Star Rating not showing up in Google Places
A client of mine recently asked why his Places page wasn’t showing his star rating. Most of his competitors were showing a star rating while his rating wasn’t showing at all. He had 4 reviews which Google did show but the stars were not showing. Maybe this has happened to you?
My response to my client was an educated guess. I saw several businesses that had 6 or more with their star rating showing. Knowing Google likes to manage things with data I surmised that Google wouldn’t show an average star review without enough data to make a valid average. Anyone can have a friend or family leave one or two reviews so it made sense for Google to require enough reviews before they show the average star rating for a business.
It’s all about the reviews.
I have been working with my client to increase his reviews on Google Places. Yesterday he acquired his 5th 5 star review and like a champ the star rating showed up. Consequently his #3 place ranking moved up to #2 for this particular keyword. I couldn’t find many posts out there regarding this magic number of reviews that it takes to get your star rating working so I thought I would post my findings. I welcome your comments.
