Review Signal
Review volume, rating, recency and responses, taken together as a ranking and trust input.
A review signal is what search engines infer from a business's reviews taken together: how many there are, the average rating, how recent they are, and whether the business replies. In local search it is one of the strongest ranking inputs, and recency carries real weight — a strong average from three years ago counts for less than a steady stream of new ones.
Definition
Review signals span platforms — Google Business Profile above all, plus the industry-specific sites that matter in a given sector — and combine volume, average rating, velocity, recency, and the presence of owner responses.
A perfect five-star average from very few reviews reads as less credible than a 4.6 from several hundred, both to ranking systems and to people.
Why It Matters
For a local business, reviews are the closest thing to backlinks: hard to fake safely, visible to customers, and directly tied to where the listing appears in the map pack.
Example
Two competitors with the same average: one has 200 reviews with the latest last week, the other 40 with the latest in 2024. The first ranks and converts better.
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