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Reviews and reputation

Reviews are the part of local marketing an owner can influence this week without spending anything, and the part most businesses leave to chance. This category covers how the flow of new reviews affects where you rank, what the platforms actually permit, how to ask without sounding desperate, and what to do when a response goes wrong. It is written for the person who answers the reviews, not for a marketing department. After reading it you should be able to decide whether your review habit is the thing holding your ranking back, and what to change first if it is.

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All twenty articles on reviews and reputation

In reading order rather than by date. 20 published so far, and the rest are written and scheduled. Titles without a link are not live yet.

  1. Review velocity: the local ranking factor most businesses ignore

    Review recency is now one of the strongest local ranking signals, and most businesses never think about it.

  2. Why a negative review beats no new reviews at all

    A negative review still refreshes your recency signal. Silence does not.

  3. Review gating is illegal and it also makes you rank worse

    Review gating means sending happy customers to Google while diverting unhappy ones to a private form.

  4. How to benchmark your review cadence against competitors

    Search the term you want to rank for, open the top three map pack results, and count how many reviews each one collected in the last ninety days.

  5. The compliant way to incentivize staff to ask for reviews

    Reward the ask, never the review. Google's Rating Manipulation policy prohibits merchants asking staff to collect a set number of reviews or reviews naming a specific staff member.

  6. How to ask for a review without sounding desperate

    Ask once, at the moment the customer is already happy, in one sentence, with no explanation of why you need it.

  7. Responding to a bad review: a template that does not make it worse

    Thank them, name the specific problem, say what changed, offer a direct contact, stop.

  8. Should you respond to every review, and what happens if you do not

    Answer every negative review and every detailed positive one. Skip the bare five stars with no text.

  9. Do keywords in reviews affect rankings? A controlled test says no

    No. Sterling Sky ran a controlled test on whether keyword text inside Google reviews boosts map pack rankings, and found it does not.

  10. Yelp's review solicitation rules and why they differ from Google

    Google allows you to ask customers for reviews. Yelp asks businesses not to, and its recommendation software filters reviews it treats as solicited.

  11. What to do about a review you believe is fake

    Report it once through the platform's flagging tool, write a short neutral public response, and then go back to collecting new reviews.

  12. HIPAA and responding to patient reviews without disclosing anything

    Never confirm that the reviewer was a patient, and never mention treatment, dates, diagnoses, or anything you learned in the office.

  13. Review request timing: when in the customer journey to ask

    Ask at the moment of relief, which is when the customer knows the outcome was good and is still standing in front of you or holding their phone.

  14. QR codes, kiosks, and review collection that stays compliant

    A compliant code or kiosk sends every customer to the same place: the public review form, with no question in between.

  15. Handling a review bomb

    Do not respond to all of them, do not ask friends and staff to post counter reviews, and do not delete anything you have posted publicly.

  16. Why your review count matters less than your recent review count

    Your total review count is history. The number that predicts what happens next is how many reviews you collected in the last ninety days.

  17. Getting reviews from customers who loved you two years ago

    Work the old list slowly, a handful at a time over several weeks, and give each person a specific memory to write from.

  18. Review response as customer service, not damage control

    Your review responses are read almost entirely by future customers, not by the person who wrote the review.

  19. What review platforms actually matter for your industry

    Google matters for essentially every local business, and after that it is industry specific and often regional.

  20. Building a review system that survives a staff change

    Put the ask inside a step that already happens, keep profile ownership in the business's name rather than an employee's, and write the whole thing on one page.

Be honest with yourself

When this category is not your problem

If you already collect more new reviews than everyone above you in the map pack and your position has not moved, reviews are not your constraint and more effort here will not change that. Look at categories, service pages, or whether the search term you are chasing carries the intent you think it does.

And if customers are genuinely unhappy, none of this applies yet. More review requests will make that visible faster. Fix the experience first.

Where to go next

Send me the search term you most want to rank for and your business name, at eric@seod.com, and I will count what the top three collected in the last ninety days against your own rate. I answer these myself, and if your reviews are fine I will tell you that rather than sell you something.

Responding to reviews is profile work, and the profile is where Search visibility starts: categories, photos, hours and review responses, with position and calls reported weekly.

Call Eric Email Eric