Do Google Reviews Help SEO? How Your Customers’ Ratings Affect Your Rankings

We’ve all experienced it. That final plea as you conclude a transaction with a business:

Don’t forget to leave us a review on Google! We would really appreciate it, if you enjoyed your experience with us, if you would give us five stars.

We’ve done it at GYBO Marketing, asking clients to leave a review of their experience with us. We’re grateful that they have been overwhelmingly positive. To date, 25 people have left reviews, all of them choosing that coveted five-star rating.

While sites like Yelp and Tripadvisor continue to have significant influence in certain industries, Google Reviews is the undisputed leader in consumer reviews. Studies have shown that nearly all consumers read reviews before deciding whether to make a purchase, and seven out of ten start with Google Reviews. On average, a customer reads 10 reviews before their decision.

But a solid collection of five-star Google Reviews isn’t just a digital stamp of approval. The feedback your customers provide, and the way you respond to it, is also a powerful, often overlooked tool for your SEO strategy.

Google Reviews and local SEO

Local SEO is built on three pillars:

• Proximity: How close is a business to your current location?
• Relevance: Does a business offer the product or service you’re seeking?
• Prominence: How well-known and trusted is this business?

Google Reviews have a significant impact on how the search engine gauges a business’s prominence. A high volume of positive ratings signals that the business is a significant part of the community, which helps improve both its ranking in search results and the likelihood of audiences to click through to further information on its products and services. Furthermore, a consistent stream of new and positive reviews — having a steady line of customers who answer the call to leave a five-star review — tells Google that your business is currently active and popular.

The hidden SEO within Google Reviews

Google doesn’t just take the star rating into consideration; it also crawls the text. The search engine’s algorithm identifies keywords that are frequently mentioned by customers. Even if your business’s website isn’t optimized for these terms, customer reviews can help bridge this gap.

Once a business starts to amass enough reviews, its Google Business Profile will start making this SEO information readily visible to audiences. This includes::

• Bolded Snippets: Google bolds terms within reviews that match a user’s search intent.
• Place Topics: Google aggregates common phrases into clickable buttons, allowing people to peruse the reviews that include these phrases — which can relate to both a business’s services and its qualities. GYBO Marketing, for example, has 14 reviews that mention our SEO service as well as place topics that include “expertise,” “performance goals,” and “online presence.”
• AI Summaries: With the rise of AI, Google now uses review text to generate summaries of your business, often highlighting your best features alongside a more negative caveat or two. 

Google Reviews can help boost a business’s SEO rankings by connecting a relevant search query to a person seeking that product or service. For example, if a customer praises a plumber for “emergency plumbing repairs,” Google is significantly more likely to recommend that plumber to the next person typing that exact phrase into search.

Does responding to Google Reviews help SEO?

Interacting with reviews — thanking people for positive feedback and addressing the issues raised in negative reviews — is well worth the effort. This engagement provides a clear signal to Google that your business is operational and connected to its customers.

While you should never try to stuff your replies with keywords, naturally citing a product or service can provide additional context for Google. A response like, “We’re so glad our emergency plumbing services could help you!” reinforces the relevance of this specific service.

In addition, responding to a bad review can help reduce its prominence. When a business makes the good-faith effort to resolve an issue raised by a review, Google is less likely to highlight the negative sentiment.

While you can’t remove a Google Review simply because it’s negative, you can dispute reviews that are irrelevant, harassing, deceptive, or otherwise malicious. While this process has less of a direct effect on your SEO, its indirect effect is huge. Clearing out these types of review will help preserve your overall rating, ensuring that the business does not get filtered out when customers search only for high-ranking options.

Ready to learn more about how GYBO Marketing can assist with your SEO strategy and other marketing services? Check out our services page to learn more.