Google Reputation Management
Google is usually the first place a potential customer encounters your business — in Search, in Maps, and in the Google Business Profile that appears alongside both. A strong, well-managed Google presence directly affects local visibility and the first impression every new customer forms.
How Google’s star rating is actually calculated
Google’s own help documentation is direct about this: “the review score is the average of all ratings published on Google for that place or business.” That’s a plain arithmetic mean — add up every star rating and divide by the count — with no Bayesian adjustment or new-business dilution like some platforms use.
The visible number lags reality on two fronts. First, individual reviews are checked against Google’s content policies before they appear, which “might take a few days.” Second, even once a review is live, Google’s own guidance says “it may take up to 2 weeks to get an updated review score” after that. A business can post a genuine new review and not see its average move for days or weeks — that’s normal, not a sign something is broken.
Only reviews that survive Google’s policy check count toward the average at all. Fake, incentivized, off-topic, or otherwise prohibited reviews that Google removes don’t factor in — which cuts both ways: a business can’t buy or fake its way to a higher score, but it also isn’t stuck living with reviews that never should have qualified in the first place.
What actually moves a Google rating
- Simple average — the displayed score is the sum of all published star ratings divided by the number of ratings, with no weighting scheme Google discloses.
- Processing delay — a new review can take a few days to appear at all while Google checks it against policy.
- Update lag — once live, a review can take up to two weeks to be reflected in the visible score.
- Policy compliance filter — fake, incentivized, off-topic, or otherwise prohibited reviews don’t count toward the average, whether they were ever published or later removed.
How we approach Google
- Google Business Profile optimization and monitoring
- Timely responses to new Google reviews
- Strategies aligned with Google’s review and content policies
- Rating and sentiment tracking over time
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