You might be thinking: “Why respond? They’re happy customers!”

Think again…

Recent research from BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey shows that:

• 88% of consumers are “likely” to use a business that responds to all reviews, positive and negative.
• 59% of consumers expect to see a response to their review within two days of the review being left.

So… how can you respond to all reviews, leaving happy customers satisfied and addressing the concerns of less-than-happy ones, all within the time period they prefer, and still have time to crack on with the work that gets you these customers in the first place?

Simple. Become a superhero.

Our new Review Reply Templates feature in Monitor Reviews (with added AI!) will revolutionize how you respond to Google reviews and Facebook recommendations with BrightLocal and turn you into a Review Response Superhero. By setting your own response templates to common responses, you’ll leave every satisfied customer even more satisfied when you respond.

How does it work?

Create a Template

Review Reply Templates couldn’t be easier to get started with. Just create a template that fits your tone of voice and select which review ratings you want to apply it to. Agency customers can even link templates to clients, allowing them to manage all review responses in one place.

Select Your Template

Then, when you’re sipping your morning coffee and reviewing the plaudits and praise (and the rest), just select the template that works best for the review, adjust if needed, and hit ‘Use’.

What’s this about AI?

Want to make your responses even more tailored and less “templatey”? With the magic of our ‘Generate AI Response’ button, a response is created that speaks specifically to what the customer review mentions, and you barely have to lift a finger.

Didn’t love the first iteration? Easy, just click ‘Generate AI Response’ again. You can generate up to three responses per review.

Where do I start?

Reputation Manager users and ‘Grow’ plan customers can get started right away! Just head into BrightLocal and get ready to work some review response magic. Need a helping hand? Head over to our dedicated Help Center guide on this awesome new feature. 

The online reviews business is hugely competitive. Reputation, as they say, is everything. Even on the research front, we increasingly see more consumer review reports enter the market. 

The Local Consumer Review Survey delves into all of the crucial questions. How are today’s consumers searching for and interacting with business reviews? Which review elements are most important to consumers, and how do online reviews measure up against personal recommendations?

If you’ve been an avid follower of our consumer review research, you’ll recognize there are some questions we ask most years. This allows us to collect that juicy year-on-year trend data that shows how things may—or may not—be changing.

But we also want to keep things fresh. The review landscape continues evolving, so we always aim to dig into the latest developments and bring brand-new insights to support your reputation management endeavors, be you a big brand, small brand, marketing consultant, or business owner.

Here are just some of the key findings you can expect from the Local Consumer Review Survey 2024.

Key Themes and Findings

The chart above shows that the percentage of consumers ‘always’ or ‘regularly’ reading online reviews has held fast over the last three years (75% in 2024 against 76% in 2023). 

Meanwhile, just 3% of consumers say they ‘never’ read online reviews, reflecting how ingrained reviews are in most consumers’ business research.

Where are consumers reading online reviews?

The review landscape has expanded in recent years, with many brands and apps incorporating review functionalities to support purchase decisions.

In terms of ‘official’ review platforms, several long-standing sites are prominent in the USA (and beyond).

• Google remains the most-used website for reading online reviews, although the percentage of consumers using it for this has dropped from 87% in 2023 to 81% in 2024.
• Consumer use of Apple Maps and Trustpilot has increased by 3% since 2022, from 13% to 16% and 7% to 10%, respectively.

It won’t surprise many that Google remains at the top of the list for consumer review sites. The search giant is still, by far, the biggest review platform today.

What’s more interesting is where we see a downward trend for almost all listed websites and directories, except for Google, Apple Maps, and Trustpilot. 

Despite remaining in the top three most-used platforms, Facebook and Yelp have seen decreases in percentage points over the years—3% for Facebook since 2022 and 9% for Yelp. The gap between the two has also become much closer in 2024, with consumer use of Facebook for online reviews overtaking Yelp for the first since time 2020.

Back then, we noted that the dip in consumers using Yelp may have been caused by the impact covid-19 had on physical businesses like restaurants, hotels, and entertainment. It’s not entirely clear why the percentage of consumers using Yelp in 2024 is lower, however. 

The use of Tripadvisor and Better Business Bureau (BBB) has dropped significantly since 2022. Both platforms are typically known and used for industry-specific reviews: Tripadvisor for hospitality and entertainment business reviews and Better Business Bureau for professional trades and service-area businesses (SABs).

As the most widely-used review platform, it could be that Google continues to eat the market share of other review platforms as it becomes more helpful to users. For example, Google and its business profile management product, Google Business Profile (GBP), introduced notable features over the last year that enable businesses in particular niches to optimize their listings. Price comparisons, booking availability, and business amenities are now prominent features of hotel business profiles, and SABs can set service areas and make specific services prominent on their profiles. 

Finally, Apple Maps and Trustpilot are the two platforms that beat the downward trend and show increasing consumer use instead. In early 2023, Apple announced Apple Business Connect, a late-coming rival to GBP. As we reported at the time, businesses have been slow to claim their business profiles, and a quick poll found that only 12% of consumers used Apple Maps over Google Maps.

New features and an improved Apple Maps interface, including more appealing iconography to distinguish business types, could explain why we are seeing an increasing trend in consumers using this app.

Meanwhile, while Trustpilot is an open review platform, businesses often invite verified customers to review their customer service experiences. These reviews are clearly labeled as ‘Invited’ or ‘Verified’. The increase in consumers using Trustpilot to read reviews could be related to a desire to read verified—or perhaps, to them, more trustworthy—reviews.

How many sites do consumers check reviews on?

Despite noting a downward trend in the use of some review platforms, we wanted to see how many sources consumers used to read reviews on average.

• 77% of consumers use at least two review platforms in their business research.
• 41% of consumers use three or more review platforms.

Less than a quarter of consumers only use one review site before choosing a local business. This finding is particularly significant as it reinforces the need to ensure your brand is represented consistently across multiple review platforms.

When asking consumers for business reviews, providing them with several options is a good idea. As we know from the responses to the previous question, consumers have preferences and may have accounts with particular platforms. Giving them options and making the process as simple as possible can encourage them to leave reviews. 

Where else do consumers source business reviews?

When it comes to reviews and recommendations, we have to acknowledge the importance of alternative sources, including the growth of social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok for “unstructured” consumer reviews (i.e. reviews that don’t follow a dedicated review structure or scoring system). 

2023 was a particularly interesting year for developments in these areas, with the introduction of Threads, the rebranding of Twitter to X, and the boom of generative AI. This is the first year we included ‘Threads’ and ‘ChatGPT/generative AI’ as responses.

• Local news as an alternative review source has increased by 8% since 2023.
• In 2024, consumers are using Instagram and TikTok for business reviews more, with an increase of 2% and 3%, respectively.

Apart from YouTube, all of the sources we listed in 2023 have seen increases. Most notable is local news—an interesting source, as it could cover both digital and more traditional forms of media, including print, radio, and TV. 

Local news and community initiatives are classic local marketing tactics that can support your brand’s visibility in local areas but can also be effective for link-building.

The increase in consumers using various social channels highlights the importance of maintaining your brand’s social presence. Being active and aware of these review alternatives will ensure you can find and respond to reviews and comments, engage with users, and maybe even win new audiences.

Finally, almost 10% of consumers said they’re using ChatGPT or similar generative AI tools as an alternative source of review information. Considering the technology only burst into the mainstream in early 2023, and research in March 2023 found that 73% of consumers had not used generative AI, this is significant.

How Consumers Interact with Review Platform Functionalities

We’ve noted some of the improvements that Google has made to business review platforms to support visibility and show more useful information to prospective customers. Now, we will look at some of the features that make finding the right review content easier.

For several years now, users have been able to use a search functionality within Google reviews to look for specific keywords and terms. More recently, it has improved filtering with ‘mentioned’ keywords, and now initially prioritizes the order of reviews shown on the default filter based on what it deems ‘most relevant.’

We provided consumers with an image of reference (below) and labeled eight prominent review features, asking consumers how useful they found each one when searching for business reviews on Google.

• 96% of consumers said that the ’search reviews’ function is useful to them in some way.
• ‘Sort by newest’ is deemed the most useful review function, with 47% of consumers finding it ‘highly useful.’
  

Clearly, all of the functions shown to consumers are useful in some way. The largest percentage of consumers who do not find a feature useful at all is 15% for a ‘highlighted’ review. From this, we can assume that consumers prefer to judge the relevance of the business’ reviews for themselves, rather than being guided by Google.

47% of consumers rated the ‘sort by newest’ function as ‘highly useful,’ which tells us that almost half of consumers consider review recency as important when deciding which business to use.

Although this question is specific to Google review functions, it’s important to note that most prominent review platforms use similar features to support the user experience. The ‘sort by’ functionality is a standard tool across most digital experiences, while keyword filters and search functionalities are present on platforms such as Yelp and Tripadvisor.

So, while we can only discuss the findings above concerning Google business reviews, it’s useful to consider how you can make review functionalities work for you on different platforms.

Functionalities like ‘sort by newest’ and ‘sort by highest rating’ incentivize businesses to actively put more effort into their review profiles, achieving a regular stream of reviews if they know that’s how people filter.

It also reinforces the importance of delivering excellent, memorable customer experiences. If there are things you want your brand to be known for, consider ways you could encourage customers to mention them in their reviews. Dog-friendly places or restaurant menus with particularly renowned items are just two examples users might be looking for.

The Most Important Review Factors

What are consumers looking for when they’re browsing business reviews? Are they looking for a high number of ‘good’ star ratings, or are there other factors that would reassure them before using a business?

• 69% of consumers would feel positive about using a business if its written reviews describe positive experiences (static against 2023, which was down from 75% in 2022).
• In 2024, 8% more consumers feel positive about a business if its reviews are written by named users than in 2023 (48% in 2024 vs. 40% in 2023).

Overall, there is a downward trend in review factors helping consumers feel positive about using a business. This could suggest that people are less willing to take things at face value.

There has been an increase in the percentage of consumers who said that reviews written by named users—as opposed to anonymous accounts—would make them feel positive about using a business. This points to a general sense of wariness around user-generated content and perhaps shows more digital ‘savviness.’

What star ratings do consumers expect to see?

• 71% of consumers would not consider using a business with an average rating below three stars, 16% lower than in 2023.
• 6% fewer consumers would use a business with a 3.5 star rating in 2024 than in 2023.

At a glance, there is an upward trend in consumers willing to use businesses with ‘low’ (lower than 3.0 stars) star ratings, and a downward trend where consumers expect ‘high’ (higher than 3.0 stars) star ratings as the minimum. 

However, if we examine this further, the majority of consumers still expect a business to have a star rating between 4.0 and 5.0. This figure has remained static since 2022.

The anomaly here is businesses with star ratings of 3.5, where we can see a percentage downshift of 6% since 2022. Could this suggest that consumers are now mistrustful of ratings that sit in the middle? 

If a business location has fewer reviews, its average star rating is likely to be skewed by an extremely low or high rating. An increasing willingness to give businesses with low ratings a chance suggests that consumers look beyond face value or are paying attention to review details to reach their conclusions.

There is no denying, however, that businesses should aim for a minimum average star rating of 4.0.

Does the number of reviews matter?

So, how many reviews does a business need to have for consumers to trust the average star rating?

• Most consumers expect a business to have between 20-99 reviews (59%), which has not changed since 2023.
• 12% of consumers said that the number of reviews does not impact the trust in their star rating, down 2% since 2023.

Interestingly, since 2023 there has been a very slight increase in consumers choosing the lower threshold of 0-19 reviews and a similarly slight decrease in consumers saying the number of reviews does not impact their perception.

This hints, once again, that consumers will look beyond ‘at-a-glance’ numbers and ratings to make their own minds up. They don’t necessarily believe in the implied worth of star ratings or how many reviews a business has without reading into the details to verify their impressions.

Almost two-thirds of consumers (59%) said that a business should have between 20-99 reviews in order for them to be able to trust the average star rating. So, while our findings suggest that consumers might be more willing to give businesses a chance, the majority expect between 20-99.

Review Recency

• 27% of consumers expect to see business reviews as fresh as two weeks, up from 25% in 2023, which was up from 22% in 2022.

Expectations of recent reviews is on the up, with 27% of consumers saying that reviews left within the past two weeks impact their decisions, compared to 22% in 2022. Reviews left within the past six months to a year are less likely to impact their choices.

In most cases, it makes sense that this is the expectation. If consumers read business reviews, they want an accurate representation of the most recent experiences with that brand. This will be especially important for businesses within the hospitality industry, including food and drink brands or hotels.

This finding highlights the importance of maintaining a regular stream of incoming customer reviews. A sporadic approach to review requests and followups won’t do, but a more robust reputation strategy or process can help.

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Responding to Consumer Reviews 

We’ve been discussing review responses for several years, and our findings consistently showed that consumers expect businesses to respond to their reviews. 2024 is no different.

• Consumers are 41% more likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews than a business that doesn’t respond to any.

The chart above clearly indicates that review responses matter to customers. 88% of consumers would use a business that responds to both positive and negative reviews, compared to just 47% that said they would consider using a business that doesn’t respond to any reviews.

Some consumers may see a business only responding to bad reviews as an attempt to save brand reputation without acknowledging the opinions of others. Similarly, consumers may see a business only responding to good reviews as just amplifying good feedback in order to gloss over the negative.

Either approach can appear inauthentic, and consumers today are clearly pretty savvy when detecting this.

As we know that review responses are an expectation in consumers’ minds, we wanted to find out if it was important when business owners respond to reviews. 

• 93% of consumers would expect a business to respond to their reviews.
• 34% of consumers expect a response to their reviews within two to three days of posting.

A mighty 93% of consumers expect businesses to respond to their reviews! So, if this has not been a part of your reputation management strategy so far, take this as a call to action.

Meanwhile, 87% of consumers said they expect review responses within two weeks, and only 4% feel it doesn’t matter when they receive one. This clearly shows how important timeliness is.

The Power of Generative AI in Reputation Management

Back to the subject of AI… in this year’s survey, we wanted to test something a little different.

We presented consumers with a business review sourced via Google. Then, we showed them two review responses and asked them to choose which response they would prefer to receive.

What the consumers didn’t know about these options is that one (Response 1) was the human response sourced from a genuine business owner on Google, and the other (Response 2) was a review response that we generated using ChatGPT.

58% of consumers unknowingly chose the AI-generated review response as their preferred response! Of course, there are many reasons why someone might prefer the content and sentiment of one written response over another.

When we considered the reasons behind their preferred response, it was interesting to note the sense of over-familiarity conveyed in response 1, compared to the more measured sentiment in response 2. Would you agree?

We can’t say what prompted this finding, but it highlights an interesting use case for marketers who may struggle with crafting unique review responses at scale.

Trust in Business Reviews

One of the most prominent themes that reports such as this surface is the importance of consumer trust in brands. While brands cannot actively control the content of the reviews published by other consumers online, we know there are many ways to manage the reputation process.

So, where do reviews sit in consumers’ minds compared to other types of recommendations?

Reviews vs. Recommendations from Other Sources

• 50% of consumers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family.
• This is the first year that ‘I trust consumer reviews as much as recommendations from influencers with my local community’ was included as a response to this question.

The percentage of consumers who said they trust reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends has increased by 4% since 2023. It’s a significant finding, showing that half of consumers feel online reviews carry as much sway as personal recommendations.

For this year’s report, we wanted to distinguish between social media influencers and local influencers—essentially, macro vs. micro-influencers. We wanted to learn: is there a significant difference between well-known social media influencers endorsing a brand and influencers within the local community?

We found that the percentage of consumers who said they trust reviews as much as social media influencers has remained at 35% since 2023. 24% of consumers said they trust consumer reviews as much as local influencer recommendations. This could be lower than social media influencers as we tend to follow local personalities for specific recommendations, like restaurants and bars. If we were to examine the trust in macro and micro-influencers more closely, to look at businesses in different industries, the reasons might be much clearer.

We can see a 4% increase in consumers who said they trust consumer reviews as much as professionally written articles since 2023. This suggests that they verify online reviews against the opinions from other sources they deem trustworthy. This could also show a sense of wariness in terms of trusting influencer-endorsed content.

The Impact of Local Reviews on Big-brand Reputation

Another new question we had was how local branch reviews of big brands or franchises impact consumers’ choices, and whether this affects overall brand perception.

For example, if your nearest McDonald’s branch has a Google star rating of 2.0, would you still use that store? And how would that affect your overall perception of the McDonald’s brand?

• 89% of consumers said that the reviews of local branches would impact their decision to use the store in some way.
• 91% of consumers feel that local reviews of chains and franchises impact their overall perception of the brand in some way.

These findings are important because they show that marketers in big brands can’t afford to rest on their laurels in the hope that brand equity will win out. For more than a quarter of consumers, both of these things are true:

• The local consumer reviews of chains or franchises would impact their decision to use it ‘a great deal’.
• The local consumer reviews of chains or franchises would impact their overall perception of the brand ‘a great deal’.

The power of local reputation to impact brand perception should not be underestimated, particularly if we consider the previous findings on how consumers trust personal recommendations from friends and family or those of online influencers.

Fake Reviews and Suspicious Activity

Those in the reputation and local marketing game will know the perils of fake reviews. Even those who aren’t will likely have seen the reams of suspiciously gushing product reviews on e-commerce sites such as Amazon—generally known as the biggest culprit for fake reviews. 

As we’ve touched on in previous reports, and in our many resources on fake reviews, it’s a real industry problem. Most review and e-commerce sites take the issue seriously as a matter of policy, and Google in particular regularly takes strict action to prevent the practice.

What kind of trends are we seeing fake reviews this year?

Consumers are confident they’ve seen fake reviews across most platforms we asked about. Just 19% said they hadn’t seen any on the sites we provided, which remains static compared to 2023.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon remains the top culprit for fake reviews. However, it’s interesting to note that, aside from Tripadvisor, Apple Maps, and BBB, the percentage of consumers who are confident they’ve spotted reviews on the other review giants has decreased.

This could result from the efforts that platforms have put in to combat the issue in recent years, suggesting that there are genuinely fewer obviously fake reviews on these websites. According to Google, it removed over 170 million policy-violating reviews in 2023, 45% more than in 2022.

Despite a lower percentage of consumers saying they’ve used BBB to read reviews in 2024, there has been an increase in the percentage of consumers who are confident they have seen fake reviews there (9% in 2024 vs. 5% in 2022). The platform itself has recently spoken out on the issue of fake and incentivized reviews, suggesting the practice is becoming notably widespread on different platforms.

Can consumers tell if a review is fake?

A fake review could be left for various reasons. Some businesses pay fake review sellers for positive reviews of their businesses and negative reviews of their competitors, for example.

But fake reviews may also be written by disgruntled customers, employees, or even competitors! In some cases, people might write fake reviews to try to support friends or family, particularly if their business is struggling against negative feedback.

With all these reasons in mind, the content and sentiment of such reviews can vary wildly. There may be a barrage of star ratings with no written context or review content that feels too unbelievably positive or negative, for example. So, which of these would make consumers suspicious that a review is fake? 

This year, we introduced the response ‘the review feels like it was written by AI’. Surprisingly, this answer came out top! 40% of consumers said they’d suspect a review was fake if they felt like AI had written it.

It’s an interesting point because, as we know, there are plenty of legitimate use cases for generative AI in content writing. A consumer may feel unable to articulate what they want to say well enough and use generative AI tools for this. It’s also worth considering how, while standalone AI tools such as ChatGPT are available for anyone to use, generative AI is now being incorporated into other software and plugins. The Google Suite and Grammarly are just two everyday examples where generative AI can help predict and improve your writing, making suggestions based on tone and sentiment.

The fact that consumers are collating AI with ‘fakeness’ suggests that there is a misunderstanding in terms of what the technology really is and does. Coupled with AI headlines entering the mainstream press, it’s easy to see how people might reach these conclusions.

However, we also know from our review response test earlier in this survey that maybe consumers prefer the content generative AI can produce. Sure, they didn’t know that’s what they preferred, but it presents an interesting contrast in how consumers act vs. how consumers think.

The remaining results highlight some big contrasts between 2023 and 2024. In 2023, consumers seemed confident that reviews with just ratings and no words would make them suspicious that reviews were fake (47%). This has decreased by 19% in 2024. 

They also seem less certain that seeing business owners suggesting a review is fake would make them suspicious of fakeness (19% vs 30% in 2023). Further, they’re now less suspicious of reviews from users without profile photos (17% vs 27% in 2023).

As with the previous question on specific platforms, these responses could result from websites tackling fake review issues or consumers simply noticing fewer fake reviews while browsing. Alternatively, it could point to a greater sense of trust in online reviews.

How Consumers Write Reviews

So, we know how often consumers read reviews to support their business research and the elements they feel are most important to build trust. But how many consumers are leaving reviews themselves? Are they more likely to leave reviews for all experiences, positive or negative, or do they favor a particular type of review?

What types of reviews are consumers leaving?

While the numbers are roughly the same as last year, slightly more consumers have written reviews in the past year (73% vs 72% in 2023). The sentiment of these reviews has changed, though. 

The chart above highlights a positive shift in the percentage of consumers leaving positive reviews (38% in 2024 vs. 34% in 2022) and negative reviews (10% in 2024 vs. 7% in 2022). The percentage of consumers leaving both types of reviews has decreased from 33% in 2022 to 25% in 2024.

This trend suggests a further waning of the ‘gray area’ between extreme personalities and opinions, as we’ve seen in political discourse over the years (though it would be too far a leap to suggest they’re directly related).

Fewer people are being what you might call ‘balanced’ and leaving reviews for various experiences, and more are getting increasingly set in their ways. The good news is that, right now, there are more consumers only writing positive reviews than negative.

• The percentage of consumers that ‘always’ left a review when prompted has increased from 12% in 2023 to 19% in 2024.

69% of consumers can recall leaving a business review after being prompted by the brand within the last year, vs. 60% in 2023. Coupled with this, only 12% of consumers said they were prompted but did not write a review, compared to 19% in 2023. So, we can infer that more consumers positively respond to review requests in 2024, even if they don’t always write them.

What does this mean for your brand? Well, you may not always be successful, but it is absolutely worthwhile to ask customers for reviews. Nearly seven in every ten consumers will likely write a business review based on the above findings. So, if you aren’t currently asking, you are very likely missing out!

As for how to ask them, and even when, that’s up next.

Asking Consumers For Business Reviews

Knowing how and when to ask a customer to leave a brand review is tricky. Ask too soon, and they may not have had time to reflect on their experience; ask too late, and they may have forgotten about it entirely.

Plus, let’s face it, we all get a lot of review requests these days, don’t we? Multiple prompts in a short window can be irritating, and email inboxes are overflowing with review prompts, promotions, and spam.

So, how do consumers want to be asked for reviews?

Methods of Requesting Reviews from Customers

• The top three methods for asking for reviews are: email (32%), in-person (28%), and via social media (27%).
• There has been a 3% increase in consumers choosing ‘none of the above’ when asked about review prompt methods.

Despite email being a busy place, 32% of consumers still say they are more likely to respond to review requests this way. The top three answers from 2023 are the same in 2024 (email, in-person, and social media), although you’ll notice there is a downward trend across all three.

This finding, along with the 3% increase in consumers choosing ‘none of the above’ for review prompts, could point to a sense of review request fatigue. We’re all so used to being prompted to review transactions and experiences that it can run the risk of feeling meaningless.

Brands need to make their requests count by using the right formats, making it simple (as we discussed earlier with the choice of review platforms), making their request stand out from the others, and timing it right.

But when is “right”?

The Window of Opportunity for Review Prompts

We asked consumers when they think brands should contact them with a review prompt, and provided seven different industries where this could differ.

We’ve grouped hospitality, entertainment, and wellbeing together in one chart, as the industries share similarities in how their services focus on providing customers with experiences. Healthcare, professional trades/SABs, and real estate have been grouped in another.

• 24% of consumers expect to be asked to leave a review for food and drink brands on the same day as their experience.
• 48% of consumers said food and drink brands should ask for a review within two to three days of the experience.

‘Food and drink’ stands out as the industry where consumers expect the fastest turnaround for review prompts. Almost a quarter of consumers want these businesses to reach out on the very same day, although the majority would prefer between one and three days.

For accommodation, entertainment, and beauty and wellbeing, we see larger proportions of consumers who think businesses should ask any time within a week.

Our earlier discussion on review recency comes into play here. If you’re planning on visiting somewhere to eat, you’d expect to read about the most recent customer experiences with food and drink brands. It makes sense that consumers would expect these types of businesses to follow up quickly.

The same might be true for recent experiences in the accommodation, entertainment, or beauty industries. However, consumers might require a slightly longer window to reflect on their experiences with these business types—for example, how well a particular beauty or cosmetic treatment lasts.

• Healthcare review prompts should be sent within three days to a week (40%).
• 11% of consumers would not want to be prompted to leave a review for a real estate experience at all.

For healthcare, professional trades, and real estate, consumers would expect slightly longer windows before brands reach out to ask for a review, although within three days to a week is the sweet spot. 

40% of consumers said they would prefer healthcare brands to ask within three days to a week. Given the nature of some healthcare services and procedures, it feels accurate that consumers wouldn’t want to receive prompts too soon after an experience.

The key takeaway from these request findings is that brands need to be smart with their prompts, get the timing right, and avoid bombarding their customers at all costs. Remember, this is still a part of the transaction or experience, so annoying customers with endless review request emails could achieve an undesirable result.

Incentivizing Customers to Write Reviews

Now, while we’ve included incentives within the following section of the report, it is crucial to note that BrightLocal does not endorse the incentivization of reviews in any way.

We can appreciate that there is a lot of conflicting information out there and it’s easy to go down this route to attract more customers to write business reviews. What’s the harm of rewarding loyalty with a simple discount, right? Wrong, unfortunately.

For brands and businesses that aren’t in the know—of which there are many, so if this is you, don’t panic!—it’s important to note that most review platforms prohibit review incentivization. The penalties for incentivizing or buying reviews can vary, including the disabling or removal of your review profiles, or having your profile labeled as one that has unlawfully incentivized reviews.

Last year, we found that review incentivization is still sadly alive and well. Given the ongoing issues around the prevalence of fake reviews, we wanted to see if businesses were still going down the incentivization route in 2024. The results are… quite something.

Not only is the practice of review incentivization up across the board but the percentage increases in consumers recalling being offered these incentives is significant.

Increases in Review Incentivization: 2023 vs. 2024

It could be that such drastic increases in discounts or free gifts come from a lack of understanding of incentivization rules. As discussed, many businesses don’t know that these methods are prohibited on many platforms, and may have viewed discounts or free gifts as ‘harmless’ ways to reward loyalty.

The fact is that incentivization encourages consumers to leave reviews that they might not have organically, and influences the content of the review—typically in the brands’ favor. Even if they are from verified customers, the reviews cannot be deemed authentic and trustworthy, therefore discrediting the entire system.

Summary

While much of what was important to consumers in 2022 and 2023 holds today, some themes stand out in 2024.

Firstly, it’s more apparent than ever that consumers are checking multiple sources for business reviews and recommendations, including those outside of traditional review platforms. It’s a pressing reminder that reputation management should be viewed as a strategy instead of a task; not something that can be picked up when there’s time. Reputation encompasses both digital and offline channels. Realistically, it should be a shared responsibility and actively factored into areas like social media and community management, email marketing, content strategy, and more.

Next, brand marketers have to be more strategic with their review requests. Automation is a wonderful thing that can speed up tasks for us marketers. But without the human considerations of timeliness and providing customers with the choice of where and how they review, it remains ineffective—or worse, frustrating for consumers. 

Several findings hint at a sense of consumer apathy towards the expectation for them to provide reviews after almost every experience with a business. Brands must remain conscious and respectful of this when asking for customer favors. It’s a tricky balance, knowing that review recency is a particularly important review factor.

Ultimately, with all things customer experience, the utmost focus should always come down to exactly that: delivering exceptional, memorable experiences. Give consumers a reason to want to write your brand a review actively; make sure they have things to talk about that others will find useful; be present across your reputation platforms (that includes the alternative channels, like social media), and always keep in mind how local brand experiences contribute to overall brand perception.

Methodology

The Local Consumer Review Survey 2024 was conducted using a representative panel of 1,141 US consumers via SurveyMonkey. 

Publications and individuals are welcome to use the research findings, charts, and data, provided that BrightLocal is cited as the author and the page URL (https://brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey) is linked to.

Well, the time is upon us, and I imagine there’s a significant number of people that haven’t acted. Many people may even be wondering “what’s the big deal?”—but there are a lot of things to consider that may be attached to your Gmail account beyond emails.

And for brands, it could mean bad news for your Google Reviews.

So, consider this a good time to do a bit of account housekeeping! Check all of your logins and either update the email address if you’re not using Gmail, or log in to your Google account to ensure it’s active.

What does this mean for my business reviews?

Users who leave business reviews on Google must have an active account, so it could be the case that brands will see a drop in the total number of reviews their profile has if they are removed.

However, it hasn’t been confirmed if Google will remove the reviews or simply highlight the review poster as inactive/anonymous. According to Reputation America, reviews from deleted accounts do remain visible on business profiles but are no longer linked to personal information.

We asked Ben Fisher, Co-founder of Steady Demand and Google Business Profile Diamond Product Expert, about his experience with deleted Google accounts:

“In short, if the account is deleted and the GBP is live, the GBP will probably keep the reviews. The user name could change to ‘A Google User’, I have seen that before.”

– Ben Fisher, Steady Demand

It makes sense, given the importance of various review factors for building trust with businesses—and Google will want to maintain this integrity. As we know from the Local Consumer Review Survey, consumers are interested in more than just the top-level star rating for a business, looking at the experiences customers are describing.

What does this mean for Google Business Profiles?

To claim and manage your Google Business Profile (GBP) listing, you’ll need a Google account. If you’ve had various people associated with your GBP over the years, it’s a good idea to review the owners associated with the Profile and ensure the users with account access are up to date.

You can do this by heading to your GBP dashboard, clicking the three dots next to the profile strength indicator, and selecting ‘Business Profile settings’.

Although it has not been confirmed what would happen to a GBP if its sole user was deleted, we can assume the profile would revert to an unclaimed business listing.

A GBP will still remain visible if it is not managed, so it doesn’t seem likely that Google would remove it, but you may need to go through the claiming and verification process again.

Ben’s thoughts pretty much echo this:

“I would think that if that account is the only account associated with a GBP, then the chances of a soft suspension are highly likely.”

– Ben Fisher, Steady Demand

A soft suspension on a Google Business Profile generally means that the listing becomes unverified and you lose control of it. So, if this is the case, you’ll need to act fast to re-verify your GBP and ensure you’re in control of your business information.

How to Verify a Google Business Profile

Use this guide as a refresher if you need to verify your GBP.

Read more

What’s exempt and how do I know if my Google account is inactive?

Well, if you’re an Android or Google device user, there’s a good chance you won’t have to worry. If your system is logged into Google and connected to apps like Calendar, Chrome, Photos and Play Store, your use of any of these will count as activity. Likewise, if your YouTube account has videos posted to it, this is also safe.

According to Forbes, exemptions also include Google accounts that are connected to educational establishments and those that are business accounts.

What should I do?

If your personal Google account has been inactive for two years or more, but you have personal files, photos, and memories stored there that you don’t want to lose, you’ll want to consider logging in before it’s too late.

It’s not clear whether the mass deletion has commenced, but Google initiatives tend to take several weeks to fully roll out.

For GBP owners and managers, the chances of your GBP being associated with an inactive Google account seem quite unlikely, but take the time to review who has access to the account and update the details if necessary.

How to Access Google Business Profile Support and Get Help

Where to go for help and support for your Google Business Profile.

Read more

And as for reviews, there isn’t much you can do to prevent these changes. For now, we’ll just have to wait for the effects of the great Google account purge.

Remember, it’s always good to keep your eyes on forums like X (formerly Twitter), the Local Pack, and Local Search Forum to see if any big changes or updates have been spotted, and how people are responding to them.

Business text messaging is here to stay, and businesses that adopt it now will have an early advantage over competitors late to the party. With that in mind, let’s explore the benefits and considerations of business texting.

What the Numbers Say

A recent survey showed an eye-popping 89% of consumers want to initiate and reply to two-way conversations with brands via messaging channels and apps. 76% of consumers currently receive text messages from at least one business they work with.

Leadferno’s survey of 2,000 consumers surfaced that SMS is the most popular communication channel — topping calls, emails, and other messaging channels.

The adoption numbers and trends show that it’s time to leverage text messaging to grow your local business and for your agency to recommend it to clients.

7 Ways Your Local Business Can Benefit From Text Messaging

The benefits of communicating with your prospects and customers using SMS are many, but let’s focus on the seven that can have the most impact on businesses. The great news is that it’s not just your customers that benefit, it’s your team and company too.

1. Real-time Communication

Text messaging allows businesses to communicate with their customers and team members in real-time, enabling quick response times and faster decision-making. Compared to email, SMS replies, on average, are 60 times faster. Just 90 seconds for texts and 90 minutes for emails.

Text messages also boast an open rate of 98% so leveraging this real-time communication channel is important. It’s always with customers on their phones, and in the app they use most.

2. Lead Capture With Web-to-text

You’re already spending time and money on driving traffic to your website with SEO, local SEO, social media, paid ads, and traditional marketing. You want to maximize conversions of that traffic to leads and a web-to-text widget can help you. 

A web-to-text widget allows your visitors to immediately start texting with your business. Connecting via SMS might be the lowest barrier to entry for prospects to ask questions and start a conversation.

Web-to-text offers advantages over live chat for many businesses because it’s familiar to your customer, personalized, fast, and easy to manage. They’re not stuck in a chat window on a web page where they started the conversation, and they aren’t waiting for an agent to help them. 

It’s an easy-to-manage asynchronous conversation where they get reply notifications, can think through responses, and engage on their schedule.

A web-to-text widget is always available to collect leads on desktop, tablet, and mobile websites. There’s no “Agent offline” message typical of chat widgets. Our survey found 57% of users left a website when clicking a live chat button that then stated the chat agent was offline or unavailable. That’s an incredibly leaky conversion funnel.

Texting is also easier to manage for your staff. As consumers’ reply expectations move from just minutes with live chat to same-day responses with texting. That leaves your team more time to delight your prospects and customers and use a channel both sides are already familiar and comfortable with.

Lastly, texting, unlike chat, allows you or the customer to restart the conversation at any time. Texting becomes an ongoing connection, live chat is just a session that has to revert to email once the moment has passed. 

3. Updates and Reminders

Reminders are where SMS proved its value early on for business communication. Appointment reminders from your dentist or an update on your appliance delivery have been very handy. Don’t limit your business use case to just reminders. You can grow to accommodate two-way communication and reminders.

Texting is a great way to keep customers updated on any process. An email might get lost and a phone call might be an inconvenience all the way around. Texts are a fantastic way to keep customers updated on any meeting, needed information, or other details.

Texting can increase the quantity and quality of your customer touchpoints and processes. Better yet, as you’re using them for reminders, with a two-way texting solution, your customers can start a conversation with you about the reminder you just sent.

4. Customer Experience

When you’re easy to work with you become a business that customers want to rave about, refer, and review. Being easy to work with is the new golden rule of business. Offering 2-way texting for your customers makes working with you easy and supports a solid customer experience. Just look at this review:

When users are willing to note the benefits of texting in a review, you can clearly see the impact. Great communication is a differentiator that can bolster your reputation and brand, especially as a small business. 

5. Connection

Humans crave connection, text messaging can help to improve connection with customers by providing a convenient, personalized, and instant form of communication that can help to build stronger relationships and increase customer satisfaction.

Building and maintaining a great connection with your customers is especially important during an economic downturn. As many businesses found out at the height of the pandemic, being connected to your customers is a lifeline. Connection can help rally the support of your customers and take their loyalty to new levels.

These strong connections to your business will lead to repeat purchases, referrals, social media mentions, positive reviews, and more.

6. Requesting Feedback and Reviews

Online reviews and customer feedback are incredibly important to local businesses. They build trust with prospects, improve Google rankings, influence decisions, and help businesses understand their customers better.

Following up with customers and asking for reviews with a text message is both easy and efficient for the business and the consumer.

When you have already been communicating by SMS with your customers, requesting a review over text is both personal and natural. They’ve already communicated in this channel with you, and you’ve likely delivered a great experience, leading to that 5-star Google review.

7. Improved Staff Efficiency

Businesses look to technology and software to help save time and increase productivity for their teams. It’s a double bonus when it saves your company AND your customer’s time.

With text messaging your customers win by communicating in their most familiar way, and the channel is easy to manage for your team. A true win-win scenario for both.

Sales teams can engage with more prospects, service reps can handle more customer needs, and technicians and installers can spend more time on their work than tied up on calls.

A study from Benchmark Portal showed that the average sales and services call time is 5 minutes and 58 seconds. In that time frame, a team member can engage with anywhere from 6 to 10 text conversations. All without a decline in service levels or customer satisfaction. 

The increase in productivity with texting compared to emails as well as phone calls is similar. On average text replies are 60x faster than emails averaging just 90 seconds for a text reply, compared to 90 minutes for email replies.

Text messaging as a channel and business through software like Leadferno offers features that scale communication and save time.

What Do I Need to Know to Start Texting With My Customers?

Permission and Opt-in For Texting

First of all, you need to get permission to text your customers.

If you are planning to send text blasts or do SMS marketing (more on that next), you absolutely need to get permission. These text campaigns are often sent in weekly or monthly intervals for special offers, sales, and updates. Because you are sending to many recipients at an interval you decide, you need consent.

If you are texting using 2-way text messaging where the prospect or customer has initiated the communication, consent is now implied, and you don’t have to do anything special in the US. Many web-to-text widgets that allow consumers to text you from your website have a disclaimer that sending the first message is consent. 

The standard of implied consent was upheld in a recent legal ruling involving Facebook where the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled that companies engaging in text messaging from their website or platform when the customer initiates the communication don’t violate the TCPA in the United States. The TCPA protects consumers from auto-dialing and mass messaging when they have not given consent. 

Getting permission is still your best move in texting. Here are the most popular ways to get permission to text your customers:

• Web-to-text-widget with a disclaimer that sending the first message is the same as giving consent for SMS communication.
• Written consent on your intake forms or other customer paperwork.
• Checkbox for consent on a web or contact form.
• Consent via text by directly asking the customer to respond with approval to receive text messages from your business.

Once you have received consent you want to store it in case you would ever need to review it or prove that you obtained it.

If you are gaining consent for text marketing or blasts you will also need to provide an automatic way to unsubscribe, just as you do with email marketing. For SMS, this is most often letting the consumer know they can reply with STOP or QUIT to stop receiving your messages.

Lastly, keep in mind that regulations and laws vary by country. For example, Australia requires a double opt-in process for business texting, so do your research on consent before starting.

SMS Marketing Blasts 

SMS marketing or text blasts is a way of sending a message to many recipients at once. It’s similar to email marketing but sees a higher open rate and engagement when done right. SMS marketing is popular in retail and e-commerce to drive interest and purchases with offers and sales. 

One thing for sure is that your business needs to have permission from your customer to send them marketing texts as we outlined before, along with the ability for subscribers to opt-out. Your consent process and policies need to be airtight.

Is SMS marketing right for local businesses? That answer has a few layers to it, so let’s take a look at them. 

On the pro side, the ability to reach many customers at once is always appealing. A local business with the right content, offers, and timing can be successful with text blasts.

On the con side, there is a very real risk of our customer unsubscribing or worse marking your text as spam. Your direct connection is cut off. Many small businesses are challenged with actually delivering valuable content and offers. Just like email marketing, campaigns without value eventually are unsubscribed.

While the business feels it’s the message of “buy now and save 10%” that will generate new business, the consumer might feel annoyed and opt out of you being able to text them.

A local business should strongly consider these strategic items when deciding on whether to send text blasts or not:

• An SMS subscriber consent and compliance process
• The ability to deliver valuable content and offers
• Timing of blasts that meets customer expectations  – too frequent should be avoided

In the end, if you can’t succeed with the elements that SMS marketing requires, focusing on 1:1 text communication will be far more effective, without upsetting your customers.

Data Security

It can be hard for small businesses to plan for data security, but they are just as vulnerable to data breaches as larger companies. While it might not make the news, the impact of a breach can be just as devastating.

Instead of employees using their own SMS app on their phones and having conversations, contacts, and customer data outside of your control, a business texting app centralizes and secures your data.

In addition to the physical security of customer data, protecting valuable customer and prospect contact information centralized when a salesperson or team member joins or leaves the company is a must. 

Data security and centralization are a big benefit to using a business text messaging app when using text messaging for business. 

Industry Regulation and Verification

The text messaging industry continues to evolve quickly. One can only look at the abuse and spam of email and phone calls to see why the SMS industry is looking to work faster to prevent and manage spam and bad actors. 

In the last year, both local (10DLC) and toll-free numbers that wish to text now have to go through a verification process when activating the number for SMS use. Carriers like AT&T, T-mobile, Verizon, and others continue to tighten their delivery of messages from unauthorized numbers and are trending to zero tolerance. 

The number verification process should be part of any business texting solution you utilize. Depending on the number type and other factors this third-party verification process can take a few days or up to many weeks, but once completed it ensures delivery of your text messages to customers.

This space will continue to change and ultimately is for the good of the industry to preserve texting as the valuable business communication channel it is. 

This is Your Notification, Business Texting is Here

There is no doubt that consumers desire and some even expect text messaging to be a communication channel option with your business. How and where you deploy it can make a big impact in growing your business.

SMS can help you capture more leads, and improve communication, connection, and customer experience. These benefits can be had and even reduce effort and workload on your business and staff when planned and executed right. 

So all that’s left to do is check your text messages because business texting has arrived.

A customer satisfaction survey is the easiest way to gauge how your customers are feeling about your business. That could mean rating the customer support they have received, describing how they feel about your products and services, or sharing their experiences of your brand.  

If you already know how to ask for reviews and get reviews on a regular basis – perhaps as a result of using a review management software – you’re in a great position to begin sending out customer satisfaction surveys. Don’t worry if you are new to this type of feedback though as we’ll be sharing plenty of good customer survey examples and useful tips throughout this article.

What is a customer satisfaction survey?

To put it simply, a customer satisfaction survey is a questionnaire that you ask your customers (both past and present) to complete. Sometimes also known as a customer feedback form, the survey guides customers through a series of questions about their experiences with your business. These questions give your customers an opportunity to tell you more about their overall experience.

As well as sharing how they feel about your business, it’s also a chance for customers to express what they particularly appreciate, what they would like to see more or less of, and what causes frustration or disappointment.

How does a customer survey differ from a review?

It should be noted that a customer satisfaction survey is different from a consumer review. Although some review platforms may ask a consumer to rate a few specific aspects of your service (such as the cleanliness of the hotel room or overall value for money), a consumer review is a broader, freeform comment.

The consumer won’t be prompted to reply to carefully considered questions about a range of business aspects when writing an online review. They’ll simply leave a short comment, often with a star rating, which sums up their experience publicly for others to see.

By contrast, a customer satisfaction survey guides the consumer through a set of very specific questions. Often you’ll have a specific goal in mind with a customer survey, where you want to address a particular issue or get feedback around a service or product. 

Customer service survey question examples could include things like ‘how likely are you to shop with us again?’, ‘Did we resolve your complaint within an acceptable timeframe?’ and ‘What can we do better’?. These are questions that you wouldn’t expect to be addressed by a consumer asked to leave an online review. 

What’s more, this type of feedback is intended to be used internally, rather than shared publicly on review sites. Rather than helping other consumers decide whether or not to use your business, survey responses help drive decision-making and improvements within the business itself. 

Why Customer Surveys Are Useful For Local Businesses

There are no two ways about it: customer feedback is vital for local businesses. But, why?

If you’re already meeting your sales goals and have good client retention rates, you might think you have your niche cornered. You may think that as you’re already doing well, you don’t need customer survey questions to tell you what your customers are thinking.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Regularly gathering targeted feedback via satisfaction questionnaires gives you the data you need to make data-driven decision-making. The client input you receive through this process can guide your decisions so that they’re perfectly aligned with what your customers specifically want and need.

This feedback could be useful in product and service development – asking real customers what else you can do to support them, or what other features would be helpful to them means you’re better placed to deliver on that need. In doing so, you can set yourself apart from the competition and become the go-to in your local area.

Source: BrightLocal Academy Customer Survey

Being able to tap into authentic experiences across your business can also help pinpoint areas where change must be made. If feedback commonly cites frustration with slow customer service responses, for example, that’s an indicator that you need to revisit current processes or consider expanding the customer service team. While this may feel like criticism, in practice it gives you the opportunity to address pain points. In turn, that can help to reduce customer churn, increase retention, and deliver an even better experience to every customer. 

Tips for Creating Customer Satisfaction Surveys

When approached correctly, satisfaction surveys can bring you closer to your customers, enhance product and service delivery, and fuel company growth. 

You may be wondering what questions to ask in a customer survey so you can get started immediately. But before you do, read our following tips to get your strategy right before you hit that send button. 

Have a Clear Objective

The best customer survey examples all have one thing in common: they are focused on a specific objective. Therefore, a clear idea of what you want to discover will help you ask the right questions. This means that the insight you gather will be useful and help you achieve your objective.  

For example, if you would like to reduce customer churn, you could ask questions about what you could have done better. This will help you to pinpoint stumbling blocks for customers that you can address to boost retention rates. 

Don’t Gather Unnecessary Data

Gathering unnecessary personal data can inhibit respondents. For example, they may feel they don’t want to share specific details due to privacy concerns. You also risk recipients being reluctant to share genuine opinions if the survey isn’t anonymous. 

Certain questions may also overstep personal boundaries, such as asking about gender, salary, contact information, religious beliefs, etc. Audit your questionnaire and remove any request for identifying data or personal information that isn’t strictly necessary. 

Source: BrightLocal Academy Customer Survey

Write an Introduction 

Begin your questionnaire with a short introduction. Explaining the purpose of your survey upfront increases the likelihood of useful responses. If you do need to gather personal information, use the introduction to explain why you’re asking those questions and how you will handle that data. 

Ask Specific Questions

Questions that are too vague or too open-ended will likely generate non-specific answers. To ensure feedback is valuable and gives you the insight you can work with, ask precise, specific questions. 

‘What did you think of our service?’ might seem quite specific, but if we consider it a little further, it becomes clear that this question can be interpreted in several different ways. One person reading the question could understand that you’re asking for an overall opinion of their experience buying from you, including things such as shipping speed, quality of product, and value for money. Another may understand the question to be asking only about the customer service they received. 

A better option would be to ask, ‘How would you rate the quality of this specific product?’ or ‘Did our customer services team resolve your query?’. 

Ask Different Types of Questions

Having different types of questions will give you a much richer pool of feedback to learn from. The best customer survey examples use a mix of open-ended questions and those that can be answered with a yes/no response or a rating out of five.

The yes/no or star rating questions make it easy for you to see, based on an average of all responses, whether your customers are happy, what they enjoy, and what they don’t like. 

If you were to ask your customers, ‘Would you recommend our dry cleaning service to a friend?’ simply counting up the number of yes versus no responses will allow you to conclude that ‘9 in 10 customers would recommend our service to a friend’. 

Questions that allow the customer to provide more detailed responses give you deeper insight. For example, asking something like, ‘What did you most enjoy about our service?’ or, ‘is there anything we could do differently in the future?’ can prove useful. Here, you’re giving the recipient space to share their opinion. This is a good way to draw out suggestions and extra details that you may not have access to otherwise. 

Allow Respondents to Skip Irrelevant Questions 

Despite your best efforts, it could be that some questions aren’t relevant to every recipient. Allowing respondents to skip irrelevant questions can remove friction and reduce frustration. It also means you aren’t in danger of gathering inaccurate or untruthful responses simply because the recipient had to answer to move on to the next question.  

Be Consistent 

A consistent rating scale system will make it easier for your recipients to share their opinions correctly. Giving satisfaction scales to grade responses is common in customer survey questions. A commonly used satisfaction scale is: 

• Very satisfied
• Somewhat satisfied
• Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
• Somewhat dissatisfied
• Very dissatisfied

If you adopt this scale for your survey, ensure that the scale follows the same order each time and is presented in the same way. Changing the order of satisfaction levels could lead to the recipient choosing an incorrect scale by mistake. 

Source: BrightLocal Academy Customer Survey

Don’t Make Your Questionnaire Too Long 

It’s important to strike the right balance when writing your questionnaire. Too many questions, and your recipients are less likely to complete it. But conversely, asking too few questions won’t generate much helpful insight. 

There’s no hard and fast rule when deciding how long your survey should be, but 60% of people say they won’t complete a questionnaire that requires more than 10 minutes of their time. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if a question is truly necessary. Don’t include it if it isn’t vital to achieving your primary objective. 

There’s one more thing to keep in mind. Research suggests that respondents spend less time per question when the survey is long. This indicates that longer questionnaires generate lower quality and less considered responses. 

Conclude With an Open-ended Question 

Having an open-ended question such as ‘is there anything else you’d like us to know?’ gives the respondent a space to share information not covered by your questions. 

Source: BrightLocal Academy Customer Survey

Choose an Appropriate Medium 

To maximize the number of valuable responses you receive, you’ll need to consider the medium you use for distribution. The option you choose should ensure maximum convenience for your recipients.

Email: Email is one of the most popular survey channels. You can embed questions within an email or use the email as an invitation. In that case, you’ll provide a link within the message body to the survey. 

Text: A text message-based survey could be appropriate if your customers routinely deal with your local business via SMS messaging. 

In-app: Does your local business have an app to manage bookings and reservations? You could embed your survey within the app, allowing users to give feedback after a certain period. 

Website: Another option is to host your survey on your website and invite your customers to share their opinions after they check out their cart. 

In-store: Tablets at the point of sale can provide a convenient way for customers to share their feedback with you immediately. 

Don’t feel that you must limit your survey distribution to one channel. Combining channels can boost participation rates. For example, an SMS prompt after an email invite has gone unanswered may improve survey response rates. 

Segment Your Recipients

Creating customer segments can improve satisfaction survey results. You may already have those customer segments set up because of other marketing activities you’ve carried out. Email lists, for example, are commonly segmented to allow more targeted messages to be sent to customers. 

Segmenting your lists means you can be very specific about the questions asked. Targeting questions to smaller pools of customers also enhances the quality of the data you receive back. 

Think About Your Survey Invitation Wording 

How you ask your recipients to complete your survey is almost as important as what you ask. That’s because the wording of your invitation will determine whether that customer then continues to complete your feedback form.  

Begin by personalizing your message so the email addresses the customer by name. Next, it’s important to outline how the survey will benefit the recipient. This could be as simple as stating that responses will be used to improve the products and services you deliver to them. 

If your survey is being sent to only a small segment of customers, highlighting that within your message creates a sense of importance. Note how the recipient has been selected and is one of a select few invited to share their opinions and experiences. 

Giving an estimate of the time required to complete the questionnaire is a trick often used in the most successful survey examples. Finally, remember the importance of a compelling subject line, so your invitation is read.  

Source: BrightLocal Academy Customer Survey Email

Consider Offering an Incentive

Unlike reviews, you can offer incentives to customers to encourage them to share feedback via your satisfaction survey. This could be an entrance into a prize draw or a discount code for money off their next purchase with you. 

14 Customer Survey Example Questions

When it comes to what questions to ask in a customer survey, there’s an almost unlimited number of options. The specific questions you include will depend on your objective and who the survey is going to. These customer survey example questions can be used to form the basis of your own satisfaction form.

1. On a scale of 1-5, how happy were you with [name of product/service]?

This question gives you a clear idea of satisfaction levels for a particular product or service. A low score indicates that something isn’t quite right and that further work needs to be done.

2. Which three features of [name of product/service] are most helpful to you?

This is a great question to ask before product development or updates take place as it allows you to hone in on what your customers consider most valuable.

3. Does our [name of product/service] represent you good value for money?

Budget is a significant consideration for many local consumers. Tracking whether your business continues to be considered a good value for money option can improve client retention rates and reduce churn.

4. If you had to choose an alternative local [name of product/service], who would it be and why?

This question can be a useful source of competitor intel. You’re asking your customers which of your local rivals they are also aware of and what’s most compelling about those alternative options. Information gleaned here can help you address gaps and maintain your competitive advantage.

5. Why did you choose our [name of product/service] rather than a competitor’s?

Similar to the previous question, this is helpful for competitor benchmarking. The responses should tell you what customers most appreciate about your offering and what differentiates you from rivals. These are your differentiators. Once you know what they are, you’re better placed to leverage them in customer communications. To widen the gap, you may also want to build on these differentiators in future product and service development.

6. Which other [name of products/services] did you consider before choosing ours?

While you will have an idea of your competitors, this may be different from what your customers consider being alternative options. Asking this question could reveal alternatives that you weren’t aware of, such as new entrants to the local market, that warrant further investigation.

7. If you could change one thing about our [name of product/service] what would it be?

This question can play a direct role in your product or service development. It highlights unresolved needs and opportunities to serve your customers better. The most common responses should be implemented as quickly as possible.

8. How can we improve your experiences with us?

This is an open-ended question that could throw up lots of interesting responses. These answers should give you an idea of what customers want and expect from you. With that knowledge, you can work on delivering those desired changes.

9. How likely are you to return to our [website/physical location]?

This is a good barometer of how you’re performing overall, as it speaks to customer intent.

10. Did you find it easy to locate what you were looking for [in-store/app/online]?

Offering a superior customer experience is critical to securing repeat business. Customers who find your website difficult to navigate, or find it hard to locate items in-store, are likely to want to avoid repeating that experience. The responses you generate here could highlight customer friction and help you make a plan to make the path to purchase more straightforward and streamlined.

11. Was our customer service team able to resolve your problem?

When it comes to customer service matters, you’ll want to know that your team is delivering. Asking if queries were resolved speaks to the effectiveness of your service.

12. Did we respond to your query promptly?

Today’s consumers expect increasingly fast responses from customer service teams– a study found that nearly half expect a response in fewer than four hours, while 12% expect a response in less than 15 minutes. This question helps you to judge how well you’re meeting those expectations and whether additional team members or a more streamlined process is required.

13. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

This question gives the respondent space to provide additional feedback they’d like to convey. This is a great question to include as it could reveal valuable information not covered by the questions you’ve asked.

14. We may contact you to discuss your responses. Is that ok?

Asking if you can reach out for a further conversation allows you to have a deeper conversation and discuss any interesting responses further. Or to clarify comments that you didn’t understand.

Consider Surveys for Direct, Actionable Feedback

While reviews are a compelling way for users to provide you with feedback, they don’t always offer actions you can use to improve your business. As we’ve highlighted, a properly planned customer survey can provide you with clear actions and insights that you can use.

Why not try adding customer surveys to your review management strategy? Get direct feedback on specific aspects of your business, to create visible change.

What’s new with Google Business Profile?

New Tests for Google Posts/Updates Overlay

Two new tests around Google Posts/updates have been spotted in the wild. In the first test, Google updates get overlaid over images for the business listing…

Noticing update or post from business. At mobile serp

Looks new to me .
cc @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/UWBW3PFDmF

— Khushal Bherwani (@b4k_khushal) February 24, 2023

And in the second test spotted, users can click to see ‘More Posts’ when browsing the most recent updates:

Google has added view all posts "more posts" feature in GBP. Before it was not shown on GBP.

Cc @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/bw3ZwrJk8f

— keyur shah | SEO (@Keyurshah3535) February 24, 2023

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Google Shopping Results Displaying GBP Products

Google has started showing products added to Google Business Profile via the Products & Services feature in the Google Shopping section of Search. Great news if you’re selling products and you want more visibility of what you have in store!

First time seeing organic GBP Products that were manually added show up like this under the "Shopping" tab. I haven't paid too much attention to this section in the past but I had thought all the items under "shopping" were paid shopping feeds. Seen this before @rustybrick ? pic.twitter.com/JCVWMknMxJ

— Colan Nielsen (@ColanNielsen) February 28, 2023

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Prompt to Link to Better Business Bureau Appearing in GBP Verification

Google has started including a few new questions in its GBP verification process, and one might come as a surprise…

New: Google Business Profile asking for BBB link in assistive help flow, and even more questions.

— I guess GBP trusts BBB a lot! Which is strange in some cases. pic.twitter.com/U3sg9213Z6

— Ben Fisher (@TheSocialDude) March 5, 2023

Yes, apparently Google trusts data from the Better Business Bureau enough that, for US-based business at least, it’s asking for a link to their company information on the popular directory.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

“Similar To” Personalization Appears in Google Business Profile

Google users performing local searches may find themselves being prompted by Google that a business in their search is “similar to” another business they’ve frequented in the past.

How long has this been a thing on GBP? I've been to Green Zebra when searching for acai bowls and now I'm searching in a different town & "similar to" shows up. I like it! #LocalSEO #IsThisNew @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/oz85IZWyuv

— Tricia Clements (@yourbizwatchdog) March 11, 2023

It’s an interesting step in the name of personalizing your search experience, but sometimes this stuff just errs too much on the creepy.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Fixed: “Your Business Is Not Visible to Customers”

Local SEOs had a panic in mid-March when a confirmed bug at Google’s end left them seeing this message when accessing or editing their Google Business Profiles. A fix came a day or two later, and it seems like it was a glitch and that these businesses were actually visible and editable during that time.

Way to keep us on our toes, Google!

Google Inserts Incorrect Prices Into GBP Services

We all know Google, rather frustratingly, likes to pull your business information from places you might not be able to control, but this is the first time we’ve seen it completely make up your service prices!

Hey @rustybrick – when looking into a client's services in their GBP, we noticed that some of the predefined services had a "free" label which we nor the client added. Is this new? pic.twitter.com/jV0uOd5VMr

— Sukhjit S Matharu (@SukhjitSMatharu) March 17, 2023

Here's another where pricing is arbitrarily added in – not from the client… certainly not correct! pic.twitter.com/z3gwL4XdW8

— Carrie Hill (@CarrieHill) March 17, 2023

If you haven’t checked in on your services in GBP lately, now might be a good time to do so!

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

New ‘About’ and ‘Reviews’ Tab on Desktop Mirroring Mobile Experience

Is Google starting to go mobile-first with GBP, and bringing the experiences closer together? This new feature, in which ‘Reviews’ and ‘About’ are tabbed rather than appearing vertically in a desktop GBP, certainly suggests so.

Seeing an "about" and "reviews" tab on Google Maps that looks similar to the mobile experience. Only seeing this while logged in and not on every listing. pic.twitter.com/FKeOkdnOg4

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) March 20, 2023

Manage Your Menus via the New Merchant Experience (NMX)

Restaurants can now use the NMX (in-SERP GBP management) to select a preferred source for their menus, or create a custom menu in GBP.

New select your preferred menu source for restaurants.

Custom Menu: Create your Own in GBP
3rd Party: Why would you ? pic.twitter.com/mkEIMR5v2g

— Tim Capper (@GuideTwit) March 1, 2023

We don’t know about you, but we’re still going to rely on the photo of the coffee-stained, laminated menu taken and uploaded by a visitor five years ago instead…

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Online-conversion Local Ads (OLAs) Allow for More Targeted GBP Advertising

Shown in Google Business Profiles in Search and Maps, these ads allow you to promote products or services relevant to specific locations (e.g. a competitor’s GBP listing, or your own, if you want to ensure no one else can make the land-grab on your own listing).

Source: GMBapi.com

What’s new with reviews?

Google Expands Documentation Around Personal Info and ‘Fake Engagement’

In an update to its ‘Prohibited and restricted content’ guidelines, Google has turned existing vagueness around what personal info can be used where into an absolute rule (with exceptions, of course).

It has also added guidelines around fake engagement, e.g. using an automated tool to post reviews.

Definitely worth reviewing if you’re considering engaging in automated fake reviews. Whether this applies to businesses using automated tools to respond to reviews at scale remains to be seen.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Restaurant Reviews Encouraged to Include Recommendations of Specific Dishes

When reviewing a restaurant, you might now be asked to recommend a specific dish while you’re rating elements like food, service, and atmosphere.

Google adds an option for recommended dishes on reviews @mblumenthal @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/RtwsCrUsb8

— ClaudiaT (@ClaudiaTomina) March 6, 2023

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Google Releases Reviews Mistakenly Removed as Spam as “New”

What the searcher doesn’t know, can’t hurt them, right? That’s true until Google hands the business reviews it mistakenly removed back to you, but labels them as “new”.

After Google’s initial admission that they would be reinstating these reviews, DAC found that over the following weeks, a significant number of them were being reinstated as “new” reviews on businesses’ GBPs.

If you like the look of lots of fresh, new reviews on your profile, then this is probably a good thing, but not so much if they are old reviews contain information and opinions that no longer reflect your business.

Google Details Progress Made in Tackling Fake Contributions in 2022

In its annual report on its progress towards finally making Google fakery-free (hey, we can dream!), Google released some key stats, including:

• 115m+ policy-violating reviews removed, including a 20% increase in the removal of fake reviews
• 200m photos and 7m videos were blocked or removed for being blurry, low quality, or violating content policies
• 20m attempts to create fake Business Profiles stopped

Google puts a lot of its success in these increases down to the evolution of its machine learning capabilities.

Surprise, Surprise: Review Spammers Are Using AI

File this under: no sh*t. Although OpenAI and Google disallow the use of their generative AI technology to produce spam, spammers aren’t exactly ones to follow the rules, so it should come as no surprise that AI is clearly being used to create fake business reviews at scale.

Perhaps Google could see which way the wind was blowing, hence the ‘Fake Engagement’ guidelines mentioned above?

Sources: Review Fraud via Search Engine Roundtable

What’s new in local search?

New Local Ranking Factors Survey Released

Whitespark have released their survey of local SEO expert opinions on what does and doesn’t impact local rankings, including questions around negative ranking factors, LSA ranking factors and suspension risk factors for the first time.

Darren Shaw goes into detail on what’s changed over at Near Media. It’s well worth a watch.

Google Explore Now Features Local Search Results

Google has added business profile overlays and scrollable business info to the Google Explore section of search (which Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz rightly describes as “that weird feature you get when you keep scrolling and scrolling through the search results”).

Google explore with business in different way , it's with overlay feature.

Notice first time.

Before covered as – Google Explore" Testing As The Dynamic SERP Feature via @rustybrick @glenngabe – https://t.co/pDTJHdwRy9

now with business profile with overlay pic.twitter.com/hNZ3vFSIM7

— Khushal Bherwani (@b4k_khushal) March 1, 2023

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Google Tests Blend of Search and Local Snippets

Here’s a strange one: an odd mix of local business info and standard search snippet appearing in search results. It has some of the local features you’d want to see (map, directions, how to call, etc.) but very little actually useful info like business or product description.

Just noticed this new hybrid search result, normal web link plus GMB listing together…is it new @rustybrick? pic.twitter.com/U6cr0h1kKp

— Manish Chauhan (@ManishK_Chauhan) March 15, 2023

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Google Testing Reviews Icon Limited to One Star

You’d be forgiven for having a coronary if you spotted this one when searching for a client’s business!

I noticed on the local pack they are only showing one star next to the cumulative rating. This is the first time I've seen a condensed way they are displaying the number of stars. @rustybrick @glenngabe @DarrenShaw_ pic.twitter.com/nfb4w3W4Uc

— Jason Parks (@Jason_Parks1) March 19, 2023

No, those businesses don’t just have one-star average review ratings. That’s just Google trying to save a bit of space in the already cramped local pack by having the single star signify what the number next to it refers to, rather than showing the full amount of stars.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

What’s new with Local Services Ads?

Services Supported by LSAs See Massive Expansion

In early March, Google expanded the business types that can use Local Services Ads far beyond the usual remit of home services, law practitioners, and real estate agents.

The new list of supported businesses, which you can find here, includes education, people care, pet care, wellness, and healthcare—so Google is clearly still sticking to the sorts of businesses that involve handing over a lot of trust, often known as YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) industries.

You Can Now Report (Some) Reviews on LSAs—Finally

In news that many have been looking forward to, Google has now added the function to ‘Report a review’ on Local Services Ads. This naturally doesn’t include verified reviews (a big part of Google’s offering here) but it at least helps to bring some parity between the usual GBP review experience and LSAs.

Yes!!! Finally we can flag/report Google LSA Reviews @keyserholiday @lenraleigh – time to build a dispute bot for this pic.twitter.com/99IrMjtTxz

— Curtis Boyd (@DataBoyd) March 14, 2023

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

It’s Now Much Easier to Add and Remove Verticals in Local Services Ads

The interface that allows you to edit, set up and optimize your Local Services Ads has been updated to make it easier to select those that apply best to your business.

JUST SPOTTED!!!! Google Updated The Local Services Ads Interface.

It is now easier to add/remove verticals directly in the LSA interface.

Not sure how I feel about it yet and still exploring.

Check it out!! #PPCchat pic.twitter.com/lRT5P8OWUI

— Anthony Higman (@AnthonyHigman) March 17, 2023

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

That’s especially true for fast food brands. Take Burger King and McDonald’s. Whether you’re traveling for leisure or work, and find yourself in unfamiliar territory, there’s just nothing like seeing those famous golden arches or orange burger buns and feeling that, in a way, you’re home.

Is that too dramatic (or perhaps just reflective of my feelings towards delicious, salty junk food)? It certainly got us thinking recently about the role of local business reviews for some of the world’s biggest brands. How do these global icons stack up from a local perspective, and could they learn a thing or two about review management?

We gathered the Google reviews for every Burger King and McDonald’s outlet in the USA (that’s over 20,000 locations!) to see how their average review ratings compare. Who will come out as the top-reviewed brand in the USA? Choose your player… this is the Big Brand Review Showdown!

Introducing Bard

Google recently announced Bard, “an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA”. (Language Model for Dialogue Applications). 

Bard will simplify and make sense of information when answering questions. For example, you can ask it to explain the pros and cons of buying an electric car. You can then ask it to plan your next road trip and ask it to tell you the best places to stop at along the way and show you interesting things to do with your family. 

Google says it “draws information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.” 

Whilst tools like ChatGPT have the capability for content creation, and that’s what we’ve seen most SEOs using it for, it feels like Bard could remain more of a search engine, with increased power for business discovery. 

Bard is launching to Trusted Testers this week before launching broadly in the future. 

Like Microsoft, Google has also now made a valid effort to remain responsible in this new world of AI, highlighting that it has been in their DNA from the start.

NORA – No One Right Answer

The latest acronym to come from the event is NORA (No One Right Answer) which displays multiple sources of information at the top of search results, alongside additional questions for the user to explore more around their search query.

Currently, Google uses featured snippets for quick, factual answers to a query, but because people might actually want a diverse range of opinions, Google is using generative AI to search results, to give users more choice of results to find the answer they’re looking for.

What this might mean for local SEO however, is a little more unclear. When searching for “best pizza in Brighton”, the search intent there is to find one specific pizza place. If NORA starts sharing multiple choices, then we might as well continue with our usual search on Maps. 

Source: Google

Immersive View

Immersive View was announced at last year’s Search On event, but Google has given us a few more visuals into how it will look and how it will work as it rolls out globally. 

When using Immersive View, you can get a sense of what the area is like at different times of day, how busy the area is, and get a sense of what else is surrounding the place you’re searching at. You’ll also be able to use it to explore things like restaurants in the area, plus take a look at what the restaurant is like inside.

This technology uses 2D images alongside AI, to create 3D images of the locations you’re in. For local SEOs, the importance of great photos of your location could become vital for this new technology to be effective. 

Source: Search Engine Roundtable 

Augmented reality is another new way to interact with the map. Search with Live View uses AI to find things nearby. A quick search for coffee shops near you, whilst holding your phone up to the street in front of you, will show you nearby businesses. The AR view will show the business’ star rating and the number of reviews, as well as how busy it is at that time. 

But how useful is this for users? Whilst a more visual map is fun to use, the key thing here is there’s not a lot you can’t get already from Maps. In real life, you can see the business name and how far away the business is just by looking up, so what this AR view really highlights, is the business’ reviews. There’s now even more of a business case for local businesses to consider reviews, as it’s another place reviews are surfaced. 

Source: Search On 2022

Since its inception in 2010, the report has aimed to help local businesses, consumers, and marketers understand the impact customer reviews can have on consumers, and see which trends change each year.

While 2020’s survey saw a big focus on how Covid impacted consumer behavior towards reading and writing reviews, this time we’ve asked more questions around fake reviews. This is to see if the reputation of the main review sites is as clean as they’d like to think it is.

Customer Review Trends 2022

Business reviews can be an incredibly useful tool for attracting new customers, not only through the psychological effect they have on the reader, but by boosting local rankings so that businesses are more likely to show up for searching consumers.

Throughout the twenty questions explored in this survey, we’ll cover everything you’ll need to make a strong case for online review management, be it for the purpose of building a loyal customer base, improving your online visibility, or both!

You’ll also come away understanding which direction the wind is blowing in terms of consumers’ preferences for star rating, review responses, and how recent reviews need to be in order to impact decision-making.

Without further ado, let’s get stuck into the results of BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2022.

How Consumers Read and Write Online Reviews for Local Businesses

Consumer reviews of products have been a staple of the online experience for years, but the sophistication with which people can leave business reviews has developed over time. Platforms like Yelp are bringing more and more features and functionality to businesses and consumers alike, helping to boost engagement within the platform.

To understand how these behaviors have changed over time, we asked several questions about how consumers look for reviews, read reviews, and leave reviews for local businesses.

How often do consumers search for local businesses online?

To help us understand why and how consumers read and write reviews, it’s important to first take a look at how often they’re using the internet to find local businesses. We can then consider these trends when looking at levels of engagement with review platforms.

• 99% of consumers have used the internet to find information about a local business in the last year.
• 78% of consumers use the internet to find information about local businesses more than once a week (up from 69% in 2020).
• 21% of consumers use the internet to find information about local businesses every day (down from 34% every day).

In 2021, far fewer people were searching for online businesses every single day than in 2020, which initially suggests a lessening need for their use. However, looking across the board, the frequency of use has risen greatly. We’ve observed a 9% year-on-year increase of people using the internet more than once a week to find information about local businesses.

We’ve seen a large drop of those less engaged with finding businesses online, too. 1% of consumers say they don’t use the internet to find local businesses at all; that’s an incredible 99% of consumers using the internet to find local businesses. I think it’s safe to say the era of those still relying on the printed business directory is over and that the visibility and impact of online reviews is higher than ever.

Ben’s Take: “It appears that the increase in the percentage of users that check multiple times a week has increased by 10%, whereas those checking every day has decreased by just a little more comparably. This may be because, as an industry, we have been trying to change the frame of mind our customers are in when it comes to success. Conversions over rankings.”

Which sites do consumers evaluate businesses on?

While there are a great many business review and discovery sites out there—some focused on particular territories, others on industries and products—it’s safe to say that a handful truly have a monopoly on consumer opinion and local businesses.

Let’s take a look at which were 2021’s winners and losers in the race to capture the attention, and opinions, of consumers.

• Consumer use of Google to evaluate local businesses has leapt from 63% in 2020 to 81% in 2021.
• Consumer use of Yelp to evaluate local businesses has climbed from 32% in 2020 to 53% in 2021.
• Consumer use of Facebook to evaluate local businesses has dropped from 54% in 2020 to 48% in 2021.
• Only 13% of consumers used Apple Maps to evaluate local businesses in 2021.

Google’s star continues to rise, with an 18% year-on-year jump in consumers using it to evaluate local businesses. This is to be expected, as it’s by far the search engine with the largest market share (87% of the market when this survey was carried out, according to Statista). However, it’s still a notable leap, and reiterates the importance of developing and monitoring your Google Business Profile, which consumers will see information about your business on.

The bigger story here is perhaps one of two parts: that Yelp saw an impressive 31-point increase while Facebook’s use for local business evaluation has slumped 6%. As we’ll see later, this chimes with an overall souring of public trust in Facebook, which has weathered, and is always weathering, controversies on multiple fronts.

The strategic takeaway here is that your efforts shouldn’t revolve around Google alone. A large and growing proportion of consumers are looking to Yelp to help them with their business decisions; your business or clients would be foolish to ignore it.

How often do consumers read online reviews for local businesses?

Now, onto the reviews themselves. We’ve established that 99% of consumers looked online to find a business last year, but how often did these people look to the opinions of other customers before making their decisions?

• 98% of people at least ‘occasionally’ read online reviews for local businesses.
• 77% of consumers ‘always’ or ‘regularly’ read online reviews when browsing for local businesses (up from 60% in 2020).
• The percentage of people ‘never’ reading reviews when browsing local businesses has fallen from 13% in 2020 to just 2% in 2021.

Over the last two years, we’ve seen a massive drop in the holdouts saying they ‘never’ read reviews. This has fallen 16%, from 18% in 2019 to just 2% last year. Looking at the rest of the data, we can be fairly confident that many of these have moved on to ‘occasionally’ or ‘regularly’ reading them.

For 43% of consumers, reading online reviews is now a regular occurrence. When looking at this data—in light of earlier results showing an increase in consumers using the web to find businesses—we can safely say that the importance of having a good review profile is growing. More people are regularly using the internet to find businesses, and more people are regularly reading reviews when they do so.

Ben’s Take: “The increase in those regularly reading reviews from 2020 to 2021 is interesting. I would have expected to see an increase in those answering ‘always’. I feel this is a very natural result. It is very normal behavior: when looking at a business, we are thinking of engaging to read about others’ experiences.”

Which business types do consumers pay the most attention to reviews of?

Not all business experiences are created equal: the risk in poor service from a plumber and a bartender just don’t match up. So it’s expected that people care more about, and will likely read more reviews of, certain business types than others.

To explore this, we looked at eight key sectors that we know reviews play an important part in, and asked how important a part reviews played in consumers’ decisions to use them.

• The top business types for which reviews play an ‘important’ or ‘very important’ part in consumers’ decisions are:
  • Service businesses and tradespersons (84% said reviews are ‘important’ or ‘very important’ in their decision)
  • Care services (83%)
  • Healthcare (82%)

As expected, businesses that are infrequently required, and come with a high level of risk, face public scrutiny far more than things like restaurants and bars, where a friend’s recommendation is sometimes all that’s needed. It’s heartening to see that care services come out on top in this, given what important, and likely difficult, decisions are involved in using services in this sector.

Healthcare and service, or service-area, businesses (SABs) stack up fairly evenly, which is definitely worthwhile tradespeople knowing about: your potential customers care about reviews for your business as much as they do for their doctors!

It’s also interesting to see that 6% of consumers consider reviews for financial and legal services to be ‘not important’. Could it be that years of Google Business Profile spam and fake reviews in the legal sector has taken its toll on the public perception of this industry?

How many consumers write reviews, and for what types of experiences?

We’ve explored where people read reviews, and for what types of businesses, but those reviews have to come from somewhere. That’s why we asked questions around the writing of reviews, trying to uncover the holy grail of reputation management: what makes someone more or less likely to leave a review?

• 74% of consumers left reviews for local businesses in the last 12 months.
• 67% of consumers will consider leaving a review for a positive experience, while 40% will consider leaving a review for a negative experience. A crossover of 33% will consider both.
• 7% of consumers only leave reviews for negative experiences, while 34% of consumers only leave reviews for positive experiences.

Ultimately, review sites are fairly dumb tools, and show all reviews on an equal footing (though admittedly not necessarily in the order they were left). They don’t take into consideration the different types of reviewers there are, the customer’s history of reviews, or what sort of people leave reviews in certain conditions. Therefore, these points aren’t taken into account when presenting the all-important average star rating.

That’s why it’s particularly interesting to look at the percentages of consumers that only leave negative reviews (7%) and those that only write positive reviews (34%). The cynic in me is happy that the former isn’t higher, but it’s definitely worth bearing this in mind when working on the quality of your customer service.

In total, 67% of consumers will consider leaving a review for a positive experience, while a comparatively low 40% will do so for a negative experience. This shows that the benefits far outweigh the risks associated with growing your review profile. And as we’ll see later, negative reviews can actually help your reputation!

Ben’s Take: “This stat is interesting. Only roughly one in three surveyed stated they have left a review for a positive or negative experience. This could be based on many factors, but the leading reason, I would think, is that they were not asked to leave a review. “

What factors influence a consumer’s decision to leave a review?

Providing a positive customer service experience is obviously the first step to getting a great review, but not everything that influences it is in the business’ hands. We wanted to explore what other factors could play a part in turning a positive experience into a positive review:

• 88% of consumers say they would be ‘likely’ or ‘highly likely’ to leave a review if the business went above and beyond to ensure they had an exceptional experience.
• 80% of consumers say they would be ‘likely’ or ‘highly likely’ to leave a review if they initially had a negative experience that was turned into a very positive experience.
• 74% of consumers say they would be ‘likely’ or ‘highly likely’ to leave a review if they knew that the business was family-owned, while only 43% feel the same about a large chain.
• 73% of consumers say they would be ‘likely’ or ‘highly likely’ to leave a review if the business had a low average star rating and they didn’t think it was deserved.
• 77% of consumers say they would be ‘likely’ or ‘highly likely’ to leave a review if they knew that the business was fairly new.

With the obvious out of the way (going ‘above and beyond’ is most likely to result in a positive review), there’s a few interesting things to note here.

Firstly, compare the proportion that would be ‘likely’ or ‘highly likely’ to leave a review if they knew the business was family-owned (74%) with the proportion that would feel the same about a large chain (43%). This shows the massive amount of potential of highlighting that your business is family-owned when it comes to marketing, and developing the customer experience with this in mind.

Conversely, large chains really face an uphill struggle to generate reviews, even after positive experiences. It’s cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless, that 22% of consumers say that the business being part of a chain wouldn’t impact their decision.

Another surprise is that feeling like a low average star rating is undeserved is what might push customers to leave you a review, with 73% saying that they’d leave a review after a positive experience in this situation. So, providing you deliver a genuinely excellent experience, there’s no need to feel down about a low average star rating. Your future customers will be willing to help you out if you deliver your best!

Ben’s Take: “61% of users state that after having a positive experience, they would leave a review if a business went above and beyond, and 43% said they would be highly likely to leave a review if a negative experience was turned into a positive one. Also, it appears that an equal percentage would review a business if there were not a lot of reviews and if they were asked to by an employee. Overall, it is a good idea to provide the best service possible and also ask for a review, if you are looking to get more positive reviews.”

What Really Matters to Consumers about Reviews

Despite being deceptively simple on the surface, there are lots of elements of reviews and business review profiles that can have an impact on how consumers perceive them, such as recency, length, responses, and so on.

With this in mind, we looked at the various elements of reviews to find out what really matters to the consumers reading them.

Which factors of reviews matter most to consumers?

Depending on your personal preference, perhaps based on experience with businesses, review sites, and even just other people, you might have a strong aversion to one type of review but implicitly trust another.

Does the review have a named author? Was it left recently? Has the business owner responded? Are there lots of capital letters in the review? Are photos attached?

We wanted to find out how much, if at all, things like these matter to consumers.

• The top three review factors that make review readers feel positively about a local business are:
  • The written review describes a positive experience (75% chose this)
  • The review has a high star rating (58% chose this)
  • The business owner has responded to the review (55% chose this)
• At least 25% of consumers don’t care about the review describing a positive experience, and at least 42% don’t care about a high star rating.

It goes without saying that to get a good review, you need to deliver a positive experience, so it’s natural that it’s these types of experiences people want to hear about most.

However, while you might think the star rating is the best barometer of this experience, in fact, people want to read written descriptions of experiences, and value these above star rating.

Anyone trying to decide whether to start responding to reviews should pay attention to the fact that 55% of consumers said that a response from the business owner makes them feel positive about that business. If that doesn’t sound like much, consider that only 3% more said that a high star rating would do the same, leaving us with the conclusion that consumers care about star rating and responses roughly the same.

So if you’re looking at a low star average and are worried about starting to respond to reviews, these results suggest that it could be a winning strategy.

Ben’s Take: “Overall, I think what we are seeing here is that the core tenets of reviews are about the same. It is important to have reviews that are recent, responded to, and highly-rated and positive in nature. This is good advice for any business, and a goal most merchants should strive for.”

What are the minimum star ratings consumers will accept?

Depending on the review site, the average sentiment across all your business reviews might be displayed in a different way, but the most user-friendly and most widely-recognised is the familiar star rating. We wanted to find out how consumer attitudes to this ‘shortcut to sentiment’ have changed over the years.

• The percentage of consumers who would only use a 5-star business has fallen from 12% in 2020 to just 4% in 2021.
• In 2021, just 3% of consumers said they would consider using a business with an average star rating of two or fewer stars. That’s down from 14% in 2020.

Perhaps in line with consumer trust in reviews somewhat dwindling (as we’ll see later), it makes sense that there’s been a drop in those only expecting to see five stars, from 12% in 2020 to just 4% in 2021. A clean sweep like this can seem untrustworthy and unreliable, especially when it comes to businesses with a large number of reviews.

However, at the other end of the scale, consumers in general expect more than they used to, with 97% only considering businesses with over two stars. Considering that 2.5 out of 5 is effectively a score of 50%, that’s a big leap in consumer expectations in just a year.

With more and more businesses learning the importance of review generation, and more consumers searching for and evaluating businesses, it makes sense that consumers expect more. But they also understand that nobody’s perfect. The much-publicized difficulties local businesses have faced during the coronavirus pandemic could explain this understanding, too.

Ben’s Take: “This makes tons of sense as users are looking for at least a 4.0 average rating. No business is perfect, and users understand this. They expect to see some negative experiences.”

How important is recency of reviews to consumers?

A review tells the story of a single customer interaction at a single point in time, but what if that point in time is long ago? Services can change frequently, so for the best representation of the current experience, it would make sense that the most recent are the most trusted, right?

• In 2020, 50% of consumers felt that only reviews left within the last two weeks impacted their decisions. In 2021, that figure dropped to 22%, with many more taking into consideration reviews left between the last three months to a year.

Interestingly, there’s been a big drop in the expectation for very recent reviews left in the last two weeks prior to evaluating the business. Accordingly, the amount of consumers willing to trust reviews left as long as a year ago are on the rise. As Ben suggests below, this could be because consumers are being more lenient about what businesses can achieve due to the pandemic, and therefore more realistic about how recently reviews should have been left.

It’s worth noting that 7% of our survey respondents said that review recency didn’t mean anything to them. Depending on your situation, this could be a good or bad thing. For example, if you had a slew of bad reviews a year or so ago, but have turned the ship around and now boast a 4-star profile, there are those who will look into your history and consider those old low-scoring reviews as relevant and representative of your business now.

Ben’s Take: “This is very interesting. For the longest time we have seen that users want to see fresh reviews that were made in the last few weeks. Based on this new data, that seems to have been extended out to a month. It’s possible that users are becoming more lenient on merchants, and noticing how hard it is for merchants to get reviews these days, albeit thanks to Google’s tightening of the review filter.”

Which elements of a business’s review profile matter the most to consumers?

Just as with a single review, there are plenty of elements of a business’s overall review profile that can have an impact on consumer decisions, such as the number of reviews or, as mentioned above, how recently they were left.

• How important consumers consider the range of review sites that businesses have reviews on has fallen from 79% in 2020 to 69% in 2021.
• How important consumers consider the total number of reviews for a business has fallen from 79% in 2020 to 69% in 2021.
• The top three factors of a business’ review profile that would influence a consumer’s decision are:
  • The overall average star rating of the business (85% said this was ‘important’ or ‘very important’)
  • The business having a higher average star rating than other businesses they’re considering (76%)
  • How recent the latest reviews are (73%)

We’ve been asking this question since 2017, but we included a number of new responses in this year’s survey in order to understand how certain elements compared. As we did last year, we found that the star rating, recency, and number of total reviews on a review site were considered important.

However, it’s worth pointing out that while 76% of respondents said that the business having a higher star rating than competitors was important, far fewer (39%) feel the same about the number of reviews. This means that it’s not just about getting as many reviews as possible, but ensuring that your service is genuinely deserving of a high star rating.

One final thing to note here is that how important consumers perceive the number of review sites you have reviews on has more than halved, from 72% in 2020 to just 34% in 2021. It’s clear that the number of sites people pay attention to is dwindling, so it’s best to focus your efforts on the handful of sites that are most relevant to your audience.

What Consumers Think About Businesses Asking for, and Responding to, Reviews

When it comes to your online reputation, it’s not just a case of ‘deliver a great service and hope for the best’. As we’ve seen above, consumers care about the quality and recency of reviews. This is why reputation management software exists to enable business owners to grow and monitor their reviews.

However, that’s only one part of the equation. We’ve already seen that 55% of consumers said that the business owner responding to the review would make them feel positively about a business, so this could be the key differentiator between you and your competitors.

Responding to reviews is also a great way of showing your brand personality, providing an example of your customer service, and highlighting fake reviews, so it’s a recommended strategy, as we’ll see below.

How does responding to reviews impact consumer decisions?

Some businesses like to respond to positive reviews every time and shy away from the potential conflict arising from replying to negative reviews. Plenty others leave their fans alone and just seek to counteract the negative impact of bad reviews by exclusively replying to those.

• 89% of consumers say they would be ‘fairly’ or ‘highly’ likely to use a business that responds to all reviews, positive and negative.
• 57% of consumers say they would be ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ likely to use a business that doesn’t respond to reviews at all.

We found that an astonishing 89% of consumers would be ‘likely’ or ‘highly likely’ to use businesses that respond to all reviews. And at the other end of the scale, 22% say they’re ‘not likely at all’ to use businesses that don’t respond to any reviews at all. This goes to show the power of responding to negative reviews as well as positive ones.

Meanwhile, it’s interesting to see that, broadly, consumers feel more favorably about review profiles including responses to negative reviews, rather than those with replies to positive reviews only. This suggests that consumers respect a business owner trying to turn around a bad situation more than one basking in praise and ignoring the naysayers.

Ben’s Take: “I encourage all of our clients to respond to all reviews. The data backs this up as well. 59% of users said they are fairly likely to use a business that responds to all reviews. I feel it is important to respond to all reviews: respond to negative reviews so that prospective customers see how you deal with a negative experience, and respond to positive reviews as a way of thanking a user for leaving a review. What also makes sense here is that 52% said they would use a business if a merchant responded to only negative reviews, meaning that it is very important that, at a minimum, negative reviews are responded to.”

How often are consumers prompted to leave reviews?

We now know that consumers want to see responses to their reviews and the reviews of others, so it’s clear they’re happy for business owners to get involved in the consumer feedback process. But how many are influenced when businesses ask them to leave reviews, either directly or indirectly? And how many business owners are even asking for reviews in the first place?

• 17% of consumers say they haven’t been prompted to leave a review by a business in the last 12 months.
• 12% of consumers say they left a review every time a business prompted them to do so in the last 12 months.
• 35% of consumers say they left a review at least half of the times they were prompted to do so by a business in the last 12 months.

It’s clear that businesses are getting the message about the importance of asking for reviews, because just 17% of consumers said they hadn’t been prompted for a review in the previous 12 months. What should really buoy anyone investing time into this, though, is that a not-insignificant 12% of consumers say they’ll always leave a review when prompted to do so by the business.

That means you could potentially get 12% of all of your future customers to leave you a review, just by asking them. Take into consideration that 23% leave a review more than half of the time and that figure grows even further. Now, the number of reviews you get will depend on the frequency with which people use your business, or the level of foot traffic, but it’s a strong indicator that asking for reviews is worth every business’ time.

How are businesses prompting consumers for online reviews?

There are countless imaginative ways to ask for reviews or raise awareness of the importance of them to your business, from including a link in an email footer to displaying a request at the point of sale. To find out which of these types of request is growing in popularity (with businesses, at least), we asked consumers to tell us the ways in which they recall being prompted for a review.

• The methods of asking for reviews that have increased year-on-year are:
  • In an SMS text message (7% increase)
  • On a receipt or invoice (5% increase)
  • In person, during the sale/experience (1% increase)

While there’s been no significant changes to the methods most used for requesting reviews (via email, on a receipt or invoice, and in person), it’s worth noting the 7% increase in the use of SMS messaging to request reviews. This is impressive considering the extra lengths businesses have to go to get consent to use SMS.

Elsewhere, previously lesser-used methods are on the decline. Social media, over the phone, and via business card have all seen large drops, year-on-year. However, this doesn’t necessarily speak to their efficacy. It’s worth remembering that just because a lot of businesses don’t use a particular tactic, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It could just be that one of these lesser-used methods is the thing that makes your review requests stand out from your competitors, so be creative!

What incentives are businesses using to encourage reviews?

Each platform has its own set of review guidelines, from Yelp specifically stating that businesses can’t request reviews to Google being against the practice of review-gating. However, there are some practices that are considered ‘less than legit’ across the board, with ‘offering cash’ being illegal in some parts of the world.

We wanted to find out how many businesses are offering direct incentives in their efforts to generate reviews, and so asked consumers how often they remembered instances of this.

• In 2021, 17% of consumers recall being offered a discount in exchange for a review. That’s up from 12% in 2020.
• In 2021, 15% of consumers recall being offered a gift or free services in exchange for a review. That’s up from 8% in 2020.
• The percentage of consumers who recall being offered a cash incentive for a review dropped from 9% in 2020 to just 6% in 2021.

Thankfully, it looks like the practice of offering cash as a review incentive is on the decline, having fallen from a surprising 10% in 2019 to just 6% this year.

Elsewhere, though, the tides are turning in the other direction, with both discounts and free gifts/services bouncing back in 2021 from a drop in 2020. It could be that, following a particularly hard year at the start of the pandemic, those businesses either opening back up or needing to stay above water in 2021, have resorted to these measures to get ahead of the competition.

How Much Consumers Trust and Distrust Reviews

While your business might not undergo significant change year after year, large tech companies certainly do. Public opinion of giants like Amazon and Google is always in flux or, in some cases, constantly in decline, depending on the latest privacy issues or anti-competition lawsuit.

This has a trickle-down effect to reviews on these platforms, too. But how much of consumer trust in reviews is down to the corporations themselves, and how much is down to the people who use (and abuse) them?

How much do consumers trust online reviews, compared to other sources of opinion?

For the first time, this year we sought to compare consumer trust in reviews to a wider variety of sources of opinion than just ‘personal recommendations’. This widening of the question and context has led to a large decrease in these figures, as respondents have more sources to consider and compare to.

• 49% trust consumer reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family.
• 28% trust consumer reviews as much as professionally-written articles by topic experts.
• 21% don’t trust consumer reviews as much as recommendations and reviews from friends and family, social media personalities, or topic experts.

It’s still interesting to compare the trust put into online reviews and their relationships with other sources. We have to do a fair bit of reading between the lines, but this data would suggest that 21% (those answering ‘None of the above’) don’t trust online reviews as much as expert reviews, social media personality recommendations, or the recommendations of their family and friends.

Considering that in 2020, 79% said they trusted online reviews as much as the recommendations of family and friends, this feels like a significant drop in trust. Throughout the following questions, we explore why that might be.

What elements of reviews make consumers most suspicious?

As you probably already know, review sites have a big problem with fake reviews. These might take the form of a negative review bomb (in which a group of like-minded individuals who haven’t actually used a business take to review sites to batter it with fake, negative reviews), they might be a competitor simply trying to artificially reduce your average star rating, or they might just be an excitable new member of staff hoping to make an impression by leaving a glowing review of the place they work.

None of this speaks to what consumers view as fake, though. The level of education on the part of the average consumer isn’t at a point at which they’d be able to reel off the list above. That’s why, without going into too much detail about what we meant by ‘fake’, we asked survey respondents to let us know which things might hint to them that a review they’re reading is suspect.

• The top three reasons consumers might think a review is fake are:
  • The review is over-the-top in its praise (45% chose this)
  • The review is one of lots of reviews with similar content (40% chose this)
  • The reviewer is anonymous or uses an obvious pseudonym (38% chose this)
• Only 26% of consumers say that the business owner responding to the review and saying it’s fake would make them suspicious of the review.

There’s a lot to unpack there, but it’s particularly interesting to see that 45% say that a review that’s ‘over-the-top in its praise’ would make them suspicious, while a lower 36% would say the same about a review that’s ‘over-the-top in its negativity’.

What does this tell us? Perhaps that consumers are naturally a bit more wary of positive fake reviews than negative ones. This could tie into the ongoing media coverage of platforms like Tripadvisor and Amazon having issues with bought positive reviews from ‘review farms’, with comparatively less coverage going to businesses bombarding competitors with fake reviews.

Sadly, only 26% of respondents said that the business owner responding to a review to say it’s fake would encourage the reader to believe them. This is worth bearing in mind when responding to reviews: responding is important but it’s not enough. You need to go through all proper available channels to get fake reviews reported and removed.

How many consumers have seen fake reviews?

We now know what makes consumers suspicious, but how big is the problem of fake reviews in the first place? How many people can confidently say they’ve seen one or more fake reviews?

• 62% of consumers believe they’ve seen a fake review for a local business in the past year.
• Only 9% of consumers believe that they haven’t seen any fake reviews for local businesses in the past year at all.

As you can see, fake reviews are still a big problem for review sites and for businesses, with 62% confident in their belief that they’ve seen a fake review. And as we’ll see later on, these have a really damning effect on trust in review sites and reviews in general.

Strikingly, fewer than 10% can confidently say they’ve seen no fake reviews at all. This leaves 90% of consumers at least wary of fake reviews.

Ben’s Take: “Over 60% of those surveyed feel they have seen a fake review in the last year. This does not really come as a surprise. Given how bad most platforms are at detecting fake reviews, and also how bad Google is at removing reviews, the frequency of fake reviews just keeps growing.”

Where have consumers seen fake reviews?

While fake reviews can, theoretically, be left anywhere you don’t need a verifiable login to access (and even plenty you do), some sites are bigger culprits for this kind of thing than others. This makes sense, as why would you pay for fake reviews on the sites people aren’t looking at?

Here we start to dig into which sites are the most likely to host fake reviews, and find out how much consumers trust these sites. We’ve included Amazon as, although it’s not a business review site, it’s highly relevant to the topic of fake reviews in general. Also, we can learn a lot by comparing trust in Amazon with trust of other sites more directly related to local businesses.

• The top three sources of online reviews that consumers are confident that they’ve seen a fake review on in the past year are:
  • Amazon (52%)
  • Google (50%)
  • Facebook (37%)

Due to the sheer volume of reviews on Amazon and Google, and the rise in consumers using these services to find reviews, it comes as no surprise that these are the leaders, but the sheer percentages involved here might surprise some, with over half of consumers saying they’ve seen fake reviews on these two sites.

Meanwhile, despite it being reported last year that Tripadvisor had to delete nearly one million fake reviews over the course of the previous 12 months, only 11% of respondents to our survey felt that they’d seen a fake review there over a similar period. Perhaps those gaming the system on Tripadvisor are just better at it?

Ben’s Take: “It’s no surprise that Google and Amazon lead the pack here, followed by Facebook and Yelp. Google is horrible when it comes to detecting and removing fake reviews. Amazon has always had an issue with them as well. Yelp happens to be the best when it comes to detecting and removing fake reviews, but, then again, reviews really are their business.”

How suspicious are consumers of reviews on the top review sites?

Now that we’ve touched on consumer experiences around fake reviews on the top sites, let’s look at how generally suspicious people are of their reviews.

• 93% of Facebook users are at least ‘a little suspicious’ of fake reviews on Facebook. 37% are ‘very suspicious’ of fake reviews on Facebook.
• 90% of Google users are at least ‘a little suspicious’ of fake reviews on Google, but just 10% are ‘very suspicious’ of fake reviews on Google.
• Better Business Bureau is, by far, the most trusted review site. Only 29% of its users are ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ suspicious of reviews on that site.

Surprisingly, the picture painted here is very different. Here we see that it’s Facebook, Amazon, and Yelp that take gold, silver, and bronze, respectively, for suspicion around reviews. Even though 50% said they’d seen a fake review on Google, a smaller proportion (45%) say that they’re ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ suspicious of Google reviews.

The results for Facebook, on the other hand, flip the script. While the data from the previous question suggests that fewer consumers have seen fake reviews here than on Amazon or Google, an incredible 70% of consumers are already ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ suspicious of fake reviews on Facebook.

What this tells us is that perception doesn’t have to match experience: plenty of consumers might have seen fake reviews on Facebook in the last year, but many more are generally suspicious of the platform and its content, and of what they might see in the future. Conversely, while 50% of users admit they’ve seen fake reviews on Google, fewer feel that they need to be suspicious of Google reviews.

Do fake reviews make consumers generally suspicious of reviews?

Finally, we wanted to ask a big question that could speak to the potential impact of fake reviews, to learn whether the rot is corroding the machine and dismantling trust in online reviews as it goes.

• 67% of consumers agree that the existence of fake reviews and fake reviewers makes them distrustful of online reviews in general.

This is a result that should send a shiver down the spine of anyone working in online reviews. Nearly 70% of consumers are distrustful of online reviews because of fake reviews. This, if nothing else, shows that the industry needs to do more to stamp it out, and even more to win back the trust of consumers.

In Summary

While online reviews in 2020 were largely dominated by the impact of Covid-19, in 2022 there are new issues to face—the prevalence of fake reviews, in particular, threatens to continue to diminish trust in some of the biggest review sites.

However, we’ve seen plenty of reasons to be cheerful, too. Consumers are being more lenient with businesses, accepting lower star ratings, and not expecting reviews to be left yesterday. More people are ‘regularly’ reading reviews than ever before, and we now know for certain what a pivotal part the business responding to reviews plays in the decision-making process.

The fight to get visibility of your business online is more competitive than ever, but we hope that by sharing these insights you can adopt, or tweak, a review management strategy to make your business more visible, more noteworthy, and more appealing to potential customers.

We’d love to hear your predictions for what could change in the world of online reviews over the next year—let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Methodology

The 2022 Local Consumer Review Survey explores trends in online reviews for local businesses over the past year. It’s based on the key SEO and local business reviews seen throughout the year to provide local marketers the information needed to maximize the impact of their online reputation management.

The statistics and findings are focused on local business reviews on sites such as Google, Facebook, Tripadvisor, Yelp, etc.

Based on the views of a representative sample of 1,124 US-based consumers, the Local Consumer Review Survey was conducted in November 2021 with an independent consumer panel. Age group breakdowns are representative of those in the US population.

In order to provide a better understanding of those that use reviews during a purchasing decision, consumers that said they don’t read online reviews weren’t asked questions around their review behavior.

Publishers are welcome to use the charts and data, crediting BrightLocal and linking to this URL. If you have any questions about the report, please get in touch with the content team, or leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading this year’s Local Consumer Review Survey!

The Local Consumer Review Survey 2024 is coming in February!

Would you believe that BrightLocal has been exploring the relationship between consumers, online reviews, and local businesses for almost 13 years?

Since 2010, we’ve seen significant developments in the perceptions of online reviews, the ways businesses engage customers to leave feedback, and the channels or platforms consumers choose to do it on.

Whilst a simple star rating may have been enough to persuade potential customers back then, our findings over the years show that the most important review factors have evolved. This, plus an increasing savviness when it comes to detecting fake reviews, and shifting perceptions of different review platforms, makes for an ever-changing landscape. 

We wanted to continue exploring the perennial theme of fake reviews this year, and explore how reviews may be evolving outside of traditional platforms. So, what does the consumer review scene look like in 2023? Let’s get straight to it.

Key Findings

• 76% of consumers “regularly” read online reviews when browsing for local businesses, compared to 77% in 2021.
• The number of consumers reading online reviews “every day” fell from 34% in 2021 to 21% in 2022.
• 87% of consumers used Google to evaluate local businesses in 2022, up from 81% in 2021.
• The top industries where consumers see business reviews as most important are: Healthcare, Automotive Services, and Service Businesses/Tradespeople.
• The percentage of consumers using Facebook to evaluate local businesses has fallen for the second year running, from 54% in 2020 to 48% in 2021, and from there to 46% in 2022.
• 42% of consumers are confident they’ve seen fake reviews on Facebook in 2022, compared to 37% in 2021.
• Google is the most trusted review platform across all industries, although Tripadvisor still has its place for accommodation businesses, Yelp maintains a strong share of trust for food and drinks businesses, and BBB is trusted for businesses in professional trades and real estate industries.
• 26% of consumers were asked to leave a business review in exchange for a discount in 2022, up from 15% in 2021.
• 36% of female consumers are likely to leave a positive review for a business that they know is eco-friendly, compared to 24% of male consumers.
• Outside of standard review platforms, 35% of consumers use YouTube to find information about local businesses, 32% use Instagram, 20% use TikTok, and 35% of consumers consult their local news.

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How are consumers using business reviews?

We’ve been asking consumers a number of the same questions year on year, helping us to determine trends in user behavior and benchmark the results. To begin with this year, we asked about the frequency with which consumers are searching for and reading business reviews online.

How often are consumers researching businesses online?

• 98% of consumers used the internet to find information about local businesses in 2022, up from 90% in 2019.
• The percentage of consumers using the internet to find information about a local business every day has remained stable, at 21%.

In 2020, 34% of consumers used the internet to gather information about local businesses every day. This figure dropped to 21% in 2021, and the percentage of people finding information about local businesses online remains static in 2022.

Despite this, last year’s Local Consumer Review Survey revealed that the general frequency in which consumers used the internet to find information about local businesses had increased. It appears the frequency of people looking for business information online decreased slightly in 2022, as 7% of consumers stated that frequency as less than once per month, compared to 5% in 2021. 2% of consumers said they have not used the internet to research local businesses at all in the last 12 months.

It’s important to note that, on the whole, these changes are slight, so the general pattern remains fairly stable. However, the minor change in frequency could be an indicator of the current economic climate and how the typical US consumer’s needs have shifted as a result.

According to Medallia, 44% of US consumers described their financial status as “worse off” in 2022 than in 2021—so, with less disposable income to spend on goods and services, there is arguably a lesser need to search for local businesses as frequently.

How often do consumers read online business reviews?

As for the consumers “regularly” reading business reviews, this figure has also remained static, holding at 41%, since 2021.

• 98% of consumers at least “occasionally” read online reviews when researching local businesses.
• 76% of people “always” or “regularly” read online reviews for local businesses.

The fact that 2022’s results are pretty similar to 2021’s suggests that consumer reliance on using the internet to read online business reviews has remained about the same, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

If anything, this consistency in how often people are reading reviews is good news for local businesses—those that are investing time and effort in growing their review profiles, anyway.

Where are users looking for business reviews?

For the last couple of years, we’ve been analyzing which review platforms consumers navigate to as part of their local business research. 

• In 2022, 87% of people used Google to research local businesses (up from 81% in 2021).
• Consumer use of Yelp to evaluate local businesses has decreased from 53% in 2021 to 48% in 2022.
• The percentage of consumers using Facebook for business reviews has decreased for the second year running, sitting at 46% in 2022.

The biggest story around review sites in 2022? It’s clear that more people are using Google to research local businesses. This rose from 63% in 2020 to 81% in 2021, and now up to 87% in 2022. 

According to ReviewTracker, Google holds the largest number of reviews—at a whopping 73% of all online reviews. And, while it follows that more people would be using a site with the most reviews to search for local business information, Google also regularly tests and introduces updates to the reviews platform to improve the experience for users.

If Google can shorten the journey between search and results as much as possible, why would a user need to navigate to another review site? This impressive gain certainly goes to show that local businesses cannot afford to ignore the opportunity to claim—and maintain—their Google Business Profiles.

More people using Google to research businesses has natural implications for other leading platforms like Yelp and Facebook. Following a significant rise in 2021, the percentage of people using Yelp to research local businesses dropped from 53% to 48%. 

Meanwhile, following the pattern of 2021, Facebook continues to lose its share of consumers choosing it to browse business reviews. As we’ll discuss a bit later, consumer trust in the social platform has continued to fall since its many data controversies, and usage of the channel has decreased among US adults since 2019.

Although they are smaller decreases, two other notable drops came from Tripadvisor and Better Business Bureau (BBB). It’s interesting to see that fewer people used BBB to read reviews in 2022, because there is evidence to show that the platform still has its place as a trusted review site for certain industries.

Meanwhile, 29% of consumers used Tripadvisor for business reviews in 2022 compared to 36% in 2021. Given that Tripadvisor specializes in hospitality businesses and more consumers tend towards BBB for businesses in professional trades, it could be a reflection of the economy throughout 2022: did consumers just pull back in terms of ‘luxuries’ like travel and home improvements?

What types of reviews are consumers writing?

What causes someone to leave a business review? And are they more likely to write one following a positive experience with a business, or a negative one? We surveyed our consumer panel to find out what reviews they left in 2022.

• 37% of consumers left reviews for local businesses following a positive experience in 2022.
• 95% of consumers left an online review in 2022, or would at least consider leaving one.
• 4% of consumers stated they would never leave an online review, increasing from 3% the year prior.

As you’ll note from the chart above, the percentage of consumers leaving reviews for positive experiences increased slightly year on year, from 34% to 37%, while the percentage of consumers leaving reviews for negative experiences shrunk by 1%.

Why are people more inclined to leave reviews of positive experiences these days? Well, the economic difficulties of 2022 have thrown many local businesses into turmoil, so it could be the case that consumers are more aware of the implications that negative reviews can have on local businesses. With this in mind, they may feel more forgiving in the face of a negative experience and willing to think twice before leaving a bad review.

What influences consumers to write a positive review?

When we examine the factors that are most likely to influence a consumer to leave a review, we can see a pattern around positive experiences.

• 81% of consumers are “likely” or “highly likely” to leave a positive review if they feel the business went above and beyond to ensure an exceptional experience.
• 79% of people would be “likely” or “highly likely” to leave a positive online review if the business had turned an initially negative experience into a positive one.
• 73% of people are “likely” or “highly likely” to leave a positive review if they know that the business is fairly new.
• Knowing that a business is eco-friendly or owned by a community that consumers support are the two factors that most consumers said would not impact their decision.

Naturally, the top two factors that are most likely to influence people to leave a positive review are similar in that they center around the experience provided by the business. Following those, there’s a theme of consumers wanting to show support for businesses and give them a chance (e.g. ‘the business is fairly new’, ‘the business has an undeservedly low star rating’).

As discussed above, these reasons appear to support the theory that consumers might be feeling more generous towards local businesses during economic uncertainty.

This year, we added two new options to the survey questions: one around supporting communities and the other around eco-friendliness. In writing these questions, we hypothesized that consumers would have stronger opinions about communities and sustainability in 2022. In fact, these were the two answers that most consumers claimed would not affect their decision to leave a review.

Digging deeper into these responses, we can see more of a pattern when it comes to what types of consumers would consider these aspects more strongly as reasons to write a review.

	Likely	Unlikely	This wouldn't affect my decision
Male	20%	12%	12%
Female	33%	7%	16%

Examining demographic factors, you can see above that female consumers are more likely (33%) to leave a positive review than male consumers (20%) when the business is owned by a community they resonate with.

(Of course, it could be that this data is skewed by the fact that one of the attributes mentioned—as per Google Business Profile attributes—is ‘female-owned’.)

Statistics around minority-owned businesses in the US highlight the following:

• 21.7% of US small businesses are owned by women (Bipartisan Policy Center).
• The rate of new entrepreneurs is consistently higher for male business owners, with a gap that is not closing (Kauffman Foundation).
• Women-owned business earnings averaged $47,152 less than male-owned firms in 2021 (Women-owned Business Study, Biz2Credit).
• Black women-owned businesses earn dramatically less than other business owners (State of Women-Owned Business, American Express).
• 6.5% of US businesses are Hispanic-owned (2022 Census).

With substantial gaps in business ownership and earnings within minority communities, it would make sense that female consumers might be more aware of the challenges marginalized groups face. Therefore, they may be more likely to consider business ownership as a factor that would influence them to leave a local business review.

Note: In last year’s survey, ‘family-owned’ stood alone as its own factor. That year, 74% of consumers stated that they would be likely to leave a positive review knowing this. In 2023, we consolidated this into the community question, where 54% of people indicated they would likely leave a positive review. 

A sadly notable failing of our chosen survey tool (more detail in the Methodology below) is that it only asks participants for binary genders. This is something we’ll be looking into resolving in future research.

How do consumers respond to review requests from businesses?

As marketers and business owners, you’ll know that you can’t always rely on a consumer going out of their way to leave a business review. This is where timely prompts with reputation management tools—or clever review campaigns—come in incredibly handy.

We asked the consumer panel how often they responded to business requests for reviews in 2022, as well as the methods they are most likely to respond to.

• 80% of consumers were prompted by local businesses to leave a review in 2022.
• 65% of consumers left reviews in response to requests from a business.
• 19% of consumers did not leave a review after being prompted to do so by a business.

We asked consumers about the methods of review requests that they would most likely respond to, from in-person or on-premise tactics to follow-up emails and text messages.

• 34% of consumers said they would be likely to leave a review if requested to do so by email.
• 33% of people would likely leave a review if they were asked to in person, during the business experience or transaction.
• 32% of consumers said that a receipt or invoice would be an effective way of inciting a review.

The top method for requesting reviews is email, as 34% of customers stated they would be likely to leave a review this way. This is a significant finding as it shows just how effective a timely email reminder is.

However, as you’ll no doubt be aware, email inboxes are highly competitive spaces; according to Statista, over 306 billion emails are sent every day. So keep this fierce competition in mind when sending your review requests.

In-person experiences came in as the second-most-popular way for businesses to request reviews from customers. As we discussed earlier, businesses going above and beyond stand the best chance of securing positive reviews. This new data goes further to highlight the influence that your teams and employees can have on the customer’s decision to leave a review.

Interestingly, receipts and invoices came out as the third most popular method for review requests, while business cards and on-premise signage were the two that ranked lowest.

So, while we’re not necessarily recommending you abandon business card design and signage, there is a clear finding that utilizing space on important documentation like receipts and invoices goes much further than just for accounting or tax purposes.

Additionally, businesses that are highly focused on customer service could find that combining in-person requests with instructions or QR codes on receipts is very powerful.

Do business responses to reviews affect consumers’ opinions?

As we’ll learn more about later, consumers like it when businesses respond to reviews.

But what if that business owner only responds to positive reviews? Does the type of response affect a consumer’s perception of the business?

• 88% of consumers are likely to use a business if they can see the business owner responds to all reviews, whether positive or negative.
• 60% of consumers would likely use a business where the owner responds to only negative reviews, while 50% said they would use a business where the owner only responds to positive reviews.
• 42% of people stated they would still use a business that does not respond to its online reviews.

Only 12% of people state they would not be affected by a business owner responding to both positive and negative reviews, which highlights the continued importance of taking the time to read and respond to your business reviews. 

Additionally, with the finding that consumers will likely leave reviews where an initially negative experience had been turned into a positive one, we can assume that consumers are aware and appreciative of businesses’ efforts to make amends when they fall short of expectations. 

A higher percentage of consumers would consider using businesses that only respond to negative reviews (60%) than those that only respond to positive reviews (50%). This finding might also suggest that people see the efforts to respond to poor experiences in a positive light.

It’s worth noting that 42% of consumers are still likely to use a business that doesn’t respond to any of its reviews. However, this doesn’t mean you should be resting on your laurels! Essentially, consumers are more than twice as likely to consider your business if you’re taking the time to respond to all types of reviews.

You can find guidance on responding to your online business reviews within our Learning Hub dedicated to review management.

What matters to consumers about online reviews?

So far, we’ve examined where and how often people are reading reviews, and in what circumstances they’re writing their own—but what elements of review content can convince someone to use a local business?

We wanted to find out how important reviews are for businesses across different industries, as well as whether star ratings are still seen as important as other factors. 

Does the importance of online reviews vary by industry?

In 2022’s survey, consumers highlighted service businesses and tradespersons, care services, and healthcare as the industries in which business reviews were most important to them.

As it was noted at the time, high-risk industries—or those often used in unplanned situations and emergencies, like healthcare and care services—unsurprisingly came out on top. It’s worth remembering that those results analyzed 2021 behavior, when the world was still very much in the middle of the pandemic.

This time, we introduced several new industries:

• Travel and transportation (e.g. travel agents, hotels, taxi services)
• Pet services (e.g. veterinary care, grooming, walkers/boarding)
• Beauty and wellbeing (e.g. salons, tattoo studios, gyms, spas)
• Real estate (e.g. realtors, brokers, interior design, architecture)

• The top industries in which consumers consider reviews as “important” or “very important” to their decision-making were: services and trades, healthcare, and automotive services.
• 81% of consumers feel that reviews are “important” or “very important” in the financial and legal sector (up from 66% in 2022).
• 80% of people said that reviews for care service businesses were “important” or “very important” for their decision-making.
• As with 2022’s findings, retail is still seen as the industry where business reviews have the lowest importance to consumers.

The most interesting change trend we’re seeing here is the year-on-year increase in the importance of reviews of finance and legal businesses. This change may have been driven by squeezes in consumer spending power due to rising inflation and increasing reliance on credit services, leading to more seeking financial and legal services.

At the very least, these economic factors will have likely influenced the typical consumer’s perspective of the importance of these services—and therefore their business reviews.

Although there is no comparable data for travel and transportation, 76% of consumers ranked these types of business reviews as important. As well as considering local transport services, this bracket mentions travel agents. Deloitte notes that demand for travel services in 2021 and 2022 showed strong signs of recovery since the pandemic and, while we may be a long way from the travel restrictions faced back then, consumers will likely look to professionals like local travel agents for up-to-date advice.

What review factors influence consumer decisions when choosing a local business?

When it comes to reviews, consumers need to be reassured by what they see. But that might look different for different people. Does seeing an average rating cut it for making a decision, or do they need to read into the details?

• 69% of consumers would feel positive about using a business with reviews describing a positive experience.
• A high star rating would make 58% of people feel positive about choosing a local business.
• 54% of consumers would feel positive about using a business when the owner responds to reviews.

The pattern of responses in 2022 (shown above) remains consistent with those of 2021, albeit with slight drops in percentage points across the options. 

Although it might seem obvious that most consumers see reviews describing a good experience as a positive indicator, it emphasizes the point that consumers are paying attention to the written content of the review itself. 

However, 74% of people did not indicate a lengthy or detailed review as important in their decision-making. Why is this interesting? Well, once upon a time, lengthy essay-like reviews were often written and read on the likes of Tripadvisor, but we can see that the way consumers engage with review content in 2023 has shifted.

Although, as marketers, we can’t control the content of consumer reviews (and absolutely should not try to, but more on that later!), it does highlight the importance of aspects like keywords that many review platforms utilize to assist consumers.

For example, Google enables filters based on keywords in reviews, and displays snippets of key information, allowing people to quickly find the reviews that are most relevant to their needs.

How important is the average star rating in 2023?

If 58% of consumers feel that a high star rating would make them feel positive about using a business (as seen above), then what do they consider “high”?

We asked consumers what minimum average star rating they would expect to see before they considered using a business. But this year, we also considered the option that a star rating might not be important to some consumers at all.

• 87% of consumers would not consider a business with an average rating below 3 stars.
• 38% of consumers expect a local business to have a minimum average of 4 stars before they would consider using it.
• 6% of consumers said that an average star rating does not impact their decision to use a local business.

It’s clear that, for those who see high star ratings as important, 4 stars and above is the expectation. But with 21% of people happy to accept 3.5-star ratings and 6% saying that star rating isn’t important to them at all, some readers aren’t just taking star ratings at face value, and clearly do assess supporting review content.

The average rating for businesses on Yelp stands somewhere between 4.5-5 stars. So, while consumers may be willing to consider businesses with lower ratings, it’s worth considering how lower ratings could affect your business visibility and discoverability on these platforms.

How much do consumers trust online business reviews?

It’s all very well studying how people use business reviews, but can we measure how much they trust what they’re reading? And how do business reviews stack up against the recommendations of others—such as personal connections, influencers, or professional reviews?

• 46% of consumers feel that online business reviews are as trustworthy as personal recommendations from friends or family (down from 49% in 2021).
• 35% of people trust consumer reviews as much as recommendations from social personalities (down from 37% in 2021).
• 27% of consumers trust online reviews as much as professional reviews (down from 28% in 2021). 

Comparing the results with last year’s findings, we can see that results have fallen slightly in each area. This could suggest that consumers have become more suspicious of the content in online reviews or that they are increasingly placing more importance on personal recommendations. 

However, the finding that almost half of consumers trust consumer reviews as much as personal recommendations from family and friends should still be seen as positive. It highlights the relationship between real experiences and how consumers relate to these types of reviews, compared to those of influencers or experts.

On that theme, more consumers trust recommendations from social personalities (35%) as much as online reviews than those trusting professional reviews (27%). Although the relatability of social personalities could be a whole topic of discussion in itself, it further suggests that consumers are looking for realistic comparisons when searching for business information. 

Does trust in reviews vary by review platform?

While we know that Google is the most frequently used platform for reviews, is it also the most trusted? Do people’s perceptions of trustworthiness vary by platform—and does this vary by business type or industry?

We asked consumers which of the market-leading review platforms they would be most likely to trust for businesses in different industries.

• Google is the most trusted review platform across all industries.
• Better Business Bureau (BBB) still clearly has a place among more professional trades and businesses relating to property.

It’s a clear picture. Google is perceived as the most trustworthy review platform for businesses across all industries. Although when it comes to hospitality businesses, such as those specializing in accommodation, there is a review platform that rivals Google: Tripadvisor.

• 42% of consumers would be most likely to trust Google for accommodation reviews
• 31% of consumers would trust Tripadvisor most for accommodation reviews

We wanted to dive a little deeper into the data around hospitality businesses, which you can see in the chart above. Considering Tripadvisor specializes in tourism, covering food and drink, accommodation, entertainment, and even landmarks, it is interesting to note that it is only considered a highly trusted platform for accommodation, and much less so for food and drinks. 

Google and Yelp lead the way as far as food and drink businesses are concerned, but there may be other elements taking away from Tripadvisor’s authority. With how popular visual social media platforms tend to be for food and drink discovery, as well as third-party delivery apps containing their own review systems, the choice for browsing has widened considerably beyond Tripadvisor, while the same hasn’t happened in nearly as great a scale for hotels and accommodation.

What other platforms do consumers use for business information?

As social platforms like TikTok skyrocket in popularity, and almost act as search engines in their own right, we wanted to find out where else people might be looking online for information about local businesses.

• YouTube and local news are the top two channels that consumers use to find out about local businesses outside of typical review platforms, with 35% and 35% using them, respectively.
• 32% of people use Instagram when deciding to use a local business.
• 20% of consumers consult TikTok when deciding to use a local business.

It was interesting to discover that 35% of consumers consult local news platforms as sources of information about local businesses. While this question doesn’t dig into the specifics around ‘local news’ featuring local PR or its acting as more of a business directory, it goes to show that some of the more traditional methods like local news aren’t to be dismissed.

YouTube and Instagram came in as the other top two channels for business discovery which, given their highly visual nature and focus on video content, is good for businesses to consider. While you can’t control the nature of the content that users might be posting to these channels, you certainly can take control of your own social presence and aim to get your content seen and shared by your customers.

With Instagram, ensuring business information is set up correctly can boost your visibility on its maps feature and makes it easier for users to tag their photos with your location. 

For now, 20% of consumers said they look for business information on TikTok. Considering our sample did not contain any consumers under the age of 18, and TikTok’s relative newness as a social platform, this is quite an impressive figure. There is a lot of discussion around the adoption of TikTok for search, so I’d expect the number of consumers using it for local business discovery to grow by 2024’s survey. 

Finally, 28% of consumers stated that they don’t use any of the alternative methods we presented for finding local business information. It could be that there are alternatives they do use that we had not listed, such as service booking apps. But it might also suggest that they don’t see a need to look outside of review platforms. So a takeaway here is: yes, diversifying your online presence is good, but that shouldn’t take away from your efforts in traditional review campaigns. 

Where have people seen fake business reviews?

Of course, we can’t begin to talk about trust without raising the big issue of fake reviews. We’ve been studying consumer perceptions of fake reviews since 2017, and it’s fair to say the issue has only grown in prominence since then. Some platforms, more than others, are fighting back against the issue of fake, misleading or even potentially harmful reviews.

The recently issued 2022 Yelp Trust and Safety Report highlights the actions taken throughout 2022 to protect consumers from misinformation and maintain the integrity of its reviews. The report outlines the software and moderation processes Yelp uses to assess usefulness of content, and details the key reasons for review removal. 25% of over 206,000 reviews were found not to be detailing first-hand customer experiences!

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, it’s important to measure the perception of trust across specific platforms, so we asked consumers where they feel confident they’ve seen a fake business review.

We’ve continued to include Amazon in this question as, although not strictly a business review site, it is often at the forefront of news around fake product reviews—and provides a good (read: bad) example of how sellers can incentivize fake reviews.

• 54% of consumers are confident that they saw fake reviews on Amazon in 2022, up from 52% in 2021.
• 50% of consumers saw fake reviews on Google in 2022, remaining static from 2021.
• 42% of consumers said they’d seen fake reviews on Facebook in 2022, up from 37% in 2021.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon came out as the top website for suspected fake reviews again, with the percentage increasing slightly year on year. More interesting, however, is the finding that a far larger proportion of consumers are confident they’ve seen fake reviews on Facebook in 2022, rising from 37% in 2021 to 42%.

Coinciding with our finding that fewer consumers are using Facebook as a review platform, it’s fair to say that overall trust in the platform has dwindled for another year. Business Intelligence statistics show that US consumer trust in Facebook has fallen more significantly in 2022 than in other social networks, with 82% of consumers unable to trust the giant when it comes to privacy and data.

Google remains static at 50% and, given the sheer size of the platform, as well as the number of consumers using it regularly, it doesn’t really come as a surprise that people see fake reviews there.

What’s more interesting is that, given the number of consumers saying they’ve seen fake reviews there, Google still stands as the most used website for local business reviews, as well as the most trusted across industries. All of this feels like it’s reinforcing the fact that consumers are more switched on and take care in assessing the content of the reviews they’re reading.

We also asked what factors might make people suspicious that the review content they’re seeing is fake.

• 47% of consumers said that reviews with just star ratings and hardly any words would make them suspicious that the review was fake, up from 31% in 2022.
• 40% said that over-the-top positivity would make them suspicious of a fake review, while 32% of consumers said over-the-top negativity would make them suspicious that the review content was fake.

The fact that consumers highlighted a lack of detail in reviews as suspicious shows there has been a greater shift toward the importance of written review content. It correlates with our finding that consumers feel positive about reviews where positive experiences are outlined.

Does review incentivization still take place?

Before we delve into this section, I’d like to start with a disclaimer: BrightLocal does not endorse or recommend incentivizing online reviews in any way. It’s an important statement to make because, upon reading various articles on the subject across otherwise respectable publications, there is still plenty of confusion on the topic and marketing personalities encouraging “creative” methods of incentivization. 

To be clear, any form of incentivization is viewed as bad practice, and, in some cases, you might even get your account flagged publicly as one that engages in it—as seen on Yelp. In September 2022, Google updated its guidelines in a bid to crack down on businesses using incentives to get reviews.

With that terse disclaimer ringing in our ears, then, just how many businesses are still doing it? 

This one was a bit of a shocker! After the percentages of consumers who recalled being offered incentives fell in 2020 (which likely came as a result of the pandemic instead of any moral changes to incentivization) our findings show the practice is still very much alive and kicking. More worrying is the significant increase in consumers being offered cash in exchange for business reviews (from 6% in 2021 to 12% in 2022).

For the first time this year, we also added ‘prize draw entry’ and ‘loyalty points’ as options for incentivization methods. While they may seem harmless or more of a “gray area”, it’s important to note that these methods technically count as incentives for customers as they are being offered something in exchange for leaving a review. 

Summary

Apart from a few significant trend changes, our comparable results reflect a similar pattern year on year, so we can assume that what was important to consumers in 2022 is still important today. And we can’t expect too much to change in just a year, right?

What does stick out, though, is that while consumers remain aware of issues with fake reviews, there has been a positive shift in how consumers are engaging with review content. This means not just taking top-level details at face value but judging the detail and feeling confident in spotting fake content. We’ve summarised some key takeaways from this year’s Local Consumer Review Survey for you to consider within your local marketing and review strategies.

Key Takeaways for Businesses

• Email is the most effective way to ask your customers to leave a review, so make sure your emails stand out amongst the fierce competition for your inbox.
• Consumers are more than twice as likely to consider using your business if they can see you actively responding to positive and negative reviews—ensure you take the time to craft authentic responses.
• Consider how review keywords and snippets could work for your business. Is there something that your business is particularly well-known for? Can you get consumers talking about it?
• Consumers are more compelled to write and act upon positive reviews, so assessing where you can be going above and beyond to incite emotional responses within your customers is key.
• 65% of consumers will leave a review at least some of the time if asked, so consider how you can encourage your teams to ask for feedback and send timely requests via email. Don’t ask, don’t get!
• Ensure your business has a presence on video and social channels like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, as plenty of consumers go there for business information. Instagram utilizes business information on its maps discovery feature, so check your details are accurate.

Thanks for reading the Local Consumer Review Survey 2023! Tell us what you think—you can tweet us @BrightLocal or leave a comment below.

Methodology and More Information

BrightLocal has been conducting the Local Consumer Review Survey since 2010. We repeat many of the same questions year on year to measure changes in behavior, and occasionally introduce new questions to reflect the continually evolving landscape of consumer reviews.

Sample Considerations

A representative sample of 1,117 US-based consumers was used to conduct the Local Consumer Review Survey in January 2023. The survey was distributed to an independent consumer panel via SurveyMonkey, in which age group breakdowns and gender are balanced.

However, it is significant to note that SurveyMonkey’s consumer panels only consider participants that identify as male or female and therefore do not consider where participants may identify outside of binary genders. Additionally, no consumers under the age of 18 participated in this survey.

Using Our Data

Publications and individuals are welcome to use the survey findings, charts, and data, provided BrightLocal is credited and linked to via this page’s URL. If you have any questions about this year’s report, please contact the content team, or leave a comment below.

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