Reviews Do the Selling

Google reviews decide whether a local business gets the call. Ninety-seven per cent of people check them first, most want four stars or better, and recent reviews count for more than a big total. A steady rhythm of new reviews, each one answered, does more than a burst every few years.

Your reviews are having a conversation with every person deciding whether to hire you, and you are not in it. That conversation is going on right now, on a panel you own, in words other people wrote.

Ninety-seven per cent of consumers go over reviews for local businesses. Forty-one per cent say they always do it. This is not a nice-to-have sitting next to the real marketing, it is the last thing standing between someone and their decision.

How many stars do customers expect?

Sixty-eight per cent of people now want at least four stars before they will use a business. Thirty-one per cent will not go below 4.5. That is a meaningful tightening on where it sat a few years ago, and it means one unanswered stinker carries more weight than it used to.

Do recent reviews matter more than the total?

Here is the finding that catches most people out. Seventy-four per cent want reviews written in the last three months, and 32 per cent want something from the last fortnight.

So forty glowing reviews that all stop in 2024 do not read as a well-loved business. They read as one that might have closed. A profile collecting two or three a week looks alive in a way that a bigger, older pile never will, which makes rhythm the thing to build rather than a total to chase.

Should you reply to every review?

Eighty per cent of consumers say they are more likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews. The replies are not admin, they are the only part of the review section where you get a voice.

One caveat that matters: 50 per cent are put off by responses that read as templated. Forty variations of "Thanks for your feedback!" is worse than silence, because it tells people you are processing them rather than listening. Name the specific thing they mentioned. It takes nine extra seconds.

Reviews now feed the machines too

This used to be purely about persuasion. It is not any more. In the Insites study of 10,000 local businesses, the ones being recommended by ChatGPT and Perplexity averaged 133 Google reviews, against 11 for the ones that never came up.

Review volume was one of the strongest correlations in the entire study. So the same work now buys you the human decision and a place in the AI answer, which is a rare thing in marketing.

How do you ask for reviews without the cringe?

Most people are not withholding a review out of indifference. They have simply gone back to their day, and nobody told them where to click.

Ask at the peak, not at the end

The moment to ask is the moment they are happiest, which is usually when the thing lands rather than when the invoice does. Waiting a week costs you most of the goodwill.

Make it one tap

Google gives you a short review link in your Business Profile. Send that, not directions. Every extra step loses you people who genuinely meant to.

Ask like a person

A line in a message that names what you worked on together will beat any automated sequence. "Really glad the new site landed well, would you mind leaving a few words on Google?" is the whole script.

Spread it wider than Google

The average consumer consults six different review sites when choosing a business. Google carries the most weight, so start there, then think about the one or two others that matter in your industry.

What it adds up to

Reviews are the cheapest marketing you will ever run, and the only kind your customers make for you. The businesses winning at it are not doing anything clever. They ask every time, they reply to every one, and they never let the run go quiet.