How Online Reviews Influence Local SEO Rankings (And What to Do About It)

If you work in SEO, you have probably noticed that review signals keep climbing in importance. What was once a secondary factor in local rankings has become one of the most influential, and the data from recent industry studies confirms it.

Understanding how reviews affect local search visibility and how to manage them strategically is now a core part of any serious local SEO operation.

Review Signals as a Ranking Factor

Whitespark’s Local Search Ranking Factors survey, one of the most widely cited studies in local SEO, has tracked the growing influence of review signals over multiple years. According to their data, review signals account for approximately 17% of local pack ranking factors.

That places reviews alongside Google Business Profile signals and link signals as one of the top three factors determining whether a business appears in the local three-pack.

The 2026 edition of the Whitespark report reinforced this trend, with review-related factors continuing to gain ground while traditional link signals have steadily declined.

Whitespark’s founder, Darren Shaw, has publicly placed review recency in his top five most important ranking factors, noting that Google appears to have increased the weight it gives to how recently a business has received reviews.

This is consistent with what many practitioners observe in the field. Businesses with a steady stream of recent reviews tend to rank more favourably than those with a higher total count but less recent activity. The algorithm, it seems, is increasingly rewarding ongoing customer engagement over historical accumulation.

What Google Evaluates in Reviews

It is worth breaking down the specific review attributes that influence rankings. Based on Whitespark’s research and broader industry analysis, the key factors include review quantity (total number of reviews across your profiles), review velocity (the rate at which new reviews arrive over time), review diversity (the spread of reviews across platforms, with particular weight on Google), average star rating, review content (the presence of relevant keywords and detailed descriptions in review text), and owner response rate.

That last factor is particularly actionable and often underappreciated. BrightLocal’s research found that 88% of consumers would use a business that responds to both positive and negative reviews, while only 47% said the same for businesses that do not respond at all. Google has explicitly recommended that businesses respond to reviews on their Google Business Profile.

While the exact ranking weight of responses is debated among practitioners, the behavioural signals they generate are well aligned with how Google evaluates local results: increased engagement, longer time spent on the listing, and higher click-through rates all feed into the ranking equation.

The Whitespark 2026 report also highlighted that behavioural and engagement signals more broadly, including clicks, calls, direction requests, and review activity, continue to climb in importance. Google is, in effect, rewarding businesses that look active and engaged rather than those that simply exist on the platform.

App Store Reviews and Their SEO Implications

The relationship between reviews and search visibility extends beyond Google Business Profiles. For businesses with mobile applications, managing Google Play Store reviews directly impacts app visibility in Play Store search results, much like Google Business reviews affect local SEO.

Google Play’s ranking algorithm weighs review quality, recency, and volume when determining app positions in search and category listings.

AppTweak’s 2025 ASO benchmarks report found that 90% of featured apps on the App Store had a rating of 4.0 or higher, underscoring the tight correlation between review quality and visibility in app store search.

For businesses that rely on both local search traffic and app downloads, review management effectively serves dual purposes: it supports local SEO and app store optimisation simultaneously.

The underlying principle is the same across both channels. Consistent, recent, high-quality reviews combined with timely responses create positive signals for the algorithms that determine visibility, whether that is Google’s local search algorithm or the app store ranking systems.

Practical Steps for Managing Reviews as an SEO Strategy

Knowing that reviews affect rankings is useful. Building a repeatable process for improving them is what actually moves the needle. Here are the steps that tend to produce measurable results.

First, establish a review generation workflow. The majority of reviews come from direct requests rather than organic motivation. Research suggests that as much as 70% of reviews originate from post-transactional review request emails.

If you are not systematically asking satisfied customers for reviews, you are leaving the most controllable part of the equation on the table. Build review requests into your post-purchase or post-service workflow and make the process as frictionless as possible for the customer.

Second, respond to every review. Set a target response time and track it as a KPI. Most consumers expect a response within two weeks, but faster is always preferable. Responses do not need to be lengthy, but they should be specific to the content of the review rather than generic templates that customers can spot immediately.

Third, use tools to scale your efforts. Once review volume reaches a certain threshold, manual management becomes impractical and prone to gaps. AI review management tools can automate the process of responding to reviews at scale, which research suggests improves both review sentiment and local ranking signals.

These tools typically offer sentiment analysis, automated response drafting, and multi-platform aggregation, reducing the time required to manage reviews across several channels.

Fourth, monitor your competitors. Review benchmarking, comparing your review volume, velocity, and average rating against local competitors, provides useful context for where you stand and where you need to improve.

If a competitor is gaining ground in the local pack and also accumulating reviews faster than you, the two trends are likely connected.

The Bottom Line for SEO Practitioners

Reviews are no longer a peripheral concern that sits outside the SEO function. They are a ranking signal that is growing in influence year on year, with direct implications for local pack visibility, organic rankings, and increasingly, AI-generated search results.

Whitespark’s latest research highlights that AI search visibility is now being tracked as a distinct ranking dimension, and review signals feature prominently within it.

For SEO professionals and agencies, this means review management belongs in the strategy document, not as an afterthought delegated to customer service, but as a structured, measured activity with clear KPIs and regular reporting.

The businesses and clients that treat it this way are the ones gaining a measurable edge in local search.