What Google itself says about local ranking (relevance, distance, prominence) and where reviews fit. No folklore, just what is public.
There is a lot of confident advice online about exactly how reviews affect your position on Google Maps. Most of it is guesswork. Google does not publish its ranking formula, and anyone claiming to know the precise weight of a review is selling something. What Google does publish is short, clear and more useful than the folklore. This post sticks to that.
What Google says about local ranking
Google's help page on improving your local ranking says local results are based mainly on three things.
- Relevance: how well your Business Profile matches what someone is searching for.
- Distance: how far each result is from the location used in the search, or from the searcher if no location is named.
- Prominence: how well known the business is.
Google says these are combined to find the best match for a search, which is why a business further away can outrank a closer one if Google thinks it is a better match.
Where reviews come in
Google places reviews under prominence. Its help page says that prominence is based on information Google has about a business from across the web, and that Google review count and review score factor into local search ranking. It adds that more reviews and positive ratings can improve a business's local ranking.
That is about as far as Google goes, and it is worth reading carefully. Reviews are part of one of three factors. They are not the whole picture, and they cannot overcome distance or relevance on their own.
What Google recommends doing about reviews
The same help page gives owners a short list of recommendations. Two are directly about reviews: manage and respond to reviews, and encourage customers to leave positive feedback. Google describes replying to reviews as showing that you value your customers and their feedback. It also asks that reviews be genuine; its policies prohibit incentives and selectively asking only happy customers.
The other two factors, briefly
Relevance is the part you can fix this afternoon
Relevance comes mostly from your Business Profile. Choose the most accurate primary category, add secondary categories that genuinely apply, list your services, write an accurate description, and keep your hours correct. Google says complete and accurate information makes your business more likely to match relevant searches. This is often the fastest improvement available to a small business.
Distance is fixed
You cannot change where you are or where your customer is searching from. Be accurate about your address or service area, and accept that you will rank better close to home than far away.
How reviews affect more than ranking
Even setting ranking aside, reviews do a second job that is easier to see. When a customer searches and sees three businesses on the map, they compare star ratings and review counts before they read anything else. Ranking gets you into that shortlist. Reviews decide whether you get the call. A business that ranks one place lower but has more recent, well-answered reviews can still win the customer.
That is why it is worth thinking of reviews as doing two things at once: feeding prominence, which Google says matters, and persuading the person who is looking at your profile right now.
What this means in practice
- 1Get your Business Profile complete and accurate first, since relevance is the cheapest win.
- 2Ask every customer for an honest review, steadily, rather than in bursts.
- 3Reply to reviews, positive and negative, because Google recommends it and because readers notice.
- 4Keep earning prominence elsewhere too: being listed accurately on other sites, local mentions, and a website that matches your profile.
- 5Do not chase shortcuts. Incentivised, fake or gated reviews can be removed, and the profile you build on them is not stable.
Myths worth ignoring
- "You need exactly X reviews to rank." Google publishes no such number, and the right number depends on your category and competition.
- "Only five star reviews help." Google says review count and score matter. A believable mix of ratings with good replies reads better to customers than a suspicious wall of perfect scores.
- "Put keywords in your replies to rank." Google says nothing to support this, and stuffed replies read badly to the customers who see them.
- "Buying reviews is a quick fix." It breaks Google's rules, and removed reviews take your gains with them.
Thanks, Marcus. Glad the new water heater is doing its job, and thanks for mentioning how tidy the crew left the garage. We will pass that on.
Thank you for choosing us as your water heater installation company in Springfield! We are the best water heater installers in Springfield.
The first is what customers want to read. The second is what keyword advice produces, and it tells the reader nothing.
The honest summary
Google says reviews matter for local ranking, as part of prominence. It says to encourage reviews and respond to them. Beyond that, the most reliable approach is the boring one: a complete profile, a steady stream of genuine reviews, and a reply to every one.
Repperly handles the steady part, asking every customer for a review and drafting replies in your voice, so the habit that Google recommends keeps happening on busy weeks.