Public customer feedback posted on a search engine, marketplace, social platform, or review website.
Reviews influence trust, local visibility, reputation, and purchase decisions.
Short and sweet:
Public customer feedback posted on a search engine, marketplace, social platform, or review website.
Reviews influence trust, local visibility, reputation, and purchase decisions.
See also: Social Proof, Google Business Profile, Brand Reputation
An online review is a piece of unsolicited or lightly incentivized feedback a customer posts publicly about their experience with a business, most commonly on platforms like Google, Yelp, or an industry-specific review site rather than directly through the business’s own channels. Because reviews are visible to anyone researching a purchase, they function as a form of social proof that can influence buying decisions even more than a brand’s own marketing claims. Responding to reviews, both positive and negative, has also become an expected part of reputation management, since an unanswered negative review can look worse than the original complaint itself.
A restaurant with a string of glowing five-star online reviews on Yelp can fill tables even without a big advertising budget, since diners trust strangers’ opinions more than a polished ad.
A single scathing comment on Google can noticeably dent a small business’s foot traffic, which is why many owners now respond publicly to complaints instead of ignoring them.
Amazon product listings live and die by this kind of public feedback, with shoppers routinely scrolling straight past the description to read what real buyers had to say first.
