It’s not just you. Getting noticed in the vast digital world of online search results is getting trickier…
Google is increasingly focused on optimizing its local search results, and to that end, they’ve introduced changes to their algorithms specifically targeted at reducing duplicate content. More than that, it can feel like a dog pile of businesses out there trying to reach a finite number of users for reviews.
When it comes to Google business reviews, they’re not just a nice-to-have; they’re essential for your online visibility and credibility. Google values user-generated content highly because it provides genuine insights into your business from real customers. These days, consumers and clients are using online reviews to gauge how reputable and successful a company is. Additionally, reviews will often naturally integrate your business’s keywords, which can often help improve search engine rankings.
If this feels like a lot of information to follow, stay the course. In this article, we delve into the context of the modern review landscape, before offering a few straightforward suggestions for review generation.
The History of Google Reviews
Google Reviews didn’t become the ever-important tool it is today overnight. When Google launched its review platform in 2007, it focused on allowing users to leave feedback on businesses directly within Google Maps. This simple addition helped users make informed decisions about where to spend their money. However, as more people began relying on the Internet to make purchasing decisions, the role of Google Reviews drastically expanded.
In those early years, reviews were simply something businesses noticed and appreciated but didn’t often prioritize. Over time, as Google became the leading source for nearly all of our questions, Google Reviews became more important to business owners than it had ever before.
A Background on Google Reviews & Impacts on SEO
Starting with Penguin 4.0 in 2016 and continuing through Google’s most recent 2024 Core Updates, the company has cracked down hard on duplicate content, fishy backlinks, and other manipulative SEO practices. These updates have reshaped how local search engine results pages (SERPs) are determined, with a laser-sharp focus on quality signals like authentic backlinks, relevant content, and, increasingly, customer reviews.
The Google three-pack (a feature that prominently displays the top three local businesses in search results) remains a critical aspect of local SEO. Businesses are selected by the Google powers-that-be based on several factors, like proximity, relevance, and—critically—the quality and quantity of reviews they’ve amassed.
In this current SEO landscape, generating and managing online reviews is no longer optional—it’s essential. We can’t ignore the fact that Google reviews drive local business success. Positive reviews bolster your business’s credibility and significantly enhance your visibility in local search results.
Whether your business operates primarily online or your website functions as the digital storefront for a brick-and-mortar enterprise, earning and proudly displaying positive reviews consistently strengthens your online profile, making your site more appealing to both potential customers and Google’s algorithms.
Why Online Reviews Are Important: By the Numbers
For a search engine, be it Google, Yahoo, or Yelp, reviews of your business are a key indicator of your website’s legitimacy.
If people are leaving reviews about your restaurant, Google can safely assume that your location is legitimate. It crawls the internet for citations of your business as well as reviews to build a detailed profile of your business, storing the most relevant pages of your site in its enormous index.
While gaining more reviews doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be at the top of the search results, there are two important figures you should keep in mind:
- Users tend to respond to business listings with at least 5 – 10 reviews.
- Google Maps integrates search results with positive reviews (four-star ratings) to display the top businesses by geo-proximity.
If your business or restaurant is located near the user, there’s a very good chance that your listing will appear in the search results. However, the top three spots are reserved for listings with the best ratings.
Why? Simple. If users are reporting a positive experience, Google wants to make sure other users find the best options available. It’s in the “people pleasing” business, after all. For instance, when users search their mobile phone for Thai takeaway on the drive home from work, Google wants to give the best Pad Thai its algorithms can determine.
The Current & Future Importance of Google Business Reviews for SEO
There’s no denying the importance of earning positive Google reviews for your business — but let’s break down exactly what that is.
Credibility and Trust
Trust is the foundation of any relationship, whether that’s between you and your customers or you and today’s search engines. Google’s algorithm, in particular, can assess the quality and quantity of reviews for your business as part of their ranking criteria, so it’s important to build a strong portfolio of positive reviews to help boost your position.
EEAT Boost
Google’s EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) framework is used by the search engine’s human reviewers to determine the quality of content read. The original term in 2022 was EAT, with Experience added to the framework in 2024 as a way to prove first-hand subject matter experience. In addition to the content itself, one of the most effective ways to build your EEAT score is to build your brand reputation. Encouraging clients to leave helpful Google My Business reviews and other user-generated content is a surefire way to move the needle in your favour.
Local SEO Impact
Local SEO refers to relevant local searches and is a necessary tool for optimizing a business’s online presence. Reviews are an essential part of this process; think of them as endorsements for your company and its products or services. Google, among other search engines, looks for the quality, quantity, and timeline of reviews posted. The goal is to get enough attention to put your business in Google’s “Local Pack,” the boxed portion on the first page, showcasing the top three local businesses based on a user’s keyword searches.
There’s a lot to consider when it comes to getting more reviews for your business. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be a dreaded task. SEO experts have many helpful suggestions and articles online, including this one by Forbes Magazine and another one over at Shopify on the impact of positive reviews.
However, you’ll find a few tips below that offer a great starting point.
How to Register Your Business with Google Business Profile
This should be priority #1. If you haven’t already, get your accurate info on Google Business Profile, stat.
Google is the world’s most powerful search engine. The integration of Google Maps, Google Reviews, and Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) means that businesses registered in their search directory can significantly raise their visibility in local SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This is beyond significant for your local search engine optimization.
Business listings are free and you may already have an existing citation for your business that you were unaware of. If so, you can either claim the old listing, update it, or create a new profile. If you are a business with multiple physical locations, be sure to register both businesses with Google under their respective addresses. This will make it easier for locals to find you wherever you do business.
And when they can find you, they can review you. Let’s take a closer look at how to get Google reviews for your business.
Here’s How to Register Your Business with Google My Business
To get those glowing reviews for your business, you first need a Google My Business account. Here’s how to register:
Step 1: Create a Google Account
If you don’t already have one, create a Google account and email. All you need is your name and date of birth to get started.
Step 2: Register with GMB
Once your Google account is set up, go to Google My Business and sign in with your credentials. From there, you’ll find and confirm your company name if it already exists in their system. You’ll be asked to verify your identity to move on.
If your company is not already listed, you can create a profile and enter your business name.
Step 3: Add a Location
Google needs to know where your business is located in order to market it to potential customers. They’ll provide a map which you can use to pinpoint your company’s exact location.
You can also use the Areas You Serve feature to expand your reach if you offer services or products outside your main location.
Step 4: Add Contact Details
Customers need to know how to get in touch with you if they have questions, comments, or concerns. It’s important to be as specific as possible about contact details, including your website URL, phone number, address, and any social media presence.
How to Get Reviews for Your Business
Now that we’ve looked at the importance of Google Reviews in increasing your business’s visibility and authority, it’s time to discuss how to encourage customers to leave reviews. Getting those all-important reviews requires a thoughtful approach that not only promotes feedback but also aligns with best practices to ensure your efforts are effective and ethical.
Use an Attractive Template or Landing Page to Encourage Reviews
Asking for reviews can be awkward, particularly if you’re a new business short on clientele. A click-through page is both a marketing strategy and an SEO tool designed to ‘warm’ prospects before a proposition.
Typically, you greet users with an attractive page when they visit your site (or leave), politely inviting them to share their experience online as a review or a testimonial. Users can either ‘click-through’ to the offer (leave a review) or close the page and proceed to the content of interest. SEO services offer expertise in effective click-through design and engaging SEO copywriting for landing pages to maximize your conversion rate, but there are online tools that offer easy-to-use templates.
Encourage Reviews from Multiple Review Sites
Google and other search engines base their rankings of reviews on a number of recognized consumer review sites. You can join these groups yourself, post reviews and invite others to review your business. In addition to building out your presence on local search directories, which can boost your SEO, these sites help you reach the eyeballs of potential customers – always a win.
The list below is brief but a good introduction:
- Amazon
- Better Business Bureau (BBB)
- Bing Places
- Citysearch
- Consumer Reports
- Foursquare
- Yelp
- Angi
Think of review generation like fishing. You can drop a single line and hope for a bite or cast a wide net. Any fisherman or SEO expert worth their salt will tell you to use that net.
Utilize Review Sites’ Advice Columns –and Play Within Their Rules!
Review sites often list resources aimed directly at business owners, asking the same question as this article: How do you generate more reviews? Unlike the general, SEO-centric advice you’re reading in this blog post, these resources tend to be specific to the regulations, rules, and unique infrastructures in the individual review site.
For instance, in our blog post on why you absolutely shouldn’t resort to fake online reviews, we cover Yelp and Google specifically.
Both Yelp and Google offer resources for generating reviews. Yelp is incredibly severe about how businesses generate reviews (they don’t even let you solicit customers at the point of sale), so their advice works around those strict parameters. Meanwhile, Google is more lenient, but they still do not allow you to incentivize good reviews; as such, their advice deals with concrete, non-incentivized methods for review generation, like reminders on sales receipts, “Review Us” CTAs on your website, and staff training that includes tactfully asking for a review.
As the lottery slogan goes, “Know your limit, play within it.” Understand what you can get away with. And get your site-specific advice straight from the horse’s mouth.
Use Incentive
Encouraging customers to leave reviews can be a bit tricky, but offering incentives is a great way to motivate them. Incentives like discounts, freebies, or entry into a giveaway can be powerful motivators. However, it’s important to be careful with how you implement this strategy.
Google’s policies forbid offering incentives directly in exchange for positive reviews, so make sure any offers you provide are for leaving a review in general, without specifying the type of review they should leave. This ensures that your reviews are genuine and maintains your business’s credibility while giving your customers a little extra nudge to share their feedback.
How to Respond to Google Reviews as a Business
Once you get more reviews for your business, you want to ensure you respond to them in a constructive way that benefits your reputation. Whether the review is positive or negative, how you engage with your customers can significantly affect how your business is perceived.
Acknowledge and Respond
When customers leave reviews, they want to know their voice has been heard. When you get business reviews, try to respond within 24-48 hours. This shows your customers that you value their feedback and are actively listening to their praise or concerns. If your volume of reviews begins to grow, consider setting aside time every other day or so to go through and respond.
Personalize Your Response
There’s nothing worse than a generic thank you after you’ve left a review online. This type of copy-and-paste response could make your customers feel they’re just a number and discourage them from promoting your business again. When you respond, try to pull any specific details about their purchase or any interactions you’ve had. The more specific you can be, the better!
Manage Your Negative Reviews Proactively and with Decorum
We’ve all seen horror stories of business proprietors who hop onto Google to comment on a negative review. Shooting from the hip, they lambast the negative reviewer and deny, deny, deny. This strategy has worked a handful of times, but it shouldn’t be the benchmark for customer outreach.
It can alienate customers, minimize their frustrations, and ultimately look bad. According to WordStream, “Among consumers that read reviews, 97% read businesses’ responses to reviews.” They’re watching you to see how you handle things.
As we cover in our resource on negative reviews and SEO, “While most SEO experts agree that having negative reviews is better than having zero reviews at all, mainly because Google wants as many consumers using its online reviews system as possible, it’s still important to have a positive reputation online.”
We recommend staffing your support team accordingly to manage frustrations, shelving unpopular products, and responding empathetically to concerned reviews. Bad reviews aren’t always fixed. People change their minds all the time, especially when they feel their voices have been heard and addressed.
There are other ancillary factors that determine how likely a customer is to give you a review—good site speed, intuitive UI/UX, etc. However, these tips should get you started on the right path. Build an attractive landing page, list your business on various review sites and directories, play within the rules, and view your negative reviews as opportunities for conversion.
End on a Positive Note
Just as you would want to do in an in-person interaction, ending your review responses on a positive note is key. No matter how the review started, how you choose to end the conversation can tell a lot about your business practices and how you take feedback.
Keeping it short and sweet is often the best approach. A simple “We appreciate your business and hope to see you again soon” is an effective way to reinforce your commitment to your customers’ satisfaction.
What if My Google Reviews Aren’t Showing Up?
Visibility is key when it comes to online reviews. But what happens when your Google reviews aren’t showing up? What does that mean for your SEO rankings?
Verify Your GBP
First, make sure you’ve claimed your Google Business Profile listing. Your GBP ensures you’ve claimed and verified your business’s legitimacy and that all your information is correct. If you request a claim and you’re told someone else is already managing your profile, you can request access and follow the steps to verify your ownership.
Remove Any Fabricated Reviews
Above all else, Google favours authenticity. While it can be tempting to pad your GBP with false positive reviews to boost your rankings and encourage new customers, it’s best to avoid that practice altogether. Instead, reach out to customers you’re certain enjoyed using your products or services and encourage them to spread the good word.
Ensure Zero Embedded Links
Google doesn’t allow any URLs or links in posted reviews since they can be used to promote inappropriate content or spam. When you’re encouraging customers to leave their feedback, be sure to communicate this to them and encourage them to write informative reviews based on their experience with your brand.
Contact Customer Support
At the end of the day, sometimes it comes down to a simple technical glitch. If your content is genuine and your reviews are honest, but you’re still not seeing anything on your business’s page, reach out to Google’s support team for help.
From the days of Penguin 4.0 to Google’s most recent Core Updates, there’s no doubt that online reviews are a part of any business’s successful foundation. As a business owner, these resources and insights are integral to boosting your online visibility and authenticity on all search engines. The more time and care you spend attending and promoting customer reviews, the more success you’re sure to see on the SEO front.
