The Importance of Reviews on Google My Business

Latest edit by Steve Davies - LocalBizNet.com | August 22, 2026

If you own a local business, there is a good chance that one of the first things a potential customer sees when searching for your business isn't your website. It's your Google Business Profile.

Right there in the search results, they may see your business name, star rating, number of reviews, recent comments from customers, photos, hours, and other information about your business. In many cases, a person can learn quite a bit about your company without ever clicking through to your website.

That's why your Google reviews are so important. They aren't simply something you collect because Google happens to have a place for them. Your reviews are part of your online reputation, and they can have a very real effect on whether someone decides to contact you or move on to one of your competitors.

Reviews Help Build Trust

Think about the last time you were looking for a business you had never used before. Maybe you needed a plumber, a restaurant, an attorney, a dentist, or an auto repair shop. If you had several businesses to choose from, what would you probably look at before making a decision?

There's a good chance you would look at the reviews.

That's because we naturally place more trust in the experiences of other customers than we do in what a business says about itself. A company can tell you that it provides excellent service, has experienced employees, and cares about its customers. Every company can say those things. A customer saying the same thing carries a little more weight.

Now imagine you're searching for a local service and you see one company with a 4.9-star rating and more than 200 reviews, another with a 4.6-star rating and 14 reviews, and a third with no reviews at all.

That doesn't automatically mean the first company is the best one. But most people are going to feel more comfortable clicking on the business with a strong history of customer feedback. That's what makes reviews so valuable. They help remove some of the uncertainty that comes with choosing a business you've never used before.

Reviews Can Also Help With Local SEO

There is another reason reviews matter, and that's local search.

Google uses a number of factors when determining which businesses appear in its local search results. Reviews are one part of that overall picture. Google has stated that review quantity, review quality, and review sentiment can contribute to a business's prominence.

But I think it's important not to look at reviews as some kind of magic SEO formula. Getting another 25 reviews doesn't mean Google is automatically going to move your business to the top of the map results. Local search is much more complicated than that. Your business's relevance to the search, its location, prominence, your website, your Google Business Profile, citations, links, and many other factors can all play a role.

What reviews can do is strengthen the overall presence of your business and, perhaps even more importantly, help convince the person who finds you to actually choose you.

And that's a distinction worth remembering: getting found is only half the battle.

A Good Review Says More Than a Five-Star Rating

One thing I wish more businesses understood is that not all reviews have the same value from a customer's perspective.

A five-star review that simply says "Great company!" is certainly better than no review at all. But compare that with a customer who explains what happened, what problem they had, how your company helped them, and why they were satisfied with the experience.

That second review gives a potential customer something they can relate to. For example, if you're a plumber and someone writes, "They showed up the same day, found the leak behind our kitchen cabinet, explained exactly what was wrong, and had everything repaired before they left," that tells a prospective customer much more than five stars ever could.

It gives them a little story, and stories are persuasive. The customer isn't just saying that you're a good plumber. They're describing what it was actually like to do business with you.

How Should You Ask Customers for a Google Review?

Knowing that reviews are important is one thing. Getting customers to actually leave them is another. The good news is that asking for a review doesn't have to be complicated or awkward. In fact, the best approach is usually the simplest one: ask when the customer's experience with your business is still fresh in their mind.

One of the best ways to do that is through email.

Start Collecting Customer Emails

If you have a way to collect your customers' email addresses, use it. This is especially important for businesses that deal with a lot of first-time or visiting customers. A restaurant may serve hundreds of people in a week without ever knowing who most of them are. A hotel, retail store, medical practice, home service company, or other local business can have the same problem.

Once that customer walks out the door, you may have no practical way to contact them again. An email address changes that.

You might invite customers to join your newsletter, receive helpful tips, get updates about your business, or learn about special offers. Whatever legitimate reason you use to collect the email, you're also creating a way to continue the relationship after the transaction is over. And that gives you an opportunity to ask for a review.

In fact, you don't necessarily need to wait several days before asking. Your very first email can do it. Something along these lines could work:

"Thank you for joining our weekly tips newsletter. We hope you enjoyed your experience with us, and we'd really appreciate an honest review about your experience. Don't be afraid to share the juicy details—we'd love to hear what you liked, what stood out, and anything you think we could have done better."

I like this approach because you're not telling the customer what kind of review to leave. You're simply opening the door and giving them an opportunity to talk about their experience in their own words.

And once you have permission to communicate with that customer by email, you have something much more valuable than a single opportunity to request a review. You now have an ongoing way to stay in touch with that customer, provide useful information, bring them back to your business, and build a relationship over time.

That ongoing relationship is where email marketing campaigns become particularly valuable. You can use customer reviews, helpful content, special offers, customer stories, and other relevant information to keep your business in front of people who have already chosen to hear from you.

Learn more about using reviews in email marketing campaigns and how customer feedback can strengthen newsletters, promotions, re-engagement campaigns, and other email communications.

Ask at the Right Moment

Email isn't the only way to ask. Sometimes the best opportunity is right in front of you.

If a customer has just finished telling an employee how happy they are with the service, that's a perfect time to ask. The employee can simply say, "We're glad you're happy. If you have a minute, we'd really appreciate an honest Google review."

You can also make the request part of your normal follow-up process. A company that already sends appointment confirmations, invoices, receipts, service reminders, or "How did we do?" messages has a natural opportunity to include a review request.

The important thing is to make the process easy. Don't make the customer search for your business on Google and then figure out where to leave the review. Give them a direct link.

Don't Be Afraid to Ask

There are plenty of ways to ask for a review, and some will work better for one type of business than another. The important thing is to find a method that fits naturally into the way you already communicate with your customers.

And don't assume that customers will think about leaving a review on their own. If someone had a good experience, they may be perfectly willing to help when you ask, but they're busy and have plenty of other things competing for their attention. Even if they leave your business thinking, "I really should leave them a review," there's a good chance they'll forget about it.

There's also a common belief that unhappy customers are much more likely to leave reviews than happy customers. While there is certainly a tendency for people to speak up when something goes wrong, research on who actually leaves online reviews is more complicated. Some studies have found that satisfied customers are actually more likely to leave a review, while other research has found that customers with more extreme experiences are more likely to participate in online word of mouth.

In other words, you shouldn't build your review strategy around the assumption that only unhappy customers are going to speak up. The safest approach is much simpler: ask your customers.

Don't assume the happy ones will remember to leave a review, and don't assume the unhappy ones are the only customers who will bother. Give everyone a reasonable opportunity to share their experience, make it easy, and give them the freedom to tell the truth.

For more ideas on how to ask customers for reviews without making it awkward, see our related article on how to ask for reviews that actually say something.

Recent Reviews Matter Too

Another thing to keep in mind is that your reviews are a reflection of your business today, not just your business five years ago.

If someone looks at your Google Business Profile and sees that your last review was from 2022, they may start wondering what has happened since then. Maybe you've had hundreds of happy customers during that time, but if nobody has taken the time to leave a review, a potential customer has no way of knowing that.

That's why getting reviews should be an ongoing part of your business. You don't need to obsess over getting a certain number every month. You simply want your review profile to accurately reflect the fact that you're actively serving customers today.

A steady stream of legitimate reviews can do much more for your reputation than getting a large batch of reviews and then going silent for years.

Responding to Reviews Matters

Getting the review is important, but don't forget about what happens afterward. Take the time to respond to your customers.

When someone leaves a positive review, thank them. It doesn't have to be a long response. A simple, genuine acknowledgment shows that you noticed they took the time to say something nice about your business.

Negative reviews require a little more care. No business is going to make every customer happy all the time. Even companies that provide excellent service are eventually going to have someone who is disappointed, misunderstands something, or simply has unrealistic expectations.

What matters is how you handle it.

A calm and professional response can show future customers that you take complaints seriously and are willing to address problems. Getting into an argument with a customer in the review section, on the other hand, can make a bad situation considerably worse.

Remember, you're not just responding to the person who wrote the review. You're also responding to everyone who may read it later.

Your Reviews Can Work Beyond Google

There's another reason I like detailed customer reviews: they can become useful marketing content in other places.

If someone leaves an especially helpful review, it may be appropriate to feature that testimonial on your website or share it on social media. With the customer's permission where appropriate, you can use those real experiences to show prospective customers what it's like to work with your company.

This is particularly useful because your customers can often describe your value better than you can.

You might say, "We provide excellent customer service."

A customer might say, "They answered the phone when three other companies didn't, showed up that afternoon, explained what was wrong, and didn't try to sell me something I didn't need."

Which one do you think a potential customer is going to believe?

That's the advantage of customer-generated testimonials. They're not coming from you. They're coming from someone who actually experienced your service.

Don't Think of Reviews as Just an SEO Tactic

It's easy to get caught up in the idea that reviews are simply another thing you need to do to improve your local SEO.

I think that's selling them short.

Yes, reviews can contribute to your local search visibility. But their real value goes beyond rankings.

Your reviews are part of your reputation. They tell potential customers whether other people have trusted your business, what those customers experienced, and whether they were happy with the results. They can help answer the question that is really going through someone's mind when they find your business online:

"Can I trust this company?"

That's a much bigger question than whether Google gives your business another little boost in the search results.

You can spend a lot of time trying to get your business found on Google. You can optimize your website, work on your Google Business Profile, build citations, create content, and invest in local SEO.

But once someone finds you, you still have to give them a reason to choose you.

Your reviews can help do exactly that.

So don't look at Google reviews as something you need to collect simply because everyone says you need them for SEO. Look at them as an ongoing record of the experience your customers are having with your business.

If you're doing a good job, give your customers an easy way to tell people about it.

Because when a potential customer is deciding between you and the business down the street, sometimes the difference between getting the phone call and getting overlooked comes down to what your customers are saying about you.