Reviews and local ranking

How reviews feed Google's prominence factor and the click decisions searchers make in the map pack, and which review signals an event business can honestly influence. You will learn to measure your review gap against local competitors and build a monthly routine that keeps your profile current.

Read the transcript

Reviews and local ranking.

Reviews do two jobs in local search.

They help decide whether your profile appears in the map pack at all, and they help decide whether anyone taps it when it does.

Where reviews sit in the ranking.

Lesson 1 introduced Google's three local ranking factors: relevance, distance and prominence.

Reviews belong mainly to prominence.

The five review signals worth managing.

On detail, be careful.

You may help a client remember, but you may not write the review for them or tell them what to say.

Worked example: closing a review gap.

Lantern and Lane has 38 Google reviews with an average of 4.9.

Marco searches “wedding planner Toronto” from the west end and notes the three profiles that beat them in the map pack: 140 reviews, 95 reviews and 61 reviews.

Making reviews work on the page.

Reviews help beyond the profile itself.

The rain plan at the Humber River pavilion was a team effort, and your parents were heroes.” A reply like this tells future readers what you do and where, in natural language.

What damages review signals.

Some practices quietly hurt you even when they seem to help.

Twenty reviews in a week after two years of silence look unnatural, and Google's systems may filter some of them.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Explain how review count, rating, recency, detail and replies affect local visibility and clicks
• Calculate the review pace needed to close or hold a gap with competitors in your area
• Run a monthly review routine that strengthens ranking without breaking Google's rules or the Competition Act

Reviews do two jobs in local search. They help decide whether your profile appears in the map pack at all, and they help decide whether anyone taps it when it does. The second job is often the bigger one. A florist in third place with 80 recent, detailed reviews will win more calls than the florist in first place with nine reviews from four years ago.

Where reviews sit in the ranking

Lesson 1 introduced Google’s three local ranking factors: relevance, distance and prominence. Reviews belong mainly to prominence. Google’s own help page on local ranking says prominence is partly based on “how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have”, and that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.” It also says positive reviews and helpful replies can help a business stand out.

Notice what Google does not say. It does not publish a formula, a minimum number of reviews or a target star rating. Anyone who claims to know the exact weight of reviews is guessing. What you can say with confidence is that reviews are one of the few prominence signals a small business controls week to week, and that they shape the searcher’s choice in plain sight.

The five review signals worth managing

On detail, be careful. You may help a client remember, but you may not write the review for them or tell them what to say. A good prompt is: “If a friend asked you what it was like working with us, what would you tell them?” Clients who answer that question tend to mention the venue, the occasion and the moment that mattered, in their own words.

Worked example: closing a review gap

Lantern & Lane has 38 Google reviews with an average of 4.9. Marco searches “wedding planner Toronto” from the west end and notes the three profiles that beat them in the map pack: 140 reviews, 95 reviews and 61 reviews. He checks the most recent reviews on each and estimates how many each gained in the past year.

• Competitor A: 140 reviews, about 36 in the last year, so 3 a month.
• Competitor B: 95 reviews, about 12 in the last year, so 1 a month.
• Competitor C: 61 reviews, about 24 in the last year, so 2 a month.

Lantern & Lane plans about 40 events a year. If they ask every client and 55 percent follow through, that is 40 x 0.55 = 22 reviews a year, or roughly 2 a month.

• Against C: 61 – 38 = 23 behind, and both gain 2 a month. The gap never closes on count alone.
• Against B: 95 – 38 = 57 behind, gaining 1 a month net. About 57 months to catch up on count.
• Against A: they fall further behind every month.

The lesson is not despair. It is that total count is a slow race, and recency is a fast one. In the past three months Lantern & Lane could show six fresh, detailed reviews while competitor B shows three. A searcher sees that difference immediately. Marco also adds a second lever: corporate clients, who review less often, now get a request after every debrief, which lifts follow-through toward 65 percent, or about 26 reviews a year.

Making reviews work on the page

Reviews help beyond the profile itself.

• Reply with specifics. “Thank you, Amira. The rain plan at the Humber River pavilion was a team effort, and your parents were heroes.” A reply like this tells future readers what you do and where, in natural language.
• Add photos to the profile from the same events. A review that mentions a winter wedding sits better beside a photo of it.
• Quote reviews on service pages with the reviewer’s first name and the occasion. Ask permission, as Module 11 explains. A coordination page with three coordination reviews is more convincing than a homepage carousel of everything.
• Read reviews for keywords. The phrases clients use in reviews, such as “stress-free”, “handled our vendors” or “knew the venue”, belong in your keyword map and your copy.

What damages review signals

Some practices quietly hurt you even when they seem to help.

• Bursts. Twenty reviews in a week after two years of silence look unnatural, and Google’s systems may filter some of them. Ask steadily instead.
• Reviews from one network. Reviews arranged among vendor friends, family or staff break Google’s policy on conflicts of interest and can be removed, along with the trust they were meant to build.
• Duplicate profiles. If an old profile for a previous address still exists, reviews may be split between the two. Report the duplicate to Google rather than starting fresh.
• Silence on bad reviews. An unanswered one-star review on a profile with few reviews dominates the impression. Answer it calmly, using the four-part reply from Module 11.
• Changing the business name. Adding keywords to the name to rank better can lead to suspension, and a suspended profile shows no reviews at all.

A monthly review routine

1. Count new reviews this month on Google and on any wedding or industry platform you use.
2. Check that every event finished this month triggered a review request.
3. Reply to any review without a reply.
4. Note your count and average rating, and the counts of your three map pack competitors, in a simple spreadsheet.
5. Copy any strong new phrase from reviews into your keyword map.
6. Pick one review to quote on a relevant service page, with permission.
7. Flag any review that genuinely breaks Google’s policies, and leave the rest to be answered.

In Canada and the GTA

The rules that frame everything above. Google’s Maps user-generated content policy says merchants may not offer incentives, such as payment, discounts, free goods or services, for posting a review or for changing or removing a negative one. Merchants may not discourage negative reviews or selectively solicit positive ones, which is the practice known as review gating, and content based on a conflict of interest, such as current or former employment, is prohibited. Module 11 covers these rules in detail, along with the request and reply scripts. For ranking purposes the point is simple: reviews obtained against the policy can be removed, and the time you spent collecting them is lost. Google’s help page on improving your local ranking is the authoritative statement of what reviews do, and it is worth rereading once a year.

Federal law on fake and connected reviews. The Competition Bureau has warned that “anyone who writes or permits writing reviews that give a false or misleading impression to consumers could be liable” under the Competition Act. Employees must disclose their connection when reviewing their employer or its competitors, even when their opinion is honest, and if the connection cannot be shown clearly, as with a star rating alone, they should not post. Read the Bureau’s notice on online reviews. In the event industry, the risk is less about invented reviews than about friendly ones: a DJ, a photographer and a florist who work the same weddings every weekend and review each other without saying so are creating the false impression the Bureau describes. Penalties for deceptive marketing under the Act can be very large, so a review swap is never worth it.

The GTA review calendar. Most wedding and outdoor event work in the GTA is concentrated between May and October, so review requests, and reviews, tend to cluster from June to November. Wedding reviews often arrive several weeks after the event, once the photos or video are delivered. Corporate reviews cluster in January, after the holiday party season. If you depend on one season, your profile can look dormant from February to May. Two habits help: ask winter clients as carefully as summer ones, including holiday parties, cultural celebrations and small weddings, and ask past clients you have not yet asked, within reason, if their event was recent enough that they remember the details.

Corporate clients and review policies. Many corporate contacts in Toronto’s financial, legal and public sectors are not permitted to post public reviews of suppliers in a personal capacity, or are uncomfortable doing so. Do not push. Ask instead whether they would give a short written testimonial you may quote on your website, or a LinkedIn recommendation. Neither counts toward your Google review total, but both help the corporate buyer who checks you before signing, and the corporate page of your website benefits from real quotes.

A multilingual region. GTA clients review in many languages. A review in Punjabi, Tamil, Tagalog, Portuguese, Mandarin or French is as valuable as one in English, and to a client from the same community it may be more valuable. Thank reviewers in their language if you can do so correctly, or in English with a short courteous line you are confident of. Do not run a sensitive reply through machine translation unchecked.

Competitor attacks and spam. Occasionally a profile receives a run of reviews from people who were never clients. Do not respond in kind or accuse a competitor in public. Flag each review through your Business Profile, keep screenshots with dates, and reply briefly that you cannot find a record of the event and invite the reviewer to contact you. If statements are false and damaging, speak to a lawyer before taking further steps.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check Google’s current policies and the Competition Bureau’s guidance for your situation.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)