Not Ranking in Google Maps? Your Review Strategy Could Be To Blame

On Google’s official website, it states that the three ranking factors are relevance, distance, and prominence – the latter of which has review count and content mentioned.

Google’s exact wording on prominence states:

“Prominence means how well-known a business is. Prominent places are more likely to show up in search results. This factor’s also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.”

It’s clear that a high quantity of reviews and ratings, among other factors like backlinks, send signals to Google that your business is worth promoting.

But what Google doesn’t explain is to what degree relevance, distance, and prominence each influence the overall map ranking, which is where Search Atlas’ study comes in.

Search Atlas’ study of 3,269 local businesses has found that reviews are the second most influential factor in ranking in the top Google Map spots. This comes after the searcher’s proximity to local businesses.

The key thing to note is that proximity is entirely out of the control of businesses. Other factors can be worked on, so knowing how Google’s algorithm prioritizes these will help you identify key areas to improve on in your ranking strategy.

Proximity was the most dominating ranking factor (55.2%) in the top 21 spots. Review count followed at 19.2%, with factors like domain power, review relevance, and star ratings holding under 6% of the decision.

However, among the top 10 local search results, the study found reviews to be a much more dominant ranking factor. The most notable influences were:

• Proximity: 36.2%
• Review count: 26%
• Review keyword relevance: 22.8%

Therefore, you should not only focus on getting positive reviews of your business, but also on getting quality reviews that include keywords your customers could be searching for. This is even more important now Google has launched AI review summaries in Chrome, since it will help AI to understand the important parts to pick out of your customer feedback.

While you can’t change the location of searchers, you can influence your reviews. Search Atlas’ findings give businesses the opportunity to create a smarter review strategy that can boost your local SEO and grow your business.

Knowing how to ask your customers for reviews is key here. I always recommend offering an incentive where possible, since this will encourage feedback and repeat custom at the same time.

For instance, you could put a sign up in your bar or nail salon offering 10% off their next order for customers who leave a positive review of over 50 words. Placing a word count in the terms will boost the chances of customers including relevant keywords that could help your business appear in search results for more queries.

If you have employees, training them to promote reviews at checkout is a simple way to spread the word.

Finally, replying to your Google reviews is just as important as getting them. It not only shows your customers that you value their feedback, but also gives you a degree of control over the narrative when negative reviews are published.

Just be sure to maintain a professional and friendly tone in all of your responses, or you may put future customers off.