Reviews don't mean a lot.

Reviews and reputation control, feared by many. Makes or breaks any business in the early stages. But how much do they matter? Besides the fact that other people see them, what else does it affect? Well not as much as you’d think. 

Now don't get me wrong, social proof is huge for any business, or life in general. If you had to pick a business with 0 or 1000 reviews you'd probably pick the latter. When it comes to google though If you dont have your ducks in a line you could have thousands of reviews but still not show up on the front page. That's where 90% of the traffic is.

Hope is not lost though reviews do have an effect on your rank just not as much as people think. If you spam fake reviews it wont make you number one and puts you at risk of being banned from google business. But if you had a campaign for google reviews it would help you move up in the ranks on google.

So what does get me on the first page: The AI overlord who decides your rank is looking to see if you actually exist. Now the AI can't physically see your store, but they can check the address. They can't check how much business you do, but they can see how many other people talk about you or link back to you. Reviews are another good source of this, but its a slice of a bigger pie. If you’re struggling to get traffic with google you have to make sure you’re giving it enough information to rank you best.