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Placeholder · Add cited sources for the statistics marked [source needed] on this pageWhy reviews matter more than they did a year ago
Ninety-seven percent of people read reviews when choosing a local business, and forty-one percent now say they always do.
The bar has moved too. Sixty-eight percent won’t consider a business under four stars, and thirty-one percent now require 4.5 or better.
And recency is doing more work than volume. Seventy-four percent of people only pay attention to reviews from the last three months. A business with 200 reviews and nothing since spring looks worse than one with 40 that are current.
This is also the layer AI depends on. When an assistant recommends a business, people go and verify — and reviews are where they do it. The AI sends them; your reviews close them.
What the monthly work covers
- Google Business Profile management. Weekly posts, fresh photos, service and category updates, and Q&A seeded with the questions customers actually ask.
- Review generation to a target. A system that asks every satisfied customer at the right moment, plus a response written for every review — good and bad.
- Citation consistency. Your name, address and phone identical everywhere they appear. Inconsistency quietly caps how high you can rank.
- Local content. Service and area pages that give Google and AI engines a reason to treat you as the local answer.
- Monthly reporting on calls and bookings. Plus a quarterly review, in person, in Calgary.