There's no magic number from Google
Google has never published a minimum. What it does say is that review count and rating feed into prominence, which is one of the three things it ranks local businesses on. So the real question is how you compare to the businesses you're up against.
How to find your number
- Search your main service and suburb on your phone, the way a customer would.
- Write down the review count and rating of the three businesses in the map pack.
- Note the date of each one's most recent review.
- Your target is the middle of those three, then above it.
Why recent reviews matter more
A business with 30 reviews, three of them from this month, often looks better to a customer than one with 120 reviews where the newest is from last year. People read the dates. A profile that's gone quiet looks like a business that's gone quiet.
- Aim for a steady few a week rather than a burst every few months.
- Bursts can trip Google's spam filter and get reviews hidden.
- Fresh reviews often mention specific jobs and suburbs, which helps with the searches you want.
What counts as a good rating
Anything above 4.5 reads well. A perfect 5.0 from a handful of reviews can actually look less believable than a 4.8 from a hundred. A few honest four-star reviews with good replies are not a problem.
How fast to get there
Ask every customer, every time, by text, within a day of finishing. A business doing ten jobs a week that asks everyone usually gets a few reviews a week. That closes most gaps within a few months without doing anything that breaks Google's rules.
Don't want to chase reviews yourself? Our review management asks every customer at the right moment, with your direct link, and replies to what comes in.