March 4th
3:00 pm EST
On Zoom

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Darren