Two roofers in Swansea sit side by side in the map pack with the same rating. One has a one-star review from a customer whose gutter leaked after the job, with no reply. The other has the same kind of review, followed by a calm owner's note saying what went wrong, that it was put right the next day, and who to ring. The searcher on her phone picks the second one, and she never read the five-star reviews at all. Your reply to a review is not written for the reviewer. It is written for everyone who reads it afterwards.
Replies are public, and Google asks for them
Your reply appears under the review on Maps and in Search, marked as the owner's response, where every future searcher can see it. Google's guidance on improving local ranking lists managing and responding to reviews as one of the things to do, and says responding shows that you value your customers and their feedback.
Whether replying moves your ranking directly is not something Google documents, so don't reply for the algorithm. Reply because the response is the only part of a review you control, and because the thread of review plus reply is what the next customer reads when choosing between you and the business below you. A profile with replies reads as a business with someone at home.
Replying to a good review
Keep it short and make it specific. A reply that could sit under any review ("Thanks so much for the kind words, we appreciate you") tells the reader nothing. A reply that names what was done tells them you remember the job: "Thanks, Priya. Glad the new consumer unit sorted the tripping, and that Dan left the kitchen tidy. See you for the certificate next year."
Three rules keep these honest. Don't stuff the reply with service names and town names you hope Google will read; one natural mention of the service is plenty, and a list of keywords looks like what it is. Don't ask for anything, whether a referral, a second review or a follow on social media. And don't use one template for every reply, because readers scroll, and ten identical responses say the thanks are automated.
Replying to a bad review
This is the reply that matters most, and the one people get wrong by writing to the reviewer. The reviewer has already decided. Write to the stranger reading over their shoulder, who wants to know one thing: what happens when this business gets it wrong.
A reply that works has four moves, in this order.
- Acknowledge without arguing. Thank them for the feedback and name the problem in their terms: "I'm sorry the gutter leaked again after we'd been out."
- State the facts briefly. One or two sentences, no blow-by-blow, no "actually": "We fitted the new section on the Tuesday and the joint failed in the storm that weekend."
- Say what you did or changed. "We came back on the Thursday, replaced the joint at no charge, and we've changed the sealant we use on that bracket."
- Take it offline with a real name and a number. "If anything is still not right, please call me, Owen, on the office number, and I'll come out myself."
Then stop. Don't relitigate, and don't add a paragraph about your many happy customers. Two things are off limits entirely. Never disclose anything about the customer that they didn't put in the review: no job addresses, no medical details, no "your invoice was still unpaid". And never accuse someone publicly of being a fake reviewer or a competitor; say you have no record of the job, invite them to contact you, and flag the review separately.
Wait before you write. An hour is enough to take the sting out. A week is long enough that the silence itself becomes the story.
Reviews that break the rules
Some reviews aren't customers at all: a competitor, a mistaken identity, someone reviewing the wrong branch, or abuse. Google's Business Profile help lets you flag a review from your profile, and Google removes reviews that violate its content policies, such as spam, off-topic content, conflicts of interest or harassment. It does not remove a review because it is negative, because you dispute what happened, or because the customer was difficult; Google's help says it doesn't get involved when a business and a customer disagree about the facts.
So flag what genuinely breaks the policy, and reply anyway, because removal can take a while and may not happen. A short reply saying you have no record of this job and would like to put it right tells readers the review may be misplaced, and shows you'd have fixed it if it were real.
Make replying part of the routine
Pair replying with the weekly check from the previous lesson: the same person, the same day, every review answered the same week it arrives. Keep a short file of reply examples for the three situations that recur, the delighted customer, the fair complaint and the unfair one, and rewrite each reply from the example rather than copying it. That file becomes a record of what customers notice and what goes wrong.
What to take away
- A reply is public and sits under the review for every future searcher, so it's written for them, not for the reviewer.
- Google lists responding to reviews among the things that improve a profile and says it shows you value customers; any direct ranking effect is undocumented.
- Good-review replies are short and specific, with one natural mention of the service and no request attached.
- Bad-review replies acknowledge, state the facts briefly, say what changed and take it offline with a name, then stop.
Next
Reviews and replies are also the text AI assistants read when someone asks for the best nearby, and Reviews and AI recommendations explains how volume, recency and wording each count.