When performing a search on Google these days you will often find it contains a local result. In most cases that means results in a map powered by Google My Business results.
In fact, during quarterly earnings call Google’s CEO said,
“I wouldn’t underestimate the focus we have on local. Just to give you a sense, local mobile searches are growing faster than just mobile searches overall, and have increased by almost 50% in the last year.”
When a statement like this is made it indicates two things to me:
1. Consumers are expecting more and more local results
2. Google My Business is really important to capture traffic.
With this trend clearly in sight, I wanted to dig into some data to look into a key factor in consumers decision making, ratings, and reviews. I was curious as to how much having a strong rating impacts consumes selecting a business. We already know ratings and reviews are important from numerous studies in the industry.
For example, Brightlocal found[1] that 57% of consumers will only buy from businesses with a four-plus star rating. So I took a look at some data that included over 10 million Google My Business data points to try to understand the impact of increasing a business rating had on their conversion rates. I think what I found will seem very obvious, but certainly, validate the importance of good reviews.
Ratings really matter for non-branded searches
I thought I might start with something that is the most logical. When a consumer isn’t familiar with your brand and performs a generic, aka non-branded, search they are influenced greatly by a business’s rating. In the data set that