How Google Reviews Work for a Business
- How to Ask Customers for Google Reviews
- How to Create a Google Review Link
- Google Rules on Review Incentives Explained
- Why Review Recency Matters for Local Businesses
KNOWLEDGE BASE
Customer Reviews
A customer review is the only substantial content about your business that you did not write, cannot edit, and cannot remove. Everything difficult about reputation follows from that one sentence — and so does everything valuable.
Customer Reviews Guides
Each guide is split into a four-part series.
How to Respond to Customer Reviews
- How to Respond to Negative Customer Reviews
- How to Respond to Positive Customer Reviews
- How Fast a Business Should Respond to Reviews
- Review Response Mistakes a Business Should Avoid
How Removing Negative Google Reviews Works
- What the Google Review Policy Prohibits
- How to Flag a Google Review
- How to Spot Fake Google Reviews
- How to Appeal a Google Review Decision
What Is a Customer Review?
A customer review is an evaluation of a product or service published by the person who bought it. Online, reviews are typically combined with a star rating and aggregated into a score. They function simultaneously as content, as a ranking signal, and as the primary thing a prospective customer reads before deciding — which makes them the most overloaded object in local search.
They are a ranking factor and a conversion factor at once.
In most channels, persuasion happens after discovery. Reviews do both jobs: volume, recency and rating feed how visible you are, and then the same reviews decide whether the person who found you calls. A business with thin reviews loses twice over, at both stages, and usually only notices the second.
Recency is doing more work than people realize.
A wall of glowing reviews that stops eighteen months ago reads as a business that used to be good. Reviews decay in usefulness because readers correctly infer that a business can change. Steady flow beats a historical peak.
The response is content too.
A reply to a bad review is written for everyone who reads it afterwards, not for the person who left it. That reframing changes what a good response looks like: not an apology, and never a defense, but a demonstration that this business handles problems like an adult.
Reference
Wikipedia: Customer review
The reference article on customer reviews — user-generated evaluations, rating aggregation, and their influence on purchase decisions.
Read the full article →Your reply to a bad review isn't written for the person who left it. It's written for every prospect who reads it afterwards.
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