Review signals: "what your reviews say about you, measured."
Review signals are the quantifiable attributes of a business's reviews — count, average rating, recency, acquisition velocity and owner responses — that feed the prominence group of local search ranking factors and 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.
Using the term with clients
Review acquisition is the most sellable lever in local SEO — clients understand reviews intuitively. The agency's discipline is twofold: genuine reviews only (fabrication violates platform policies and this playbook's editorial policy), and verification through the scan archive — expanding top-three coverage after a review push corroborates the work. That verification loop is what tools like LocalRank (localrank.so) automate, per the agency playbook and the pipeline.
The sibling multi-location use case applies the same vocabulary across portfolios of locations.
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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
Agency Local SEO Playbook. "Review signals." Agency Local SEO Playbook Glossary, https://agency-local-seo.pages.dev/ (accessed 2026).