What Matters in Online Reviews?
Last updated on February 12th, 2026
All online reviews are valuable (both good and bad) but not all reviews are created equally. Today’s consumers exhibit a high level of review awareness, with 97% saying they read reviews every time they look for a local businesses.
What’s more, research shows that reviews can directly influence a shopper’s decision to purchase when displayed alongside product information — but, it’s not enough to simply have a lot of reviews. Consumers (and Google’s local SEO algorithm) look for specific elements within a review to aid them in their assessment of a local business.
The Average Star Rating
It should come as no surprise that 31% of consumers will only use a business that has 4.5+ stars.
The average star rating a local business has on a review platform is an important metric, as it speaks to the quality of the product or service being offered.
Average ratings tend to appear very prominently at the top of a business profile, meaning it could be all too easy for a consumer to make a snap judgement about the quality of your local business if you have a low average rating. As review averages are based on a crowdsourced metric, a low average rating can paint a very bad picture of your business.
A higher average rating immediately suggests that the consumer won’t be disappointed in their choice. It suggests that the business offers a great customer experience and high-quality products or services.
Correspondingly, too many negative experiences result in a low average star rating, which indicates that the business perhaps doesn’t prioritize customer care or delivering value. Naturally, if you have a much lower star rating than a rival, a local consumer will question whether they should use your business and risk a bad experience or opt for the higher-rated alternative.
Overall Review Sentiment: Positive or Negative
Much like the average star rating, the overall sentiment of a review (whether positive or negative) is an important factor that speaks to the quality of the consumer experience.
Many review platforms provide a snippet of text from the review alongside the star rating, so having a positive overall sentiment can reinforce the impact of the star rating. 56% of consumers say a positive overall sentiment matters to them when reading a review, so this is an important factor to keep in mind.
Authenticity
Fake reviews remain a major concern for consumers and businesses. Misleading feedback can influence decisions and even lead to wasted money. With new regulations in place, fake reviews finally face scrutiny, with consumers expecting action from review sites and significant punishments for wrongdoers. In fact, 97% of consumers think businesses should face punishment for fake reviews.
We’ve been tracking whether consumers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations for over 15 years. While trust in reviews has fluctuated over time, it still sits at a significant 49% today. That means nearly half of consumers place as much trust in the views of strangers online as they do in the people they know, underlining just how influential reviews remain in the decision-making process.
Authenticity matters — not just for consumers to build those vital levels of trust, but to review platforms and search engines, too. While review site guidelines vary from site to site, they all regulate against fake reviews and most have policies in place to report fake reviews, including Google.
Review Recency Matters, Too
Given the proliferation of reviews, older reviews can easily be judged to be less relevant to local consumers, as they don’t speak to current local consumer experiences. Our research shows that 74% of consumers only care about reviews written in the last three months.
Related: Free Online Video Course – ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Generating and Managing Reviews‘
Many platforms also allow users to filter reviews to show the newest first, meaning it’s important to have a steady stream of new reviews being published for your business.
Business Response to Reviews
Responding to reviews matters to consumers and Google alike, so this is a core component of building a strong review profile. Data shows that 89% of consumers expect business owners to respond to reviews, with 19% expecting a same-day response and 81% expecting a response within a week.
Google too makes it clear that responses are a core component of local business reviews, saying that responses from a business can help to build consumer trust. Review responses additionally form part of local search ranking signals and can impact search visibility.
From a business perspective, responding to the review can allow you to give additional context to the comments, such as in the example below, and showcase your appreciation for your reviewer’s time and feedback.
Reviews with Photos
User-generated content such as imagery is proven to be an important aid for shoppers when deciding whether to go ahead with a purchase. As a multi-media format, it adds rich detail to text-based information and can help consumers visualize the experience they’re likely to receive.
For local businesses with brick-and-mortar locations open to customers, such as bars and restaurants, images within reviews can be especially useful.
This is underlined by data from 2022 confirming that 40% of local consumers consider images to be an important part of a review.
Quantity of Reviews
If you think of reviews as a form of crowdsourced recommendations, it’s easy to see why the number of reviews you have matters. Having just one or two reviews may not give a local consumer the level of confidence they need to choose your business, as it could be that there simply isn’t enough opinion there to base a decision on.
By contrast, a large number of reviews demonstrates a broader depth of sentiment. This means that a strong average star rating from a large number of reviews can be taken as a measure that many people find your offering to be of good quality, thereby increasing trust. This is supported by data confirming that 47% of consumers won’t use a business that has fewer than 20 reviews.
Visibility Across a Number of Review Sites
Having a good level of diversity in your review profile, with reviews across a number of different review sites, also matters. Google has always been the standout source for reviews, but in 2026, its share has dipped from 83% in 2025 to 71%. Video platforms are on the rise, with YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok all gaining traction. But the use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local recommendations has grown rapidly, rising from 6% last year to 45% and becoming the third most popular source of business recommendations.
Not all consumers research businesses the same way, so maintaining a broad presence across multiple platforms ensures you aren’t invisible to potential customers.
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Diverse User Habits: If a consumer avoids Facebook but relies on Google, Yelp, or TripAdvisor, you need a footprint there to capture their attention.
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The Rise of AI and LLMs: Modern consumers are increasingly using Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT or Gemini, to ask for recommendations. These AI models pull data from a wide variety of review aggregates to form their answers.
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The Risk of Silos: Focusing purely on one platform, like Facebook, creates a blind spot. You won’t just miss out on direct site traffic; you also risk being overlooked by AI discovery tools that prioritize businesses with a strong, multi-platform reputation.
