Statistics
Google review statistics for local businesses
These are other people's numbers, not ours. Every figure below names the study it came from, the sample it was taken on and the date it was published, because a review statistic quoted without those three things is unusable: the same headline percentage circulates for years after the survey behind it has been superseded.
How people use reviews when choosing a local business
Figures from BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, fielded on a representative panel of 1,002 US adult consumers via SurveyMonkey.1
| What it measures | Figure | Why it matters to a profile |
|---|---|---|
| Consumers who read reviews for local businesses | 97 % | Reviews are part of the decision for nearly everyone, not a segment |
| Consumers who "always" read reviews when browsing | 41 %, up from 29 % the year before | The habit is getting stronger, not saturating |
| Will only use a business rated 4.5 stars or better | 31 % | A third of the market filters above most businesses' average |
| Will only use a business rated 4 stars or better | 68 % | Below four stars, two thirds of customers are gone before they read anything |
| Seek reviews written in the last three months | 74 % | A wall of old five-star reviews does not do the job |
| Swayed only by reviews from the last week | 18 % | Recency is not a tiebreaker for this group, it is the filter |
| Rate "the owner has responded" as an important factor | 37 % | Replies are read, by a large minority, as evidence |
| Likely to use a business that responds to all its reviews | 80 % | The strongest single number here, and the cheapest to act on |
Read the star-rating rows together. 31 % filter at 4.5 and 68 % at 4.0. Those are cumulative thresholds from the same question, not two separate audiences. The practical reading is that the distance between a 3.9 and a 4.1 average costs more customers than the distance between a 4.4 and a 4.6.
What these numbers do not tell you
- They are stated preferences, not observed behaviour. A survey records what people say they do when asked. It is evidence about attitudes, and it is weaker evidence about what happens in a real search.
- They are US consumers. Nothing here transfers to another market without its own study.
- They say nothing about ranking. None of these figures is a claim that reviews move your position on Google. Google names relevance, distance and prominence as what its local results are built from, and describes review count and score as feeding prominence, without publishing any weight.2
- One survey is one survey. Where the 2026 figures differ from the 2025 ones, part of the difference is real change and part is sampling. The direction of a two-year move is worth more than the exact point.
Where the numbers stop and the profile starts
The three things these numbers point at are all inside the profile: the average rating, how recent the newest reviews are, and whether replies exist. None of them needs a tool to see.
Related: understanding how Google reviews work · getting more Google reviews · responding to Google reviews · review reply templates
Sources
Sources
-
BrightLocal, "Local Consumer Review Survey 2026": https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/ (read 2026-09-20; representative panel of 1,002 US adult consumers via SurveyMonkey)
-
Google Business Profile Help, "Tips to improve your local ranking on Google": https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en (read 2026-09-20)
See where your profile stands
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Visibility Score
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Common questions
- Do reviews affect Google rankings?
- Google lists review count and review score under prominence, one of the three factors it names for local results, and publishes no weight for either. Anyone quoting a percentage for how much reviews move rankings is quoting a correlation study, not Google.
- Is there a number of reviews I should aim for?
- No published figure supports one. What the research above supports is a floor on the rating and a ceiling on the age of the newest review. Both are about the flow, not the total.
- How old can these statistics be before they stop being useful?
- The survey is annual, and the year-over-year moves in it are large enough that a figure more than two cycles old should be treated as history. The date is on every row above for that reason.