A landscaper told me his phone went quiet in the spring and he could not work out why.
Same services. Same service area. Same crew. Same everything. He had been in business eleven years, had over two hundred reviews, and had always shown up in the local results without thinking about it.
His Google Business Profile had not been touched since the previous summer.
For most of the last decade, that would have been survivable. It is much less survivable now, and the reason is a shift in what local ranking rewards.
What changed
Local search used to lean heavily on track record. How established a business was. How long it had been listed. How many reviews it had piled up over the years. History, essentially.
That has tilted toward something much more like right now. Is this listing getting clicks this month. Are people calling from it. Is anyone interacting with it at all. Current activity carries weight that history used to carry on its own.
This is not a punishment for older businesses. It is Google trying to answer a fair question, which is whether a business is still open and still worth sending somebody to.
The practical consequence is uncomfortable, though. A business with four hundred reviews and no recent activity can now lose position to a business with sixty reviews and a steady pulse.
Review recency, and what Google just changed about asking
Total review count still matters. It matters less than it used to, and it now sits next to a newer question: when did the most recent one arrive, and are they arriving regularly?
A steady trickle outperforms a burst. Two or three reviews a month, continuously, is worth more than forty collected during one campaign followed by eighteen months of silence. Bursts also look less natural, which is its own problem.
There is a customer-facing version of this that matters just as much. A person reading your reviews scans the top few and glances at the date. An old review says the business was good once. A review from nine days ago says the business is good now.
The rules about asking changed this year
Google updated its review policy in April 2026 and then spent the following months enforcing it, including going back through older reviews. Several things a lot of local businesses were doing are now explicitly against policy.
Review gating is out. That is the practice of asking customers how their experience was first, and only sending the review link to the ones who say it went well. It was extremely common. It is now prohibited and actively enforced.
Incentives are out. No discounts, no gift cards, no loyalty points, no free anything in exchange for a review. That includes offering something to get a negative review changed or removed.
Review stations are out. Kiosks, shared tablets, and the tablet by the register are specifically named.
Staff quotas are out. You cannot require employees to collect a certain number of reviews, and you cannot ask customers to mention a specific employee by name.
Asking for specific content is out. You cannot request that someone mention a particular service, a keyword, or a location.
What is still allowed is the thing that always worked best anyway. Ask everyone, at the moment the work is finished and they are looking at it, without steering what they say.
The cost of getting this wrong went up too. Google has been applying visible warning banners to profiles it flags, which is a considerably worse outcome than simply having fewer reviews.
Owner response rate
Replying to reviews has moved from courtesy to signal. It indicates an actively managed profile, and it gives search engines additional text associated with your business.
The more important reason is human, and the easiest way to explain it is to take it off the internet entirely.
Picture walking down the sidewalk. A stranger stops you and says, “Oh, I love your little shop.”
You keep walking. You do not turn around. You do not say thank you. You do not ask what they liked. You just keep going.
Nobody would do that. It would be rude, and it would be strange, and you would feel bad about it later.
That is what an unanswered review is. Somebody stopped, said something kind, out loud, in public, and got nothing back.
A real person says thank you. A real person asks the follow-up. “Thank you, what did you love?” or “Thank you, I am so glad the new stylist worked out for you.”
So reply to the positive ones, and be specific enough to prove you actually remember the job. A wall of unanswered five-star reviews reads as nobody being home.
Your replies are also not really for the person who left the review. They are for the stranger reading six months later, deciding whether to call. That person is reading how you respond as much as what customers said about you.
For difficult reviews, the reply has one job, and it is not to win. It is to show a future customer how you handle a problem. Short, not defensive, and moved offline.
Profile freshness
A profile that goes a month or more with nothing new starts to read as dormant. New photos are the easiest way to signal otherwise, and they are also what a hesitant customer looks at before calling.
Here is the version of this I actually recommend, because it survives a real week.
Set a recurring reminder on your phone every twenty-one days. When it goes off, add one photo and one post. That is the whole task.
The photo does not have to be a finished job. It can be the front of your building. It can be the same front of the building once the season changed. A new display. A shelf you just restocked. Your people working.
The post is the word version of the same thing, and it can carry the same photo. What is new. What has been going on. What people tend to be looking for right now. If you sell scarves and it is turning cold, that is a post. If you are running a promotion, that is a post. If you added a service last month, that is a post.
Twenty-one days is the bare minimum. Weekly is better, and weekly is not much harder once the habit exists. The same discipline works on your Facebook page, and it is worth doing in both places.
For service businesses out on jobs all day, the easiest version is still the smallest one. Take the photo before you clean up the site.
The completeness problem
Separate from activity, there is the question of whether your profile is actually finished.
Most are not. The common gaps are a services list that was never filled in, hours that are missing or wrong for holidays, no description, an outdated category, and a service area that says something vague instead of naming the towns.
Every empty field is a question a customer has to go answer somewhere else, and every question answered somewhere else is a chance to leave.
Fill in everything. Name your services the way customers say them rather than the way your industry says them. If a customer searches “septic pumping” and your listing says “wastewater management solutions,” there is nothing to match.
What to do about the Q&A section
The question and answer feature on Google profiles has been replaced by an AI-powered version that answers visitor questions directly. That means answers about your business can be drafted without you writing them.
Which makes it worth checking regularly. Look at what is being said about your business there and correct anything wrong, because an inaccurate answer sitting on your profile does damage in both directions. It misinforms customers, and it introduces conflicting information about your business into the exact place search engines trust most.
One honest exception
I work with a multi-location salon and spa group that averages somewhere between 250 and 275 new clients a month.
They do not compete on Google reviews.
That was a decision, not an oversight. The chain salons in that market are so far ahead on review volume that fighting them there would have taken years and produced very little along the way. So the energy went somewhere the business could actually win, into organic social and the referral engine a business with that many chairs already has.
I include this because I do not want the rest of this post to read as a rule.
For most local businesses, and for nearly every home service company, the Google Business Profile is not optional. It is the highest-leverage free thing you have, and it is where the hiring decision happens.
It is also not the only door. Where your best customers actually are is a question worth answering honestly, and I worked through it in what if your best customers are not on social media.
If your category is genuinely saturated at the top, and you have another channel where you are already strong, the honest answer is to keep the profile complete, accurate, and out of dormancy, then put your real effort where you can actually move.
Knowing which of those two situations you are in is most of the work.
The fifteen-minute routine
For everyone in the first situation, this is the entire intervention, and it fits on a Friday afternoon.
Reply to every review that has come in since last week. Two sentences each.
Upload two or three photos from this week’s work. No captions needed.
Check that your hours are correct, including anything unusual coming up.
Ask two customers for a review, in person, at the moment the work is finished and they are looking at it. Not three days later by email, and without steering what they say.
That is it. Fifteen minutes, weekly, forever.
The reason it works is not that any single action is powerful. It is that the profile never goes quiet, and going quiet is what actually costs you.
Before you spend money on ads
If your calls dropped and nothing about your actual business changed, look here before you look at ad spend.
Advertising into a stale profile is expensive, because the ad brings people to a listing that then has to convince them, and a listing with old reviews and old photos is not in a strong position to do that.
Fix the free thing first. It is usually the whole answer, and when it is not, at least the paid work is landing somewhere that can convert. If you want a calmer way to look at what is working before you change anything, the marketing reset walks through it.
If you would like someone to look at what is actually happening with your visibility, that is the kind of question The Marketing Review is built for.
Frequently asked questions
Why did my Google Business Profile stop showing up if nothing changed?
Local ranking has shifted toward current activity rather than accumulated history. A profile with no recent reviews, photos, or updates can lose visibility even if the business itself has not changed.
Can I still offer a discount for leaving a review?
No. Google’s April 2026 review policy update prohibits incentivizing reviews with discounts, gifts, loyalty points, or anything of value, including offers made to change or remove a negative review.
Is it against the rules to only send review links to happy customers?
Yes. That practice, known as review gating, is prohibited and is now actively enforced. Review requests must go to customers without pre-screening them by sentiment.
How often should I post photos to my Google Business Profile?
Every twenty-one days as a bare minimum, and weekly if you can manage it. A recurring phone reminder is the simplest way to keep it from slipping. Photos of real work, your storefront, or your team perform better than logos or stock images.
Do I need to reply to positive reviews?
Yes. Owner response rate signals an actively managed profile, and replies are read by future customers deciding whether to call. Unanswered positive reviews suggest nobody is monitoring the listing.
Is review count still important?
It still contributes, but recency and steadiness now carry more weight. A steady flow of new reviews generally outperforms a large but stale total.
What is the single most valuable thing to fix first?
Completeness. Fill in every empty field on the profile, especially services, hours, and service area, using the words your customers use.
