Volume, recency and replies all feed local rankings. Here is how to build a review habit that keeps working, and what to avoid.
Reviews are the fastest moving ranking signal a local business controls. Volume matters, but recency and a steady flow now matter as much, which is why a business with 40 reviews from this year often outranks one with 200 from three years ago.
Reviews do double duty. They feed prominence, one of the three factors Google names, and they are the thing a human reads before deciding whether to call you at all.
A real example from this site: a new HVAC business went from 2 reviews to 13 in 45 days, and started appearing in organic local results as a result.
Google is looking at more than your star average. Volume, recency, velocity, the words used, and whether you reply all contribute.
Star average matters to humans more than to the algorithm. A 4.7 with 90 recent reviews usually beats a 5.0 with 6 old ones, both in ranking and in trust.
Most businesses do not have a review problem, they have an asking problem. The single biggest change is asking every customer, at the right moment, with a link that takes one tap.
A two van plumbing business added one line to the end of every job: "If you were happy with today, would you mind leaving a quick Google review? I will text you the link now." Roughly one in three customers followed through, which on 40 jobs a month is about 13 new reviews a month. Nothing else in the marketing changed.
A review from last week tells Google and a customer that you are still operating and still good. A review from 2022 tells them neither. Recency has risen faster than almost any other local signal in recent surveys.
This is also why review counts should never be a one off campaign. Thirty reviews in one week followed by silence looks unnatural and stops helping quickly. Four a week forever beats two hundred once.
Reply to everything, quickly, in your own words. Replies are visible to the next customer, and response behaviour is part of what Google assesses.
A handful of negative reviews with good replies is more credible than a perfect record. What damages you is silence, defensiveness, or a pattern nobody has fixed.
Review manipulation is the fastest way to lose everything you have built, and Google now removes policy violating reviews at enormous scale.
A review habit beats a review campaign every time.
Get in touch and I will set up the asking process, the templates and the tracking so reviews arrive every week without you chasing them.