We spend a lot of our time telling clients the same thing: a Google Business Profile is something you keep feeding, and reviews are the fastest way to earn trust with someone who's never heard of you. It's page one of our own advice — the first thing we set up for every new client, and the first lever we point to when a brand search isn't going the way it should.
So it's a bit awkward to admit that our own profile sat at zero reviews for weeks while we got on with client work. Not because we didn't believe our own advice — because, like most small business owners, it's easy to let the thing you tell everyone else to prioritise slip down your own list.
What changed
A client left us a review, unprompted, five stars:
“He completely rebuilt our website from the ground up, taking it from a basic 16-page Wix site to a much faster, professionally designed website with dedicated service and location pages… focused on what would actually help us rank better on Google rather than just making the site look good. Since launching the new website, we’ve already seen a significant increase in Google impressions and organic traffic, and we’ve started receiving enquiries from areas we weren’t reaching before.” HFC Clearance, Google review
It's now sitting on our own homepage, alongside the results we've delivered for other local businesses.
Why one review matters more than the number suggests
Mathematically, one review doesn't move much. But it did three things that a stat sheet can't:
- It gave anyone landing on our site for the first time something more convincing than our own description of ourselves — a genuine account, in someone else's words.
- It forced us to actually do the thing we tell every client to do: ask directly, at the right moment, rather than hoping it happens on its own.
- It reset the clock. A profile with one recent, genuine review reads as active. A profile with none reads as either brand new or quietly neglected — and Google, like people, treats those two very differently.
The lesson, if you're in the same spot
If an agency that builds Google Business Profiles for a living can let its own sit empty for weeks, it's no surprise that most local businesses do too. It's rarely about the work being bad. It's almost always that nobody actually asked.
The fix isn't complicated:
- Ask right after finishing a piece of work you're proud of — while it's fresh, not months later.
- Make it a two-tap process. Send the direct review link, not a request to "leave us a review sometime."
- Reply to every review you get, good or bad. It's the difference between a profile that looks maintained and one that looks abandoned.
We've written a fuller guide to getting more Google reviews if you want the detail. If you'd rather someone just set the whole profile up properly and keep it fed — including asking on your behalf — that's exactly what we do, and a free working example comes before you pay a penny.
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