Most business owners think of reviews purely as reputation management. They matter for ranking too, in three specific ways:
- Review count and velocity — a steady stream of new reviews signals an active, trustworthy business.
- Review recency — a profile with reviews from three years ago and nothing since looks stale to Google.
- Review content — reviews that mention your services and location in natural language reinforce your relevance for those searches.
The fix isn’t asking for reviews once and hoping. It’s building a repeatable system so every satisfied customer gets a simple, low-friction request.