Reviews, local rankings, and what became illegal in April 2025
Reviews genuinely affect where you appear in local search. They are also now one of the most tightly regulated things a small business does online, and a lot of the advice still circulating would put you on the wrong side of the law.
How reviews actually feed into rankings
Google is unusually open about this. Local results are ranked on three things: relevance, how well your business matches the search; distance, how near you are to the searcher; and prominence, how well known and well regarded the business appears to be.
Reviews sit in prominence. Google does not publish the weighting, but Whitespark’s annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey has consistently placed review signals among the stronger influences on local pack visibility.
Four things appear to matter, in roughly this order:
- RecencyA steady trickle beats a burst two years ago. A profile whose newest review predates the pandemic reads as a business that may have closed.
- VolumeNot a race. Enough that a customer comparing three businesses sees yours as established rather than untested.
- RatingMostly a conversion factor rather than a ranking one. It decides who gets clicked from the map pack.
- What they sayA review describing the actual job in the actual place gives Google something to work with. Which is where this gets legally delicate, so read the next section before you act on it.
What the DMCC Act 2024 banned
Most articles on this subject, including an earlier version of this one, cite the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. Those were repealed and replaced on 6 April 2025 by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. If the advice you are reading references the 2008 regulations, it predates the current rules.
What the DMCC Act made automatically unfair and illegal:
- Submitting or commissioning fake reviewsIncluding writing your own, having staff or family write them, and paying anyone to write them.
- Concealed incentivised reviewsYou may offer an incentive. You may not hide that one was offered. A discount in exchange for a review, undisclosed, is now a banned practice.
- Publishing reviews in a misleading wayThis is the one that catches ordinary businesses. Showing only your best reviews on your website, or arranging them to give a rosier impression than the full picture, falls within it.
- Failing to take steps against fake reviews you publishIf you display reviews on your own site, you carry a duty to take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent and remove fake ones.
The CMA published guidance in April 2025, allowed a three-month grace period, and has been writing to businesses it believes are non-compliant since. Penalties under the Act reach 10% of global turnover, which for a small business is less alarming than it sounds and still not somewhere you want to be.
How to ask, without straying
The line is simpler than it looks. You can ask anybody. You cannot direct what they say, hide an incentive, or curate what the public sees.
- Ask everyone, not just the happy onesSelecting who gets asked is the quiet version of selecting what gets published. Make it part of finishing every job.
- Ask immediatelyThe day of the job, while it is fresh. A week later the response rate collapses.
- Make it one tapA direct link to your Google profile, by text or email. A QR code on the invoice works well for trades and hospitality.
- Ask openly, not for keywords“It helps us if you mention what we did and where” is a reasonable request about being useful to the next customer. Supplying phrases you want included is not, and reads as coached to anyone who notices.
- Reply to all of themIncluding the bad ones, especially the bad ones. A calm, factual reply to a poor review does more for a reader than the review itself does against you.
- Never incentivise quietlyIf you offer something, say so in the request and expect the reviewer to disclose it. Simpler not to.
Displaying reviews without creating a problem
Two separate risks here, and most small business sites carry at least one.
- Do not hand-pickAn embedded feed that shows what your profile actually shows is safe. A hand-chosen set of five-star quotes, refreshed to keep the flattering ones at the top, is publishing reviews in a misleading way. If you quote selectively, at minimum link to the full profile so the reader can see everything.
- Do not add Review or AggregateRating schema for your own reviewsA separate issue, and nothing to do with the CMA. Self-serving review markup on your own site breaches Google’s structured data policy and risks a manual action. LocalBusiness and FAQPage schema are fine and worth having.
Frequently asked
How many reviews do I need?
There is no number, and anyone quoting you a monthly target has invented it. What matters is that the newest one is recent and they keep arriving. Look at the three businesses ranking above you locally and use that as your benchmark rather than a made-up table.
Can I offer a discount for a review?
Only if the incentive is disclosed. Concealed incentivised reviews are a banned practice under the DMCC Act. Given the disclosure has to appear in the review itself to be effective, most small businesses find it simpler not to.
What do I do about an unfair review?
Reply publicly, calmly, once, with the facts. Do not argue. If it breaches Google’s policies — abusive, off-topic, or from someone who was never a customer — report it, but expect that to be slow and often unsuccessful. A measured reply is usually worth more than removal.
Do reviews on Yell or Checkatrade help my Google ranking?
Less directly than Google reviews, which are what the local pack draws on. They still build the wider picture and they are worth having, but if your effort is limited, put it into your Google Business Profile first.
Can you manage this for us?
Review prompts and Google Business Profile work are part of the Light plan at £199 a month. We will not write reviews, solicit selectively, or hide incentives, and you should be wary of anyone offering to.
What this contributes to
Paramount Space Cleaning in Coventry came to us in October 2025 with no local visibility. Google Business Profile work, service and local pages, technical fixes and a steady review habit. In seven months they went from nothing to position one for “deep cleaning coventry”, page one for 55 search terms, and a £7,000 commercial contract traced back to organic search.
Reviews were part of that rather than the cause of it, and we would not claim otherwise. The caveat we attach to everything: one business, one city, not a forecast for anyone else. Nora approved every figure before we published it.
Simon & Lisa Batchelor run Get Your Website Seen. Simon spent ten years as owner and editor of a magazine, then built and sold Commerce Computers Ltd, a trade computer supplier that traded online as shop4it.co.uk. So we have been on the buying side of marketing that did not work, which is most of why this site reads the way it does. You deal with us directly, and every figure published here belongs to a client who approved it.
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