An online review is a customer’s public rating and written account of a business, product or service, posted on a platform such as Google, Trustpilot, Checkatrade or Yell, or on the business’s own website. It usually pairs a star score with a few lines of text, and other buyers read it before they decide whom to contact.
How online reviews work
Each platform collects reviews in its own way. On a Google Business Profile, anyone with a Google account can leave a star rating and comment, and the average appears beside your name in Maps and the local pack. Trustpilot lets anyone review a company and also lets businesses send invitations through its own system. Trade platforms such as Checkatrade and Yell tie reviews to members or jobs, with their own checks. Product reviews on an online shop sit against individual products rather than the company.
Most platforms let the business reply publicly, report reviews that break the rules and, in some cases, invite customers automatically after a purchase. What a business cannot do is delete an honest review it dislikes. Removal is the platform’s decision, judged against its own policy.
Search engines read review data as well. Google states that review count and review score factor into local ranking, as part of how it judges a business’s prominence in local search. Recency and the wording of reviews matter far more to the people reading them than any ranking effect.
Why it matters
Reviews are often the last thing someone reads before they ring you. Two plumbers in the same Bristol postcode with similar websites will be judged largely on what previous customers say, how many have said it and how recently. A handful of detailed reviews that describe the actual job often persuade more than a long list of one-word five-stars.
They matter legally too. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 brought in specific consumer review rules from 6 April 2025. Writing, commissioning or buying fake reviews is banned outright, as is hiding the fact that a review was incentivised, and presenting reviews in a misleading way, for example by suppressing the negative ones. Businesses that publish reviews must take reasonable and proportionate steps to stop fake ones appearing. The Competition and Markets Authority can now enforce consumer law directly and fine businesses up to 10% of global turnover.
Common mistakes
- Asking only the customers you know are pleased, or filtering out unhappy ones before they reach Google. That is review gating, and both Google and UK law treat it as misleading.
- Buying reviews, swapping reviews with other businesses, or having staff and relatives post them.
- Offering a discount or prize draw entry in return for a Google review, which Google’s policies do not allow whatever the review says.
- Replying to criticism defensively, or putting the customer’s personal details in a reply.
- Collecting reviews on one platform only, so a single policy change or suspension removes most of your visible reputation.
- Sending people to a review site they would have to create an account for. Choose a platform your customers already use.
How to act on it
Decide which one or two platforms matter most to your customers. For most UK local businesses Google comes first; tradespeople often add Checkatrade or a similar trade directory, and online shops usually add a product review service that feeds ratings into their product pages.
Then build the request into the job itself. Send every customer a short message with a direct link soon after the work is finished or the order has arrived, while the experience is fresh. A steady routine of asking every customer for a review produces a more natural and more believable spread of ratings than occasional pushes.
Reply to reviews, good and bad, in a way that would reassure the next reader. Thank people specifically. For a complaint, acknowledge it, explain what you have done and offer a way to talk it through privately. Read your reviews as feedback too: the same complaint three times is an operational problem, not a marketing one.
Reviews are one of the areas I cover in Google Business Profile optimisation, where I check how they are being collected and answered alongside the rest of the profile.