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2025 UPDATE: Does the Number of Google Reviews Impact Ranking? [Case Study]
TL;DR
- Hit the “Magic 10”: Reaching 10 reviews triggers a significant ranking boost, but benefits plateau immediately after.
- Velocity Over Volume: Consistent monthly reviews (recency) are more impactful than having a large, stagnant total.
- Quality Matters: Reviews with actual text and keywords boost SEO far more than star-only ratings.
- The 18-Day Rule: Rankings can “fall off a cliff” if you stop receiving reviews for even three weeks; stay consistent.
- Rank vs. Conversion: While more reviews don’t always raise your rank, they drastically increase the likelihood of users clicking your link.
Do Google Reviews Help Rankings?
It’s the age-old question: Do Google reviews help ranking? The answer is yes, Google reviews help ranking – but does the actual number of reviews have an impact?
And we’ve heard for years that reviews are a ranking factor in local search, but what does that really mean? You might even be asking, “How many Google reviews does it take to increase the rating?”
Testing the Impact of Reviews on GBP Listings
As you probably know, Google allows listings for businesses as well as practitioners’ listings for certain industries (dentists, doctors, lawyers, insurance agents, etc.).
Many businesses set up practitioner listings and then do nothing with them, so we wanted to see if we could get a boost in rankings for the listing if we got more reviews on it.
The Test:
So, we decided to test this out.
We have an insurance agent who has a listing for the business as well as a practitioner listing for the agent himself.
It was a listing that he had not done much with as it only had 3 reviews. The listing was also targeting completely different keywords than the main listing for the practice.
We asked the client to try to get some more reviews on this listing to see what would happen.
The Results:
As you will see in the image below, we noticed a ranking increase when the listing went from 3 to 16 reviews. However, there really is not a ranking numbers increase when the listing went from 16 to 31 reviews.
2025 Update: Do Maps Rankings Still Improve at 10 Reviews?
In 2025, we decided to revisit whether the number of Google reviews still affects local rankings, especially after our findings in the 2023 case study. To see if anything had changed over the years, we picked three random businesses in the same industry, all with 9 reviews, located in different parts of the country. We ran a ranking report for each one, then added one more review to each business, and ran the reports again a few days later.
The 2025 Results
In all three cases, we saw a small but noticeable increase in their Maps ranking for the main keyword when the businesses went from 9 to 10 reviews. You can see in the before/after screenshots below that, while the change was slight, it shows that even in 2025, when a business hits the 10 review threshold, they still get a ranking boost.
Is 10 The Right Number?
We also tested 3 similar businesses with 10 reviews and tracked rankings when they received 1 more, so they went from 10 reviews to 11 reviews.
While fresh, new, relevant reviews are important, we did not see the bump in local pack rankings we saw when a business went from 9 reviews to 10 reviews.
The Law of Diminishing Returns:
The Law of Diminishing Returns is very common in marketing.
You may do something (in this case, get more reviews on a listing) and get a great result (in this cas,e a ranking boost). But that doesn’t mean that if you keep going past 10, you will get the same results.
In this case, we concluded that there is a ranking boost, but the boost does not necessarily continue if you keep getting more reviews.
Joel Headley, co-founder of Leadferno (who formerly worked at Patient Pop) mentioned ten could be the “magic number.” Joel stated, “At Patient Pop, [we saw] an increase in appointment leads when there were over ten reviews.”
Similarly, Mike Blumenthal mentioned at a LocalU event years ago that there was a ranking boost with ten reviews. So, we have come to a similar conclusion as these two; once you hit ten reviews, there is a ranking boost.
At Sterling Sky, we have repeated this test man,y many times with our clients, so we are very confident in this conclusion.
Rankings are More Than Just Reviews:
Local ranking is based on a variety of factors, so just because you have a ton of reviews does not mean you are going to rank the best.
In the image below, you will see this in effect — the blue line shows the number of reviews, and the red shows the number of top 3 rankings.
This graph shows a personal injury attorney who was killing it with reviews, but they were not ranking well at all.
So, reviews are only one piece of the puzzle. Just because you have a lot of reviews does not mean you will rank well. If you’re unsure what other factors may be holding your listing back, a local SEO audit can help identify the issues impacting your visibility.
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Hi. Maybe it was not the number of reviews but the increased average rating was the ranking boost? Did you study it in this context?
Possibly but we’ve been able to repeat this and see the same results when the rating average didn’t change as drastically.
Hi. Maybe it was not the number of reviews but the increased average rating was the ranking boost? Did you study it in this context?
Possibly but we’ve been able to repeat this and see the same results when the rating average didn’t change as drastically.
Did you also test best on the recency of new reviews vs what happens as they become stale?
We did. We’ll be publishing that one soon.
Did you happen to test when an office responds to reviews vs those who never respond? Love to know if there are any rankings boosts from that as well.
Did you also test best on the recency of new reviews vs what happens as they become stale?
We did. We’ll be publishing that one soon.
Did you happen to test when an office responds to reviews vs those who never respond? Love to know if there are any rankings boosts from that as well.
No, that is not one I’ve been able to test yet.
Wouldn’t it also depend on how many reviews their competitors have? If they go from 16 to 31 reviews, but their top competitors (rankings 1-4/5) have more than 31 reviews, wouldn’t it be possible that their increase in ranking slowed because everyone else was still ahead of them in reviews? Since this context wasn’t mentioned I thought it might be worth mentioning.
Not necessarily. I suspect what goes on is that large review amounts are more likely to reflect the age and offline prominence (i.e. high-profile translates to high volume of clients and thus higher amounts of reviews) of the profile.
I don’t think so because it varies a ton. I just checked the keyword I was looking at and when searching from one location, the listing with the most reviews has 598, the one with the least has 5, and the average is 104. So he was way below average. I think the number of reviews (who has the most etc) likely has an impact on the click-through rate but it’s too difficult to measure that since you can’t even track clicks properly from the local pack in search console. I have definitely seen anecdotal evidence that the age of a review seems to matter. I’ve also seen reviews moving over from merged listings can impact rankings (point #4 here – https://searchengineland.com/cannot-ignore-practitioner-listings-gmb-case-study-253314). I also forgot I wrote a different case study on this topic years ago here: https://searchengineland.com/do-google-reviews-impact-local-ranking-301946
Wouldn’t it also depend on how many reviews their competitors have? If they go from 16 to 31 reviews, but their top competitors (rankings 1-4/5) have more than 31 reviews, wouldn’t it be possible that their increase in ranking slowed because everyone else was still ahead of them in reviews? Since this context wasn’t mentioned I thought it might be worth mentioning.
Not necessarily. I suspect what goes on is that large review amounts are more likely to reflect the age and offline prominence (i.e. high-profile translates to high volume of clients and thus higher amounts of reviews) of the profile.
I don’t think so because it varies a ton. I just checked the keyword I was looking at and when searching from one location, the listing with the most reviews has 598, the one with the least has 5, and the average is 104. So he was way below average. I think the number of reviews (who has the most etc) likely has an impact on the click-through rate but it’s too difficult to measure that since you can’t even track clicks properly from the local pack in search console. I have definitely seen anecdotal evidence that the age of a review seems to matter. I’ve also seen reviews moving over from merged listings can impact rankings (point #4 here – https://searchengineland.com/cannot-ignore-practitioner-listings-gmb-case-study-253314). I also forgot I wrote a different case study on this topic years ago here: https://searchengineland.com/do-google-reviews-impact-local-ranking-301946
No, that is not one I’ve been able to test yet.
Blog is very nice. Many businesses set up practitioner listings and then do nothing with them, so we wanted to see if we could get a boost in rankings for the listing if we got more reviews on it.
Blog is very nice. Many businesses set up practitioner listings and then do nothing with them, so we wanted to see if we could get a boost in rankings for the listing if we got more reviews on it.
Perhaps I missed this in the article but was the website optimized up to Google’s high standards, i.e. speed, health, backlinks etc.? I assume that more reviews cannot compensate for a website that isn’t in tip top condition.
Yes, the site was optimized. The specific page this listing was pointing to hadn’t had anything altered on it in a very long time. I see plenty of listings rank with terrible websites though, so it’s definitely possible to rank without a good site if you have other factors in play.
Perhaps I missed this in the article but was the website optimized up to Google’s high standards, i.e. speed, health, backlinks etc.? I assume that more reviews cannot compensate for a website that isn’t in tip top condition.
Yes, the site was optimized. The specific page this listing was pointing to hadn’t had anything altered on it in a very long time. I see plenty of listings rank with terrible websites though, so it’s definitely possible to rank without a good site if you have other factors in play.
Thanks for the nice study. Are you talking about rankings in the local snack pack or for the “standard” blue links below?
The local pack rankings
Thanks for the nice study. Are you talking about rankings in the local snack pack or for the “standard” blue links below?
The local pack rankings
Nice post. I loved the post.Thanks for sharing.
Nice post. I loved the post.Thanks for sharing.
When counting reviews, are these Google Business Profile reviews? Or are they total reviews across a number of platforms that host reviews?
Hey Bill,
They are Google business profile reviews.
When counting reviews, are these Google Business Profile reviews? Or are they total reviews across a number of platforms that host reviews?
Hey Bill,
They are Google business profile reviews.
In addition to the quantity of reviews, did the study consider the influence of review recency and the potential impact on local rankings?
Hi Dibbyyan,
For this particular study, the focus was on the number of reviews, not necessarily the recency of them.
In addition to the quantity of reviews, did the study consider the influence of review recency and the potential impact on local rankings?
Hi Dibbyyan,
For this particular study, the focus was on the number of reviews, not necessarily the recency of them.
I might have overlooked this in the article, but was the website optimized according to Google’s rigorous standards? Factors like speed, health, and backlinks are crucial. It seems that additional reviews alone cannot make up for a website that isn’t in top condition.
Hi Sursys,
Per one of Joy’s comments above “the site was optimized. The specific page this listing was pointing to hadn’t had anything altered on it in a very long time. I see plenty of listings rank with terrible websites though, so it’s definitely possible to rank without a good site if you have other factors in play.”
I might have overlooked this in the article, but was the website optimized according to Google’s rigorous standards? Factors like speed, health, and backlinks are crucial. It seems that additional reviews alone cannot make up for a website that isn’t in top condition.
Hi Sursys,
Per one of Joy’s comments above “the site was optimized. The specific page this listing was pointing to hadn’t had anything altered on it in a very long time. I see plenty of listings rank with terrible websites though, so it’s definitely possible to rank without a good site if you have other factors in play.”
this metric is useful to me. Been enjoying the games here and it's awesome to see them supporting great causes too!
I've been pondering whether it would be a good idea to do enough requesting for reviews to existing customers of very small businesses in rural towns to get one a week or one every couple of weeks or one a month?
They have far fewer customers than the average big city restaurant, for example. So if they just start asking them all, they'll get a bunch of reviews quickly and then possibly very few or none to be more recent.
This case study was incredibly insightful! As a blogger focused on local SEO, I’ve always wondered about the tangible impact of Google reviews on rankings. The finding that there's a noticeable boost after reaching ten reviews aligns with what I've observed in my own projects. It's a strong reminder of the importance of encouraging satisfied readers to leave reviews. Thanks for sharing such detailed research—it’s invaluable for anyone looking to enhance their blog's local search presence.