Why does Google care if your business has online reviews?

Over the last decade we’ve come to expect handy guidance from ratings and reviews anytime we go online. Now Google expects them, too.

Maybe it’s because Amazon taught us to rely on ratings and reviews, or maybe it’s because we’ve always been social creatures, eager to hear about what others did when faced with similar decisions.

Maybe it’s because Google tends to show us search results that feature reviews and ratings.

Whatever the root cause, there’s no question that ratings and reviews help shoppers on their quest for the perfect purchase, or that they work wonders for businesses of just about any size.

Whether you need to improve your online reputation, create a feedback loop with your customers, step up your user-generated content game, or boost on-site conversions — a review strategy can help with all of that.

But perhaps the most underrated benefit of collecting reviews is that, when implemented properly, reviews can help Google better understand your site. That’s a huge win for organic SEO.

With more and more businesses emerging each day (who are, to say the least, also trying to stand out in organic search), ranking well in organic search results is a true asset for any business. And as brand equity and value starts to be less effective, better organic traffic is essential for businesses wanting to stay ahead.

When your potential customers are off consulting the internet for help making their next purchase, wouldn’t you want to put yourself right where they can see you? Anything that increases your placement on search engines is a huge win. And fortunately, there are a few great ways you can do this with customer reviews.

Reviews can help you rank higher in organic search results

Doing what you can to improve your organic Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking can really move the needle — without you needing to spend a time.

If we had to quantify the importance of your organic search ranking, a staggering 91.5% of organic traffic share goes to sites listed on the first page of results. Don’t shoot the messenger, but if you’re not ranking anywhere near the first page of results, you’re probably not getting seen in organic search.

Make no mistake. Ranking on the first page in Google SERPs is a challenge for businesses of all shapes and sizes, and it certainly doesn’t happen overnight. The good news is that other aspects of your broader marketing strategy, like review collection, can do double duty to help you with organic SEO.

And this isn't just referring to service reviews. This is product reviews as well. Product reviews give you rich snippets or Product Ratings on your product pages in search results as well. They can also give you more content for your pages, which will be shared across your domains. This means better SEO for your site by giving your more keywords that can help your SEO rankings.

How do we know that reviews and ratings are meaningful to the powers that be at Google in 2024?

According to Moz's Local Search Ranking Factors, review signals like quantity, velocity, and diversity came in as the 3rd most important factor in how Google ranks local businesses in its “Local Pack” SERP. That’s a pretty big deal, especially if you do a lot of local business.

And if you’re not a brick and mortar business, the SEO community believes you’ll still see serious SEO benefits from gathering reviews. Common understanding is that Google uses them to derive brand signals, which can boost your site’s domain authority and eventually your position in search.

Because Google’s goal is to serve up high quality and reputable results, they’re on the lookout brand signals that can help them separate the “brands” (who, among other indicators, have proof of a satisfied customer base) from the “generics” (the sites that Google classifies as having a poor user experience). This means that making your brand appear reputable to Google online increases your placement on search engines.

Simply put, Google appreciates when some of the guesswork around a website’s quality is done for them, so it’s a good idea to use independent (read: trusted) online platforms to gather reviews.

Reviews can help you in paid search results

Ok, so we’ve covered how reviews can help you climb to the top of organic search. But what about your paid search ads? After all, many businesses use paid search as one of their best avenues to find new customers. Easily optimizing your spend to get more out of your budgets seems like a no-brainer. 

Google store ratings show stars and rating numbers next to your Google Ads to show that you’re an advertiser that people trust. If you’re an online shopper, you’re already familiar with them.

To qualify for them, you need 100 reviews collected within the past month. You’ll also need an average of 3.5 stars or higher. If you have this, store ratings will automatically populate next to your ads, helping your business look more credible to the audience for your ads. You won’t be charged to use this automatic extension, you’ll just be charged when your ad gets clicked. 

Exact results on how effective store ratings are on your CTRs can be hard to find, but Google has said it’s as much as 10%. A 10% increase can have a big impact on the ROI of your campaigns, so we’d recommend any business should get to the threshold for Google Seller Ratings and test how well they work for your brand. 

There are also two reasons that might make store ratings even more appealing for your business: if all of your competitors have them or if none of them have them. If all of your competitors have them, when you show up in search you’re one of the only options without stars. This makes you look less credible to potential customers in search. And if none of them have them, this could be an easy way for you to stand out from the crowd.

The role of reviews in off-page SEO

In answering why Google cares about online reviews, we have to touch on the role reviews play in off-page SEO. As the name suggests, off-page SEO (also called off-site SEO) refers to the actions you take outside of your actual website to impact your rankings in organic search.

This is a high level look at how it works:

By incorporating some off-page SEO techniques into your overall strategy — like building a presence on social media and third-party review platforms — you signal to Google that you’re a brand that can be trusted.

Most businesses have an on-page SEO strategy to help with organic search, but fewer are spending significant energy on off-page opportunities. Pulling some key levers for off-page SEO could be the the thing that increases your placement on search engines and helps you rise to the top of organic search results.

Your presence on third-party review platforms can help you climb to the top of search

When people search for reviews of your brand, what do they find? Business profile pages on Trustpilot tend to appear as a top search result, often with Review Snippet stars, and are backed by the credibility of a review platform built for people and businesses.

But why do the Trustpilot profile pages tend to surface at the top of SERPs?

It all goes back to the concept of domain authority. We don’t mean to brag, but Trustpilot’s domain authority is strong. In fact, as of 2019, Trustpilot is among the top 1% of most visited sites in the world and 0.35% of all Google searches include a Trustpilot business profile page — and for some additional context, there are about 63,000 Google searches every second of every day.

The more reviews you get, and the more you enrich the content on your business profile page (think: company contact information, mission statement, social media profiles), the more content you provide for both search engines to associate your brand with ours, and show your profile page at the top of search results. And we offer dashboards to help you understand how reviews grow your bottom line with performance analytics by helping you see exactly how your reviews are impacting search.

Google changes. Reviews are likely here to stay.

According to Moz, off-site SEO-related factors like third-party reviews carry more than 50% of the ranking factor weight. Though search engines are constantly evolving, factors like relevance, trustworthiness, and authority will likely always play a role in a page’s ability to rank, and building up your online presence with reviews can help businesses crush all three of those criteria.

At the end of the day, you want both your customers and Google to think of you as a brand. You can make all the on-page SEO optimizations you want, but Google will still be looking out for your brand’s reputation on third-party platforms.

An ever-improving brand reputation

Most businesses spend a lot of time optimizing their websites for what they think Google wants to see, but what your customers want to see is still incredibly important. When a person searches for reviews of your company, they’re looking for a neutral third-party source of information.

Profiles on third-party review sites like Trustpilot tend to rank highly thanks to their strong domain authority, helping them stand out in organic search. They’re a great way to highlight your reputation to potential customers.

Choosing to build your online presence on a platform that’s likely to appear at the top of search is an advantage. But choosing a review platform known for transparency and openness is the fast track to a brand reputation that consumers can not only easily find, but also easily trust.

If you want to learn more, here are some other useful links that will help you get started improving your organic search performance with online reviews.

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