Why recent reviews matter more than your star rating

Customers use the review date as a proxy for whether you are still in business and still doing good work. Reviews older than six months carry half the weight of recent ones in how customers perceive reliability.

Google also weighs recency. A business with ten reviews this year will often rank above a competitor with fifty reviews from 2021.

The goal is not a perfect score. The goal is a steady stream that tells anyone looking that your business is active, current, and still earning customers.

A business that collects three to five genuine reviews per month will have a more compelling profile in a year than a competitor who collected a hundred in a sprint and stopped.