Topic: How to get more Google customer reviews

Business owners and operators need to know what their customers think about shopping at their stores, whether it is a brick and mortar shop or an online store offering the same products and services. Knowing what your customers think can help you better shape your business and policies. This is where Google customer reviews can help.

Why do Google customer reviews matter?

Online customer reviews have emerged as one of the most important digital marketing tools, especially for small businesses that want to compete with much larger corporations. The best part is, your company does not have to do much of the work except encourage customers to leave their favorable impressions about your business on one or more of the leading customer review sites.

If you still aren’t convinced that online customer reviews matter for promoting your products and services, let’s look at a few statistics to seal the case for receiving online customer reviews.

• More than 95 percent of consumers read at least one customer review for a local business.
• Around 90 percent of consumers use online reviews to make buying decisions.
• 97% of consumers read the responses businesses leave to customer reviews.
• The minimum star rating on a scale of one to five a typical consumer accepts for a business is 3.3.
• 67% of consumers leave a review after asked to by a business.

Google reviews and search engine benefits

Google has dominated the search engine market for years. The company has recently placed much more emphasis on how its algorithm calculates search engine results.

Although YouTube videos and social media sites have gained more prominence in how Google ranks businesses, the company’s own customer review site has morphed into one of the most important search engine ranking factors.

The typical local business compiles 39 Google customer reviews, with local businesses showing up on the highly coveted local SEO results acquiring an average of 47 Google customer reviews.

Local businesses average 4.4 out of five stars on Google My Business, while just five percent of local businesses have an average review rating of fewer than three stars.

Topic Discussed: How to get more Google customer reviews

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