The Importance of Reviews: 9 Key Benefits of Online Reviews for Businesses
Last updated on October 22nd, 2025
Online reviews are more important than ever for local businesses. They’re highly trusted and used by pretty much every industry, with huge benefits for boosting everything from SEO to sales.
The benefits of online reviews for local businesses span a number of different areas, but key to their usefulness is that they offer social proof, are used as a reference point for local consumers seeking trustworthy local businesses, and are a known local SEO ranking factor.
Broadly speaking, these advantages can be split into two camps: increased visibility and increased sales.
What are the benefits of online reviews for customers?
Let’s explore the benefits of online reviews, and learn how reviews can be used to drive local business success.
1. Reviews are often used by customers when searching for local businesses
Small businesses are especially well-placed to benefit from positive reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, or Facebook. Our annual research into online review trends finds that 96% of consumers read reviews when looking for local businesses, with 29% saying they use reviews every time.
This means that a strong review profile can help highlight your excellence, especially as consumers will see your reviews when they’re looking at your products or services. If your customers go looking for reviews and there are none to look at (or worse, only bad ones!) they might move on to the next business.
2. Reviews help customers trust businesses
Reviews are a vital tool in establishing trust among customers, which is essential for beating competitors to sales, bookings, or subscriptions. 63% of consumers lose trust in a business after seeing mostly negative reviews—a pretty sizable chunk of your potential new customers. Positive feedback shows that a business delivers on its promises, helping customers feel confident choosing you over competitors even if they haven’t heard of your brand before.
When shopping or researching online there’s no salesperson to question, so online reviews from peers provide valuable information about the company, product, or service. 42% of people trust reviews as much as recommendations from a friend or family member, while 27% trust them as much as articles penned by subject-matter experts.
Reviews give shoppers confidence when it comes to making a purchase, with average star ratings, volume of reviews, detail offered in reviews, length of reviews, and recency all enhancing confidence levels.
3. Positive reviews win new customers and drive sales
Trusting a review isn’t a passive action and doesn’t happen in isolation. When consumers trust online reviews, they tend to do something next. That action could cover anything from calling the store, visiting the location, buying online, or making a booking.
Think of the relationship between positive reviews and new business as a revenue relationship. The better your review profile, the more revenue you could potentially earn.
Having a range of good reviews gives you a head start in the race to secure business over a competitor. 55% of consumers won’t use a business with fewer than four stars, while 85% wouldn’t consider using a business with less than three stars.
One oft-cited study found that an increase of one star in a restaurant’s Yelp rating increased revenue by 5-9%. While this study is a little out of date, it’s no big leap to assume that the link between online reviews and revenue growth still remains.
4. Reviews give businesses a chance to connect with customers
For many consumers, how you respond to reviews is very telling and can make or break the reputation they’re building of your brand. Consumers are twice as likely to use a business that responds to every review than one that ignores them completely.
Responding to reviews gives you a chance to interact with your customers, thank them for their business, learn from their experiences, and express your company culture to potential shoppers. How you handle negative reviews can also be positive as you’re demonstrating that you take customer feedback seriously.
5. Reviews help businesses get better
Online reviews are inherently valuable because they put you in your customer’s shoes. This gives you real-world insights into how your business can better serve those it relies on for survival. While they’re the reviews that all business owners dread, negative reviews can actually be the most useful of all.
If you run a hotel and guest reviews routinely mention ‘slow check-in’, for example, you have a heads-up that your process likely needs fine-tuning to ensure a more positive first impression.
6. Reviews help build your reputation beyond your website
Consumers rarely start their search on your site or at your business location. Instead, they turn to platforms like Google, Yelp, Tripadvisor, Facebook, or Angi to compare local options. And what do these platforms have in common? Reviews for businesses!
Collecting online reviews across these sites helps you reach customers in the discovery phase, not just those who already know your business. These reviews don’t just build credibility for people looking at your listings—they also influence how you rank on many of these platforms.
Once you have a strong review profile, make the most of it in your marketing. Showcase positive reviews on your website as social proof, feature them in email campaigns, and share them on social channels. Don’t wait for potential customers to stumble across your reputation: put it front and center on every channel they use.
7. Reviews impact local SEO rankings
We’ve established that consumers love reviews and, in many cases, use a good or bad review to validate their decision to do business with you. Search engines also take a similar stance.
It should come as no surprise that reviews and SEO are closely linked because they have much the same objective. A search engine wants to help its users find the right product, service, or information in the timeliest manner possible. One of the key benefits of reviews is to help consumers find the best local business for their needs.
Having a strong local SEO presence is non-negotiable if you want to ensure the long-term success of your business, and this is one reason why reviews are important for online visibility.
According to the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, reviews play an important role in ranking in the local pack in Google search results. Google considers the relevance, distance, and prominence of a business when deciding which listings to show first, with reviews impacting its assessment on prominence.
Having reviews on a number of review platforms, lots of positive sentiment, and having keywords within the text of reviews are all used by search engines when deciding rankings. Sterling Sky also found a significant link between rankings and how recently reviews were gained, even if the business already had a strong review profile.
Google confirms that the star rating and frequency of the reviews your business receives makes a difference to your search position: “High-quality, positive reviews from your customers can improve your business visibility.”
8. Reviews influence AI responses
Reviews are also increasingly shaping the way AI tools like ChatGPT and other large language models provide recommendations for local businesses.
When consumers ask AI-powered tools for recommendations, responses are built on a range of data sources including business listings, reviews, and business’s own websites.
BrightLocal research found that LLMs use reviews from Yelp, Google Business Profile, and other sources to form responses, with Yelp being used as a source in a third of all searches with local intent. This means that having strong, fresh reviews across multiple general and niche platforms increases your chances of being surfaced in AI-driven recommendations.
Appearing in AI results matters for local businesses because it increases visibility to customers who rely on AI tools, potentially driving new leads, calls, or visits. As AI search becomes part of the consumer discovery journey, reviews are more important than ever. They don’t just help humans make decisions; they help machines too.
9. Reviews unlock Google Ads
A strong review profile can also boost your advertising efforts. For Google Ads, you’ll need at least 100 reviews and a minimum 3.5-star rating to activate the shop ratings ad extension.
Star ratings and reviews also have an impact on rankings within Local Services Ads, with businesses with higher star ratings and more reviews booking more jobs, according to Google.
How businesses can improve online reviews
Reviews will happen whether or not you make them a priority for your business. We live in an age where consumers treat online reviews as the norm, rely on them to make purchase decisions, and create an impression of new businesses.
There’s no doubt that consumer expectations are high in this area, and that can be daunting for any local business owner or marketer. You need a constant influx of reviews, a high quantity of reviews, new reviews added daily to compensate for older reviews losing value, and even available resources for responding to reviews.
Build a 5-star Reputation
Collect, monitor, and respond to reviews with ease
If you want a stronger review profile, to improve online reviews and maximize the benefits of online reviews for your business:
- Deliver memorable service: Going the extra mile encourages glowing feedback that surprises and delights your customers.
- Ask at the right moment: A friendly follow-up email, text, or thank-you note with a review link to your preferred review sites makes it simple for happy customers to share their experience.
- Keep reviews fresh: Consistently adding new reviews keeps your business active, trusted, and top-of-mind.
- Respond with care: Thank customers for positive reviews and show you’re listening by handling negative feedback thoughtfully.
- Manage reviews with ease: BrightLocal’s Reputation Manager helps you monitor new reviews, respond quickly, get more reviews, and showcase your best customer feedback.
Ultimately, understanding why reviews are important, embracing the benefits of online reviews, and managing reviews for businesses helps you build trust and attract more customers.
