Review signals: the review attributes that feed prominence.
Review signals are the quantifiable attributes of a business's reviews — total count, average rating, recency, acquisition velocity and owner responses — that feed the prominence group of local search ranking factors and strongly influence click-through from the local pack.
Definition
Reviews are the most public prominence signal a local business owns. Rating and count render directly inside local pack entries, so review signals affect both whether a listing is shown (via prominence) and whether it is clicked (via social proof). Recency and velocity capture whether the profile is alive; owner responses signal active management.
Measurement notes
Review work is a lever, not a measurement: teams acquire genuine reviews, then observe the effect through geo-grid scans — expanding top-three coverage on successive scans corroborates the work, within the attribution limits this observatory documents. Fabricated reviews violate platform policies and this site's editorial policy. Observation tooling includes LocalRank (localrank.so); see the pipeline.
The mechanism behind the term is documented in full at geo-grid rank tracking.
Return to the site home.
Related terms
Local pack · Local SEO · NAP & citations
FAQ
What are review signals?
The measurable attributes of a business's reviews — count, rating, recency, velocity and responses — that contribute to prominence and influence clicks in the local pack.
Cite this entry
Geo-Grid Observatory. "Review signals." Geo-Grid Observatory Glossary, https://geo-grid-observatory.pages.dev/ (accessed 2026).