GatherUp has just completed an outstanding reputation study of 15,000 local business locations across multiple industries in order to get some YOY comparative data between 2023 and 2024. The findings have yet to be published. VP of Marketing, Mél Attia, will be speaking and writing about the many valuable takeaways gleaned from this deep dive into proprietary data, but today, I’m inviting you to examine just one stat Mél has shared with me that might surprise you. I also have an experiment I’d suggest you run in the near future with the reviews of any local brand you market.
Standard owner response best practice advice
I can instantly reel off half a dozen good reasons for most local search marketers to recommend that brands large and small set the goal of responding to as many of their reviews as possible, including:
Customer service – 92% of consumers now consider owner responses to reviews as being essential to brands providing good customer service. Ignoring this form of outreach from the public is like walking away from a customer who is trying to speak to you at your premises. (Source: Beyond the Stars: How American Consumers Use Reviews to Choose Local Business)
Complaint resolution – From the same source, if you don’t respond to negative reviews, your business will miss the opportunity to earn a second chance from 73% of unhappy customers.
Trust factors – Also from the same source, 82% of consumers are more likely to choose a business that is actively responding to its reviews.
Engagement factors – Though no study I’m aware of has proven that owner responses are a local search ranking factor (interesting discussion here at the Local Search Forum) they should certainly be seen as a source of increasing user engagement. Engagement signals as a ranking factor took on an even more fascinating narrative last year following the Google API leak. Reviewers who are notified that your brand responded to their reviews have good reason to re-engage with your Google Business Profiles. (Source: SparkToro)
Content marketing – Also on the topic of engagement, a review corpus that contains responses to all sentiment doubles the content its local business listings contain. Responsive brands basically create an open book which can demonstrate to the public that the business is operational, active, professional, accessible, communicative, responsible, and caring. Owner responses provide a wealth of reading material uniquely capable of influencing consumers to choose the brand on the basis of its gratitude for praise and reliable troubleshooting when things go wrong.
Ranking factors
Apart from taking good care of customers by responding to reviews, smart brands obsess about this particular aspect of reputation management, in part, because it’s associated with signals that are strongly believed to impact Google local pack rankings. The most recent edition of the Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors survey of respected Local SEOs finds that high numerical Google star ratings, quantity of native reviews, sustained influx of reviews over time, and review recency are among the top 20 influences on Google local pack rankings. It makes sense to try to increase these proposed ranking signals by exerting any influence that owner responses might have on them. (Source: Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors)
I could keep going here, but you get the idea: there’s a very strong case to be made for local businesses responding to all of their reviews on their Google Business Profiles and other listings. Thus, I think you’ll share my surprise over the stats I’m about to share from GatherUp’s new study.
Throwing a monkey wrench into the review response works
Key to the chart:
- Businesses that never respond to reviews earn an average of 4 new reviews per month, have an ROI of 11 new reviews per 100 requests, and an average Net Promoter Score of 76.
- Businesses that respond to less than half of their reviews earn an average of 7 new reviews per month, have an ROI of 17 new reviews per 100 requests, and an average Net Promoter Score of 74.
- Businesses that respond to more than half of their reviews earn an average of 2 new reviews per month, have an ROI of 9 new reviews per 100 requests, and an average Net Promoter Score of 85.
Does anything about these numbers surprise you?
How can it be that businesses responding to the most reviews are receiving fewer new reviews and have a lower ROI from review requests than companies that are responding to just some or none of their reviews?
Should you ditch best practice advice and stop responding to all your reviews?
While it makes sense that the most responsive companies have the highest NPS (a score that measures overall customer satisfaction over time and predicts business growth), why would less responsive brands be earning more reviews?
We have theories…
3 working theories on maximum owner responsiveness generating fewer reviews
A fakeness factor?
Could it be that brands which respond to the majority of their reviews look too good to be true? We’re wading into a very murky era of the internet, with the rise of AI and increasing alarm bells ringing over review fraud. Last year, we found that 60% of consumers lose trust in businesses they suspect are using AI to generate owner responses, and I recently highlighted a prediction from the Transparency Company that Google Business Profiles could be featuring more fake reviews than real ones by the end of 2026.
Multiple surveys over the years have indicated that consumers feel there is something suspicious about Google Business Profiles (GBPs) with perfect 5-star average ratings. Could this wariness be extending into the territory of owner responses, with the public finding it difficult to believe that any business would invest in achieving a near-perfect rate of response? What do you think? @Gatherup on Linkedin with your take.
A snark and spam deterrent?
Because GBPs permit a significant degree of reviewer anonymity, some individuals have come to see reviews as a space for sounding off in an extreme way about nearby businesses without any type of guardrails. Some reviewers write rude things they might never say to a business owner or staff member in a face-to-face engagement. Meanwhile, weaknesses in Google’s review system have long made it a playground for individual and professional spammers.
Could it be that a vigorous rate of owner responses is a discouragement to both groups? Might confrontation-averse, unhappy customers be less inclined to blast a brand with a negative review if they’re certain of hearing back from its owner? Likewise, could it be that spammers see profiles with a high rate of response as being less easy prey? After all, such businesses would likely be more active about reporting fraud in hopes of removal or even litigation, making them a riskier and less attractive spam opportunity.
In other words, could local businesses that respond to the majority of customer sentiment be receiving fewer overall reviews, in part, because they are deterring some of the most heated and/or fraudulent content? What do you think?
An artefact of superlative in-person service?
When a local business has so mastered the art of building a one-on-one relationship with me, I feel zero need to take to online reviews as a proxy for communicating with them in person.
I can give a real-world example. Do they have those bumper stickers in your part of the world that urge you to “know your farmer”, or is that just a California thing? At any rate, my favorite local business in the world is run by my neighboring farmer. He knows me by name, has let me photograph elements of his business for my work as a fine artist, he sends delightful people to my door laden with the best organic produce in town, his staff have voluntarily taken out my garbage when they were passing through, and I have sent them thank-you notes and holiday tips just to show how much I appreciate them. All of this has occurred offline in the real world.
At GatherUp, we’ve made a study of the motivations of reviewers, and as you can see from the above chart, 72% leave this form of feedback as a reward for great service, 60% use the medium to warn their communities of bad service, and a noteworthy 31% turn to reviews when their complaints haven’t been resolved.
Could it be that the brands which are responding to the maximum number of reviews are so on top of their game that they are also building the kinds of meaningful relationships with their customers that my farmer has with me, obviating the need for anyone to take to the web to have their say?
If I tell my farmer that the oranges I bought last time were sort of sour, he’s very likely to throw some free apples into my next order, and as for thanking him for making my life so much better with his produce, I do it every time we speak. Could a partial explanation for review falloff in the context of a high rate of response reside somewhere in scenarios like these? What do you think?
A worthwhile owner response experiment for you
Hopefully, the stats and theories I’ve shared here have intrigued you enough to want to investigate the influence your own rate of owner response is having on your own rate of review acquisition. Every business is unique, and best practices should always be seen as general, rather than specific, guidelines for the local brands you are promoting. To that end, why not try this experiment:
Pick three months in the year in which a business you’re marketing typically experiences roughly the same volume of sales. This might be three months in the summer, or three months at some other point in the year, depending on your vertical and operations.
During month one, respond to every single review you receive. During month two, respond to less than half of the reviews you receive. During month three, respond to zero reviews (this is the one risky part of this experiment in the event of receiving a negative review, which is why I’m making this month three so that you could at least follow up in month four).
In month four, look at your results across the three months. Do they match the findings of our study, or have you discovered a different pattern for your unique business? Whatever your takeaways, they should be seen as valuable information.
If you’d like to throw Net Promoter Score into the mix of your experiment, GatherUp can help, and we’d love to hear the outcomes of any tests you do.
How I will advise clients about review responsiveness going forward
Let’s go back to our initial question: should you not be responding to all local business reviews, despite long-standing best practice advice? If you undertake the above experiment, you’ll have a custom, data-based answer to this question, but as for me, I’m going to continue to advise local brands to be optimally responsive.
Why? Because, to my mind, the customer service, complaint resolution, trust, engagement, and content marketing factors I’ve outlined today outweigh the potential ranking factors I’ve mentioned. I’d rather have better customer experience signals and more business-authored content on my local business profiles than a higher review count, even though that count is considered a ranking factor.
I’d love to know what you think of this equation, and how your business or agency plans to move forward with responses. When we commit to learning reputation management together, we all get smarter.
