Google Reviews Study: How are local businesses using Google Reviews?

[rosie.brightlocal]

Hi everyone!

We've just released our latest piece of research, the Google Reviews Study, looking in-depth at how local businesses are using Google Reviews and providing key statistics to help businesses benchmark themselves against others in their industry.

You can read the full results here: Google Reviews Study - BrightLocal

The main areas covered include:

• Which industries are leading the way in using Google Reviews (and who's trailing behind)
• How many reviews businesses in each industry have
• The average star rating for businesses in each industry
• If star ratings and number of reviews correlate with local rankings
• Which star ratings are most common in each Google local ranking position

Hope you find it useful!

Thanks,
Rosie

 

[Dan Foland]

This is interesting research. I'm surprised to see that 74% of businesses have at least 1 review. I would have expected much lower.

I'm also surprised that the average review rating is 4.2/5 stars. I would have expected unhappy customers to be more likely to review businesses.

I'd LOVE to see a similarly in-depth study on fake reviews. Which industries have the highest percentage of fake reviews for example or even the same study that is somehow able to remove fake reviews from its results.