Customer reviews
Customer reviews — rating, volume, recency, responses — are a major local ranking signal and a decisive conversion argument. They account for roughly a fifth of local pack ranking factors.
In practice
The lever is momentum, not perfection: a steady flow of recent, detailed reviews with consistent professional replies outranks a static 5.0 rating from twelve old reviews. Fake reviews expose a business to removal and, in France, to sanctions for deceptive commercial practices — the risk is never worth it.