Google reviews have been an essential component of online reputation management for several years now. We expect this to become more important in 2025 and beyond.
Continue reading to learn more about current trends with Google reviews, including ways to improve them for your business soon.
Photos Reviews are King
Google reviews that contain a photo tend to earn “top” review status much more often than photo-less reviews. These garner the “most relevant” status often whenever a customer includes a photo of a delicious restaurant meal or even a picture of the beautiful business interior.
Of course, not all photos are good news since customers can leave photographic evidence of what they considered poor service as well. These can be some of the most difficult reviews, striking hard against your online reputation.
Thankfully, there are ways to damage control negative reviews.
What Do You Do with Negative Feedback?
Critical reviews will hurt you one of two ways: 1) your review score will suffer, and 2) people read them and might be repulsed by your business. That latter part might sound harsh, but this happens even if it was a dishonest comment. Other readers notice it and immediately associate a red flag with your business.
Therefore, you must manage negative feedback.
There are also those dreaded “fake reviews,” which inevitably affect even the best businesses. While you may not always have terrific recourse against them, Google permits you to report them with its management tool. At the risk of complicating things further, you should also guard against fake positive reviews, something that can lead to various Google penalties as well.
Do You Need a Four-Star Review Score?
Yes, you must reach at least this level for many reasons, but most importantly because the four-star status is the minimum barrier for better SEO. In a nutshell, you can only earn a “top” or “best” status, in your business category, by obtaining at least that score.
Some research suggests you should aim for about a 4.7-star aggregate (rather than a perfect five) as customers consider this more believable and substantial. This assumes you have a decent volume of reviews.
How to Attract Better Reviews
You don’t need us to tell you why it’s important to have a more consistent flow of excellent reviews on Google. There’s a lot that contributes to this, but we’ll mention a few proven strategies for getting stronger local SEO in 2025.
- Get good reviews from employees
- Send customers “thank you” notes and request their feedback
- Be careful not to not directly incentivize positive reviews with customers (Google penalizes this)
- Trade positive reviews with other local businesses
Conquer Google Reviews Problems with Better Reputation Management
If all of this sounds difficult or time-consuming, then don’t worry because there are ways to lighten the burden. It’s time to hire a full-time marketing partner to help you address bad reviews, fake reviews, and anything else hindering your business’s online media empire.
DigiSphere Marketing offers a comprehensive strategy for handling every online marketing component: reputation management, improving SEO, getting more out of pay-per-click ads, and more. It’s always better to travel with a guide anywhere you go, which is no less true for marketing your business online. Contact us soon to discover how to hit a five-star review score, build a better website, attract consistent organic traffic, and score more conversions.
