Google Business reviews do two jobs now. They still feed how prominent Google thinks your business is, which affects where you appear in local results. They are also the raw material for the AI summary a customer reads before they ever open your profile. What has changed since 2024 is the bar. Customers now want reviews from the last few weeks, four stars or better, and a reply on every one. A big total on its own stopped being enough.
Do Google reviews actually affect where you rank in local search?
Yes, and Google says so in its own documentation, though it will not tell you by how much.
Google’s Business Profile help pages set out three things behind local results: relevance, distance and prominence. The first two you can do very little about. Prominence is how well-known your business is, and Google states plainly that more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.
What that sentence doesn’t give you is a number. Nobody outside Google can tell you that thirty reviews moves you up two places, and anybody who does is guessing. Google says on the same page that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking, which is also our answer when somebody asks us to guarantee a map position. We will not, for reviews or for anything else, because it is not ours to guarantee. What we can say is that reviews are one of the few prominence factors a landscaping business controls directly. You can ask the customer you finished with on Friday.
That’s worth doing because of where the searches are. On our own keyword figures, updated in August 2026, “landscape gardeners near me” is searched around 12,100 times a month and “gardening companies near me” 9,900. A search worded like that puts a map above the ordinary results almost every time, and the only things a customer can compare in that map are the star rating and the number of reviews behind it. Reviews are one part of getting into it. Search engine optimisation is the rest of it, and if your profile isn’t properly filled in to begin with, our guide to setting up your Google Business Profile correctly covers work that no number of reviews makes up for.
Why do landscaping reviews matter more now than they did two years ago?
Because most customers now read a summary of your reviews rather than your reviews.
BrightLocal’s 2026 local consumer review survey, published on 11th February 2026 and based on 1,002 consumers, found 82% read AI-generated review summaries and 23% would decide on the summary alone. In the same survey, 45% said they use ChatGPT and other AI tools to get recommendations. The year before, the figure for ChatGPT on its own was 6%.
Those two numbers are not measuring quite the same thing, so treat the gap between them as a direction rather than a multiple. The direction isn’t really in dispute.
In practice it means Google AI, ChatGPT and Claude are reading your reviews and writing a sentence about your business that you don’t get to draft. It’s assembled out of what your customers wrote, so the words in your reviews now do work they never used to do. “Tidied the garden, very pleased” gives an AI almost nothing to repeat. “Built a raised patio and sorted the drainage problem underneath it” gives it something specific, in the language somebody else might search for.
That’s not permission to tell customers what to write. Google prohibits asking for specific content, and coached reviews are obvious to read. It’s a reason to ask on the day you finish, while the customer still remembers which bit was difficult.
How recent do your Google Business reviews need to be?
Recent enough that your newest one is weeks old rather than months.
BrightLocal’s 2026 local consumer review survey, of 1,002 consumers, found 74% look for reviews written in the last three months. 32% look for reviews from the last two weeks, up from 20% a year earlier, and 18% are only swayed by reviews written in the last week.
That last group is small, it’s growing, and it’s the one most landscaping businesses are least ready for. The usual pattern goes like this. A business decides to take reviews seriously, asks twenty customers over a fortnight, gets fourteen back, and then stops. Eighteen months later the profile shows a respectable total and a most recent review dated last spring. To somebody checking on their phone between school run and lunch, that reads as a business that used to be good.
So a steady trickle beats a burst, even though the burst feels more productive at the time. Two a month, every month, is a better profile than fourteen in a fortnight and nothing after.
How many reviews and what star rating do you actually need?
Four stars is the floor, and the floor moved up sharply in a single year.
BrightLocal’s 2026 local consumer review survey, of 1,002 consumers, found 68% will only use a business with four or more stars, against 55% the year before. 31% will only use a business rated 4.5 or higher, and 92% said the star rating matters to them.
On volume there is a floor and then there is your area. The same BrightLocal survey found 47% of consumers will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, so twenty is the number to clear first. Above that there is no magic figure, and anyone who gives you one hasn’t looked at your patch. The comparison a customer makes is not against a national benchmark. It is against the two profiles sitting next to yours on the map. So go and look: search what your customers search, note what the businesses above you have, and that’s your target. In a market town it might be forty. In outer London it might be two hundred.
One thing worth saying about the odd bad review. A 4.8 built from sixty reviews, including one two-star complaint you answered properly, reads better than a flat 5.0 built from nine. Perfect scores make people suspicious, and well-handled complaints help provide the reader with context, making your profile more persuasive.
Do you need to reply to every review?
Yes, and a generic reply does more harm than most people expect.
In BrightLocal’s 2026 consumer review survey, 80% say they are likely to use a business that responds to all its reviews, and 42% say they are unlikely to use one that never replies. Then the figure that should change how you do it: 50% are unlikely to choose a business whose responses are generic.
Which means “Thanks for your review” fourteen times in a row isn’t a reply strategy. It’s visible, and half the people reading it hold it against you.
Timing has tightened as well. In the same February 2026 survey, 81% expected a response within a week and 19% expected one the same day, against 6% a year earlier.
Google’s own guidance agrees on the principle. Its Business Profile help pages say that replying to reviews shows you value the feedback, and that positive reviews and helpful replies can help your business stand out.
A reply worth reading names the job. “Glad the patio came together. That drainage was a nightmare and you were patient with us while we sorted it.” Thirty seconds of your evening, and it tells the next reader what you actually do.
What are you not allowed to do to get reviews?
Two things, and plenty of honest businesses get caught out by the second.
Google’s prohibited and restricted content policy for Business Profiles bans offering incentives, such as payment, discounts or free goods and services, in exchange for posting any review. It also bans reviews that have been paid for directly or in kind. So £20 off the next visit is out, and so is entering everybody who reviews you into a prize draw.
As obvious as it sounds, Google also prohibits businesses that discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers. Asking your happy customers and quietly skipping the one who wasn’t happy breaks the policy as written. So does a feedback form that sends five-star answers on to Google and routes everything else to your inbox, which is sold as review management software and is against the rules.
What you may do is stated just as plainly on the same page. Google permits you to solicit or encourage reviews that represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives. Ask everybody, ask straightforwardly, do not tell them what to say, and do not stand over them while they type it. Google warns specifically against pressuring somebody to leave a review while they are on the premises, which for us means not handing over the phone before you’ve handed over the invoice.
Where to start this week
Ask the last three customers you finished with, then put a standing reminder in your phone so you keep asking.
We already cover the mechanics in detail on this site so there’s no sense repeating them here. Chris walks through the direct review link, the QR code and the follow-up sequence in our how-to video on getting Google reviews, and the companion post on how to get Google reviews and the benefits of them takes it step by step.
What we would add, given what has moved since those were written, is two habits. Try to keep your newest review under a fortnight old, so nobody lands on a profile that looks abandoned. And reply to each one by name and by job, because a wall of identical thank-yous now costs you half your readers.
Reviews are not the whole of local search, and treating them as a substitute for the rest is how businesses end up with a strong profile and a weak website. Our post on local SEO trends every landscaping company should watch in 2026 covers what else is moving. Reviews are simply the part you can start on this week without spending anything.
Frequently asked questions
How many Google reviews does a landscaping business need?
There is no fixed number, because customers compare you against the businesses nearest you rather than a benchmark. Search what your customers search, look at the profiles ranking above you, and use their totals as your target. In a small market town that might be forty reviews. In a competitive city area it can be several hundred.
How quickly should I reply to a Google review?
Within a week at the latest. BrightLocal’s 2026 local consumer review survey found 81% expect a response within a week, and 19% expect one the same day, up from 6% a year earlier. Same-day is becoming normal, so replying on the evening you see it is a reasonable habit to build.
What should I do about an unfair one-star review?
Reply to it, calmly and factually, and leave it there. A well-handled complaint gives the reader context, which makes the rest of your profile more persuasive, because it shows a real business dealing with a real problem. You can report a review to Google if it breaks the content policy, but disagreeing with it isn’t grounds for removal.
Is it against the rules to only ask my happy customers?
Yes. Google’s policy prohibits selectively soliciting positive reviews and discouraging negative ones. That includes feedback tools which send high scores to Google and low scores to your inbox. Ask every customer the same way, and take the occasional four-star with the fives.
Do Facebook or Trustpilot reviews help my Google ranking?
They help customers, and they’re worth having, but Google’s own guidance on local ranking refers to the reviews on your Business Profile. If your time is limited, put it into Google reviews first, then add other platforms once you have a steady flow coming in.
