The Most Underrated Local Ranking Factor in 2025

If your business isn’t getting new reviews consistently, your competitors will quietly pull ahead of you in the rankings, and you probably won’t even notice.

Google likes to see that a business is active, and a steady stream of incoming reviews proves that you’re active better than anything. The moment you stop getting new reviews, you’re going to see your local rankings start to slip.

How often should you be getting new reviews to see an impact on your rankings?

A better question is, how often are your top competitors getting new reviews?

If the answer is twice a month, you should also aim for that, plus 1.

How not to request reviews

A common mistake I see businesses make is sending out review requests in bursts (say, every six months). They blast out requests to hundreds of customers all at once, get a bunch of new reviews, and then don’t get any new reviews again for another 6 months. That’s no good.

How to request reviews

The best strategy is making review requests part of your ongoing daily local SEO work, so that you get new reviews coming in on a regular basis.

This method works for two reasons:

1. You’ll get a lot more reviews if you reach out to your customers in a timely manner, not 6 months after their visit.
2. Getting new reviews consistently over time will have a positive impact on your rankings.

How review recency impacts local rankings

Joy Hawkins posted an excellent case study in January 2023 showing how their clients’ rankings dropped when they stopped getting new reviews.

When the owner was rewarding staff for asking customers for reviews, they got a steady influx of new reviews and better rankings. When they stopped offering the reward, reviews slowed down and rankings dropped. And when the owner started rewarding staff again and new reviews started coming in, their rankings shot right back up:

There was a direct correlation between the presence of new reviews and the business’s rankings: new reviews = better rankings; no new reviews = worse rankings.

✍️ Note: While incentivizing customers to leave you a review is against Google’s guidelines, incentivizing your staff to ask customers for reviews is allowed.

“I don’t want to ask every customer for a review because what if I get a negative one?”

My response: If you ask every customer for a review, your ratio of positive to negative reviews should be at least 30 to 1. If you never ask, however, you can expect to only get reviews when people are unhappy.

And here’s something that might surprise you: getting a negative review is actually better than getting no new reviews at all. Review recency will increase your rankings regardless of whether the new review is positive or negative.

In the 2023 Local Search Ranking Factors, Review Recency ranks as the #20th most valuable local ranking factor.

However, I think Google has cranked the dial on this factor. I’d put review recency in my top 5 most important ranking factors of 2025.

Conclusion

Your 3 big takeaways here are:

1. Keep getting reviews regularly. You should make review requests part of your daily local SEO strategy.
2. You can’t incentivize customers to leave you a review, but you can incentivize your staff to encourage reviews.
3. Never stop asking for reviews!