Google reviews survey.

The impact of local business ratings on consumer behaviour

Welcome to the findings of the first major survey on Google business reviews and their impact on local businesses!

Online reviews of local businesses are a metaphor for your customers' experience in public view, often accompanied by rating symbols (such as stars). Local business reviews facilitate two-way conversations and feedback between businesses and customers, are strong part of a brand's reputation and influence Google's local ranking factors, as after Google My Business, reviews are the most powerful ranking factor in organic search results on local maps.

This research seeks to understand habits and behaviours those who write the reviews, those who read them and the business owners who respond to them.

15 of our favourite key findings from this survey

• The 96% of the people reads reviews.
• To measure confidence, the 86% of consumers says that the reviews is either "the most Important" or "somehow" important factor.
• Only 11% of consumers trust brand messages over public sentiment
• 52% of respondents say that the negative reviews they made came from false or incorrect business information online.
• The 50% of consumers lose confidence if it appears that owners or employees are evaluating their own business.
• After reading the reviews, the 91% of consumers' next steps is to visit the business's website, physical location, or contact them directly via call or message.
• The 65% of respondents writes negative reviews due to rude or poor customer service.
• The 40% of customers accept prohibited or illegal review requests.
• 39% of those who wrote a review have not received any requests to review this review in the last 5 years
• If asked, more than half of your customers will always or usually write a review.
• The main reason that customers do not evaluate your business is because they forget.
• Consumers, over 90%, are moderately or extremely influenced by owners' responses to reviews.
• The 62% of customers who left a negative review would give a second chance to a local brand, as long as the owner's response was sincere in their desire to resolve the problem that led to the negative review.
• 63% consumers will revise the negative review or low star rating once the owner's response resolves their complaint.

Methodology

In September 2022, 1000+ people were surveyed asking them 34 questions about their engagement with local business reviews. The survey consisted of 17 questions each about reading and writing local business reviews. The survey itself was conducted by a third party and then the data and responses were analysed by the same team. The findings were divided into 3 main categories of analysis - the attitudes of review readers, the attitudes of review writers and the strength of owners' responses.

Respondents were asked appropriate questions to ensure that they a) read local business reviews and b) wrote local business reviews. Due to the nature of the questions, respondents were not required to answer every question. This was done to allow people who read reviews, but did not write them, to continue to participate in the survey. The question with the most total responses received responses from 1,314 respondents and the question with the fewest responses received 1,084 responses.

The survey began with a group of 1336 respondents, 1255 of whom qualified to proceed with the survey based on the criteria used to read local business reviews. In addition, 1086 respondents said they also write reviews, giving them the criteria to complete the questions in the second part of the survey.

Participants resided in all geographic regions and provided age ranges of 18-29 (21%), 30-44 (25%), 45-60 (36%) and 60+ (18%).

Full Google Reviews Survey Results

We are pleased to share with you the full findings of our research, organized into three categories - the attitudes of those who read reviews, the attitudes of those who write reviews, and the power of local business owners' responses.

First finding: The attitudes of those who read the reviews.

Source: Moz