Episode 6: Using Review Management to Boost Business Visibility

Key Takeaways

• Google’s algorithm weighs review volume, recency, star rating, text content, images, and whether the business responds
• Consumers increasingly skip the website and go straight to reviews — especially for hotels, restaurants, and emergency home services
• Responding to reviews consistently and authentically matters more than responding perfectly
• AI-powered review response tools address creative fatigue and multilingual challenges
• Soliciting reviews with intentional, specific questions helps customers write more useful reviews that include relevant keywords naturally

Review management has moved far beyond a nice-to-have. It is now a core ranking signal, a trust-building mechanism, and a conversion driver — all in one. But for multi-location brands managing hundreds or thousands of reviews across platforms, doing it well at scale requires the right strategy, the right tools, and the right balance between automation and authenticity.

In this episode of the Local Marketing Beat podcast, host Christian Hustle is joined by Cris Thome, Global Head of Product Marketing at Uberall, and Amanda Stichter, Chief of Operations at Virtual Vision Computing, to explore how reviews impact local search rankings, why responding to negative reviews builds more trust than a perfect score, how AI is transforming the review response workflow, and what the future holds for automation in reputation management.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction and housekeeping: Spotify, close captions, global audience

01:07 Episode overview: review management, rankings, and AI automation

02:00 Meet the guests: Cris Thome and Amanda Stichter

04:10 Ice breaker: when reviews made or broke a personal decision

07:15 How Google’s algorithm processes reviews as a ranking factor

10:00 Why the one-star reviews are the first thing consumers read

12:40 The importance of consistent, authentic review responses

17:00 Uberall’s AI-powered Review Assistant: how it works

22:00 Creative and technology fatigue: meeting clients where they are

27:00 The future: will Google accept fully automated review responses?

33:00 Gold nuggets: soliciting reviews with intentional questions

Reviews Are a Direct Ranking Factor — and Consumers Know It

“Google’s algorithm takes into consideration the customer rating, the volume of reviews, how often you get reviews, if the reviews have text or images, and if the business owner is answering reviews. Review management became a critical piece in location marketing.” — Cris Thome

Cris outlines the multiple signals that Google extracts from reviews: star rating, volume, recency, text content, attached images, and whether the business responds.

This makes business review management not just a customer service function but a direct input to the local search algorithm. Businesses that treat reviews as an afterthought are actively undermining their own visibility.

Amanda reinforces this from her work with home services companies, noting that Google has begun requiring a minimum of five reviews before displaying certain business profiles in search results. For new businesses, review generation is not optional — it is the foundational first step before any other local SEO effort can take effect.

Consumers Skip the Website and Go Straight to Reviews

“I skip over the management photos every single time and go straight to the actual visitor reviews and photos. There have been times where I don’t need to read more than one review with one picture to know that is not a place I am going to stay.” — Amanda Stichter

Both Amanda and Cris share personal experiences that mirror what research consistently shows: Consumers are bypassing brand-controlled content and going directly to reviews to make decisions.

Amanda describes her process for booking hotels — skipping professional photos entirely and looking only at guest-uploaded images and reviews. Cris does the same for restaurants, reading reviews to understand noise levels, wine selection, and service quality before booking.

For multi-location brands, this behavior shift has a clear implication: The review section of your Google Business Profile is often the first real impression a customer gets of your business. How you respond to reviews — especially negative ones — directly shapes whether that customer chooses you or moves on.

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Respond Consistently and Authentically — Not Just Occasionally

“Some businesses respond to reviews occasionally — once a month they go there, respond to a couple of them, and then don’t do it for another month. That doesn’t help your search visibility at all. You’ve got to be consistent, authentic, and for multi-location businesses, it’s also about keeping the tone of voice consistent.” — Cris Thome

Cris emphasizes that sporadic review responses are worse than no strategy at all, because they signal to both Google and consumers that the business is not engaged. The algorithm rewards consistency — responding regularly, across all platforms, in a tone that matches the brand.

For multi-location brands, this introduces additional complexity: maintaining a consistent brand voice across hundreds of locations, often in multiple languages. Amanda describes how her team handles this through a hybrid approach — some clients use automation for straightforward reviews while handling complex or negative reviews personally.

Generic “thank you” responses do not build trust. Each response should demonstrate that the business actually read the review and cares about the experience described. For brands using analytics to track response rates and times, consistency is the metric that correlates most directly with improved visibility.

AI Review Responses Address Creative Fatigue — Without Losing Authenticity

“Customers told us: we don’t know what to answer on the reviews, we don’t have the time to be creative. The ChatGPT integration reads the review, understands the sentiment and the rating, and suggests a reply. It’s not fully automated — you need to read the suggestion, you can make changes, you can reject it. But it’s a starting point.” — Cris Thome

Cris introduces Uberall’s AI-powered review assistant, built on a ChatGPT integration that reads each review, interprets the sentiment and star rating, and generates a suggested response. The tool is designed to address what Cris calls creative fatigue — the reality that business owners and marketing teams run out of ways to say “thank you for your review” after the hundredth response.

Amanda highlights how this approach meets clients where they are — particularly those experiencing technology fatigue who resist fully automated solutions. The review assistant provides a stepping stone: AI generates the draft, but a human reviews and approves it before it goes live. This balance between efficiency and authenticity is what makes the tool practical for businesses at every level of digital maturity.

The Future: Will Google Accept Fully Automated Review Responses?

“At the moment, Google’s algorithm does not appreciate completely automated responses. There is a balance between being authentic and doing some automated responses. Big debate in 2024 — and we are watching this space very closely.” — Cris Thome

Both Cris and Amanda identify the same trend as the biggest question facing reputation management in the near future: Whether Google will evolve its stance on fully automated review responses.

Currently, Google’s algorithm does not reward responses that appear machine-generated. But as AI-generated responses improve in quality and personalization, both guests expect Google to gradually adapt — much as it did with AI-generated content, which was initially penalized and later accepted when it met quality thresholds.

Amanda draws a direct parallel to Google’s helpful content updates: The initial reaction was to penalize anything AI-generated, but the policy shifted once the focus moved to whether the content provided genuine value. She expects review responses to follow the same trajectory. For brands managing reviews at scale, the practical advice is to use AI as an assistant — not a replacement — and monitor Google’s evolving guidelines closely.