Everything You Need to Know About the Google 5-Star Rating System

People rarely stumble upon your business by chance. Today, most buyers won’t click past the first page of Google—or go beyond the top 10 recommended local businesses they come across. In other words, when it comes to growing your business, it pays to be #1.
<a href="https://moz.com/learn/seo/local-ranking-factors">According to Moz</a>, several important factors make up local search algorithms—one of which is online reviews. After all, you’re not going to rush out to a 1-star furniture store to outfit your new living room.
No, when you want high-quality items and a top-notch experience, you’re looking for those 5-star businesses. When your business ranks higher on Google, it builds trust and credibility—and improves your searchability.
So, what does it take to become a <a href="https://www.podium.com/article/google-reviews/">5-star business</a> on Google? We reached out to our community of local businesses to find out. And we’re sharing their best practices so that you can find your path to Google stardom too. In this guide, you’ll learn:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The ins and outs of Google reviews and how to set up a stellar profile</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">What consumers look for in best-in-class businesses so you can hit all the marks</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How to get more customers to leave reviews and how to respond to improve their customer experience</li>
</ul>
<h2>Creating a 5-Star Local Brand on Google</h2>
<a href="https://www.podium.com/guides/google-reviews-101/">Approximately 97% of consumers</a> use online search to find a local business or service—and the vast majority of those searches happen on Google. 
The top organic search result in Google receives 25% of clicks, and the top three receive 75% of clicks. If you’re not in the top three, this leaves little opportunity for your business to be discovered.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-24884" src="https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1122_GuideAssets_PathToStardom_1.png" alt="organic search Google reviews" width="837" height="211" srcset="https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1122_GuideAssets_PathToStardom_1.png 837w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1122_GuideAssets_PathToStardom_1-300x76.png 300w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1122_GuideAssets_PathToStardom_1-768x194.png 768w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1122_GuideAssets_PathToStardom_1-600x151.png 600w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1122_GuideAssets_PathToStardom_1-360x91.png 360w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1122_GuideAssets_PathToStardom_1-160x40.png 160w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1122_GuideAssets_PathToStardom_1-350x88.png 350w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1122_GuideAssets_PathToStardom_1-100x25.png 100w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1122_GuideAssets_PathToStardom_1-720x182.png 720w" sizes="(max-width: 837px) 100vw, 837px" />
One way to propel your business into the top three is through 5-star reviews. While Google doesn&#8217;t factor star ratings into web search rankings, Google acknowledges these star ratings influence local search results and ranks.
<blockquote>
&#8220;We started in 1995 and grew an office from no customers to the largest in the city. We did it the old-fashioned way—knocking on doors and advertising in the Yellow Pages. Today, if you can&#8217;t rank on Google, you&#8217;re in trouble.&#8221; –Ted Byrt, Owner of Ted Byrt Insurance
</blockquote>
So, the more 5-star reviews your business has, the more likely it is to rank higher in search results, and the higher you rank in search results, the more people will find and purchase from your business.
But how do you get these elusive 5-star ratings? It all starts with the customer experience.
Going Above and Beyond Customer Expectations
Customers today have high expectations from businesses. Though price and location still matter, today&#8217;s consumers want to feel like their interactions with businesses go beyond a basic transaction. 
In fact, <a href="https://www.podium.com/guides/modern-customer-experience/">84% of customers</a> say that their experience with a company is as important as the products and services offered.
So what makes a customer experience good or even extraordinary? Customers want seamless, personalized experiences. It might sound like a tall order, but over <a href="https://www.podium.com/guides/modern-customer-experience/">70% of customers</a> say one extraordinary experience will automatically raise their expectations of another company. So, if you want to stay ahead of your competition, the experience you give your customers matters.
<h2 class="p1">How to Improve the Customer Experience</h2>
Here are some easily implementable ways to create a more seamless, convenient, and personalized <a href="https://www.podium.com/guides/local-business-customer-experience/">customer experience</a>.
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li4">Build a relationship with customers: Stay in contact through personalized messages that offer value to the customer.</li>
<li class="li4">Ask for feedback: Show customers you value their opinions and learn what you can do better to improve the customer experience.</li>
<li class="li4">Be responsive: Respond immediately to customers when they have a question. If you don&#8217;t have an immediate answer, it&#8217;s okay to say you don&#8217;t know and you&#8217;ll find out, but be sure to get back to them as soon as possible.</li>
<li class="li2">Personalize interactions: Let customers know you care about them by offering a personalized discount or checking in with them and offering small gifts on special occasions like a birthday or a one-year anniversary of doing business with you.</li>
</ul>
When you do these things consistently, these small touches add up to a better customer experience overall. And happier customers lead to more high-star reviews on Google.
<h3>Building a Strong Online Presence</h3>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-23371 size-full" src="https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Customer-Reviews-Blog-Cover.png" alt="Customer Reviews" width="1200" height="1050" />
<a href="https://www.podium.com/guides/google-reviews-101/">Local businesses</a> are 1.4x more likely to have an average star rating of 4.5 or higher if they are proactive about their online reputation than if they are passive.
Maus Family Auto, for example, noticed that prospects were looking much more closely at customer reviews. “The car business has changed dramatically in the last two years,” says Devin Stotts, the Director of Online Sales at Maus Family Auto. “And our reputation as a dealer is one of the biggest things that people look at.”
Devin realized that Maus would need to not only increase their average star rating but also respond to reviews—both positive and negative—to show prospects that they care about their customers and will work to resolve any issues. 
In addition to all of his other responsibilities, Devin was trying to manage the online reputation of all four Maus locations. He needed to find a solution that would make gathering and responding to online reviews much easier. 
With Podium, Devin’s team could send out review invites via text to customers. In their first full month with Podium, they received almost 100 new customer reviews. 
“If you look at most of our stores, we’re 4.3 to 4.5 [average star rating] across the board, which I can attribute primarily to Podium,” says Devin.
To ensure a strong online presence, it’s important to invest in the following:
<ul>
<li>Create an engaging website: Every business needs a<a href="https://www.podium.com/guides/website-conversion/"> website</a>. It establishes you as a credible business and is one of the first places people will look to learn more about your products and services. Make sure your website is professional-looking and reflects your brand.</li>
<li>Build brand awareness with content: Once you have your website up, you can use it to increase<a href="https://www.podium.com/article/brand-management/"> brand awareness</a>, educate customers, and improve your search rankings by creating content, such as blog posts and ebooks. Consistently creating content will help you build a much stronger online presence.</li>
<li>Use SEO to drive more traffic to your business:<a href="https://www.podium.com/guides/local-search-101/"> Search engine optimization (SEO)</a> is the strategy of using keywords in your content and website copy. Keywords are the most likely terms customers will use to search for the types of products or services your business sells. You can use<a href="https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/"> Google’s Keyword Planner</a> tool to figure out which keywords are most popular for what your business does. Then you can optimize for SEO by using those keywords in your headlines, subheads, website content, and any other content you create.</li>
<li>Stay active on social media: While you don’t have to be on every<a href="https://www.podium.com/guides/social-media/"> social media</a> channel, you should determine which channels your prospective customers are most likely to be on, and engage with them by posting content, following customers, and commenting on other people’s content.</li>
<li>Update your profile on all online directories: Today’s online business directories are like the Yellow Pages. People rely on these online directories to find local businesses selling the products and services they need.<a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/web-directories-list/287799/"> According to Search Engine Journal</a>, some top online directories are<a href="https://www.google.com/business/"> Google Business Profile</a>,<a href="https://www.bingplaces.com/"> Bing Places</a>, Yahoo, Yelp, and Foursquare. In addition, if your industry has industry-specific directories, such as Houzz or AutoGuide, be sure to keep an updated profile on those as well.</li>
<li>Encourage positive reviews: The more<a href="https://www.podium.com/article/examples-good-reviews/"> positive reviews</a> you have online, whether that’s on online directories, your website, social media, or elsewhere, the more you build trust and credibility with prospective customers. Make it easy for your current customers to post those reviews by texting them a review request after a positive interaction with your business.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Getting Customer Feedback and Reviews</h3>
<a href="https://www.podium.com/article/google-reviews/">Most consumers (77%)</a> say they’re willing to leave a review, but only 10% do. One of the main reasons is that consumers simply aren’t asked to do so. As many as 76% of consumers will leave a review after being asked to do so.
The other barrier is that leaving reviews often requires too much effort. Your customers may not know where to leave the review, or there are just too many steps in the process, and they quit. If you want more customer feedback or reviews, you have to make the process as frictionless as possible.
One of the simplest ways to make this process easier is to use an<a href="https://www.podium.com/reviews/"> online reputation platform</a> that can streamline the entire feedback and review process by:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Texting feedback or review requests with a link to where customers need to go to leave feedback or a review.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Collecting all feedback and reviews in one centralized location for your employees to review and respond to.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Monitoring review postings so you can see what reviewers are saying and respond promptly.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Mattress Firm Makes the Review Process Easier for Customers</h4>
“After we expanded our offering with Podium, the biggest area of opportunity that we solved was just making it easier for our customers to leave a review,” said Steve Barnes, Senior Manager of Omnichannel Integration at Mattress Firm.

<blockquote>“Now, we only have two that are under that, so it’s made some of our locations more visible in a broad search and just allowed more of the good experiences that we more often provide to be out there for the public to see,” says Schyler.</blockquote>
<h3>Gallery Furniture Lowers Paid Search Costs and Boosts Inbound Leads with More Reviews</h3>
<a href="https://www.podium.com/customer-stories/gallery-furniture-customer-story/">Gallery Furniture</a> set itself apart from competitors by offering same-day delivery, but as this has become standard among many large online retailers, they realized that their digital marketing and online presence needed some attention, especially their online reviews.
Using Podium, they began to combine sending invitations manually with an automated Salesforce integration to ensure each customer can leave feedback. This became such an integral part of their process that the owner built it into their compensation plan, making getting reviews part of the pay matrix for the sales teams. Since then, reviews have increased “exponentially,” according to Gallery Furniture.
“Podium has really shown us that we had a huge gap in the opportunity to receive online reviews. We have so many fans out there, but we just weren’t inviting them to review us. Podium gave us the venue to do that. Now that we are, we’re just seeing tremendous results,” says Daniel Marchione, Project Manager/Systems Administrator at Gallery Furniture.
<blockquote>“Our organic search results online now are incredible. It is amazing how we show up without even having to pay for Google search results. We’re not spending nearly as much on paid search results as we have in the past. We’ve had a ton of inbound calls as well because we always show up number one when people search for furniture in Houston. They could be searching for another store, and we’ll show up on top of the list, so they will call us.” –Daniel Marchione, Project Manager/Systems Administrator at Gallery Furniture</blockquote>
<h3>Valley Roofing’s Reviews Performance Goes Through the Roof</h3>
<a href="https://www.podium.com/customer-stories/valley-roofing/">Valley Roofing &amp; Exteriors</a> recognized how critical positive customer reviews were to their business, but they didn’t have a great way to capture testimonials, let alone get them online.
Prior to Podium, Valley Roofing had collected a total of 22 reviews in 2019 – just under two per month. Once they allowed customers to leave a review by texting them, they immediately saw those numbers rise by 4.3x, garnering 182 reviews in just 24 months with an average 4.9 star rating. Best of all, customers now had a fast, easy way to share their thoughts on Valley Roofing with the community.

<blockquote>“Making sure that at the end of the job the customer is going to refer us—that has really kept us head above our competition in the area.” But in order to sustainably capture the fond favor their customers have, they implemented Podium to drive an impressive 182 reviews in just two years.”—Valley Roofing &amp; Exteriors </blockquote>
<h3>S&amp;R Insurance Leverages Reviews for More Leads, Improved Client Retention, and Greater Growth</h3>
S&amp;R Insurance serves a mix of consumers and commercial clients with property and casualty, home, and auto insurance products. However, a weak online presence made it hard to find new customers.
Without the knowledge of how to grow the business online, growth was flat. Reviews weren’t a priority and the results reflected that. “I think we had five reviews on Google. We really needed something to change,” said Jon Spaugy, co-founder and president of S&amp;R Insurance.
With Podium, “it’s easy to request and collect reviews,” said Jon. Implementing a standard review ask has increased the quality and frequency of reviews. Plus, the business is responding to every negative review to see how they can turn it around and make the customer happy.
Reviews have also helped S&amp;R improve client retention. “We estimate that when a customer posts a review, we keep that client 3x longer than we would if they didn’t write a review,” said Jon.
Today, reviews and the S&amp;R Insurance Google Business Profile are the best lead sources for the business. “Even though we still pay for leads through lead services and we’re working in the community, our best lead source is Google. And it’s all from reviews,” said Jon.
Google Business Profile actions have also increased significantly. Clicks-to-call, directions to the business, and website visits have all been impacted by an influx of positive customer reviews. “The best business is referral business, period. We can’t generate that on our own. And today, referral business comes from reviews,” said Jon.
<h2>Make a 5-Star Effort to Get More Google Reviews</h2>
A <a href="https://www.podium.com/article/online-reviews-guide/">strong Google review presence</a> can provide incredible ROI for your local business. And the investment is often much lower than other channels, and you’ll see results much faster. Put what you’ve learned in this guide into action, and you’ll see the fruits of your efforts pay off with greater credibility, trust, and visibility for your local business.
Start getting more high-quality reviews with Podium.
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Collect more reviews: Use text to invite customers to review your and watch your response rate dramatically increase.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Manage the review process more efficiently: Be able to review and respond to all reviews from a central location.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Get found more often and get more business: By generating more high-quality reviews on your Google site, you’ll see a direct impact on your customer and revenue growth goals.</li>
</ul>