It’s important for all people involved to be able to answer the following question: why Google Reviews are important for small businesses? Some people still downplay the importance of all Internet-based reviews, believing that they still can’t make that much of a contribution to the bottom line of a business. In fact, Google Reviews can literally cause a business to rise and fall in the modern world. While Google Reviews are important for large businesses, they are particularly important for small businesses.

Customer Search Patterns

When people consider going to a new business today, almost without exception, they are going to go check the reviews online. People will typically do this for everything from restaurants to clothing stores. They will even do it for dental offices. Checking the reviews of a given establishment has just become a fact of life. When people don’t see any reviews of a given business, sometimes they take it as a bad sign. Other times, they will just ignore that business altogether.

Large businesses might have other forms of advertising that they can rely on, or they might have a more established reputation. Small businesses are going to rely on Google Reviews to a much larger extent, especially since Google is such a popular search engine at this point and people will usually see the Google Reviews show up the moment that they even search for the directions to a given establishment.

Exposure

There is a common perception that any publicity is good publicity. People might wonder whether or not it is actually true. This is a complicated issue, but the short answer is that any publicity is good publicity if the person, organization, or item in question is obscure. For small businesses, there is still such a thing as bad publicity. However, they are more likely to benefit from all forms of publicity than large businesses, even if the publicity that they receive is not ideal.

Getting a bad Google Review is not enough to sink a small business, at least depending on the nature of the bad review. It is possible that if a review is bad enough, this is going to be a problem. It will also be a problem if this is the only review of the small business. However, if the bad review exists on a spectrum and there are positive and average reviews available as well, the bad review is actually an asset as opposed to a liability. It demonstrates that the other reviews were more likely to be genuine. Even bad reviews can offer exposure, and in the case of a small business, having multiple reviews is often more important.

Encouraging Feedback

If customers see some Google Reviews in place, they are going to be more likely to leave reviews of their own. This will give all businesses much more publicity. More customers will be talking about a particular business, which can make all the difference. All businesses benefit from Google Reviews, but small businesses benefit from them the most.

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