{"id":117356,"date":"2022-05-10T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/revealed-industry-benchmarks-for-customer-reviews-in-2022\/"},"modified":"2024-12-20T09:23:49","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T14:23:49","slug":"revealed-industry-benchmarks-for-customer-reviews-in-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-ca\/insights\/blog\/local-search\/revealed-industry-benchmarks-for-customer-reviews-in-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: Industry benchmarks for customer reviews in 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been especially difficult for businesses to evaluate if they meet benchmarks for online reputation management<\/a> over the past two years. Year-over-year analyses have relied on frustratingly imperfect information as industries dealt with not only the changing business landscape but the all-encompassing impact of COVID-19. As a result, it has been almost impossible to tell if negative reviews are due to strategic mistakes, pandemic-related fluctuations, or a combination of both. Without review benchmarks to compare against, all businesses have been able to do is guess\u2014and too many business owners have used the pandemic as an all-purpose excuse for downward-trending sentiment.<\/p>\n

Few possess the knowledge to set benchmarks outside of their own business, and fewer still can confidently set such benchmarks across entire industries. But we’ve stepped up. Utilizing our data set of hundreds of clients across dozens of industries, we can reveal the review benchmarks businesses need in order to determine if they’re weathering the storm as effectively as their rivals or if there may be something other than the pandemic holding a business back.<\/p>\n

How we sliced and diced our data<\/h2>\n

To begin, it is important to note that our data sets are looking at year-over-year comparisons of April 1 2020 to March 31 2021<\/strong> versus April 1 2021 to March 31 2022<\/strong>. This timeline allows a complete view of how businesses handled initial lockdowns and how they adapted when pandemic procedures became commonplace. It also includes the holiday season because although the past two years have felt like one endless season, the golden quarter still exists as the most important time of the year for many an industry.<\/p>\n

It is also to be noted that we are looking primarily at businesses within the US, Canada, and Europe. We have data sets available in other geographies, but benchmarks for industries vary wildly across continents even in the most standard of scenarios. Certain industries, such as health insurance and real estate, have obvious and drastic differences depending on the region\u2014and without a sample size carrying into the thousands, we cannot provide viable data for other regions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Data sets are therefore also limited by the number of clients we have within those industries. Our large client base does provide a rough approximation of how businesses are distributed within industries in the US, Canada, and Europe, but this also means that prominent business types in these countries\u2014such as retail\u2014will see greater representation than more niche industries such as PO box providers. Nevertheless, DAC’s client base still acts as a microcosm of businesses within those regions.<\/p>\n

High-level considerations<\/h2>\n

With that, let us first see what review benchmarks we can set for general business performance before diving into each industry in detail.<\/p>\n

Average star rating:<\/strong> 4.0
\nAverage # of reviews per location:<\/strong> 215
\nYoY star rating change:<\/strong> -0.01
\nYoY % review count change:<\/strong> +32.38%<\/p>\n

The average star rating and number of reviews per location is not surprising given how hard Google has pushed for reviews in the past few years. Every business should strive for the coveted 4.0+ star rating or miss out on Google searches that include the terms “best”, “top”, and similar superlatives. The average review count surpassing 200 and YoY review counts increasing by more than 32% can be attributed to two factors:<\/p>\n

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  1. Google forced a temporary review pause in Q2 of 2020 after customers left reviews regarding COVID-19 issues that were beyond individual business’s control.<\/li>\n
  2. Google stepped up its efforts to turn its local listings into a major review platform. If your business hasn’t already encouraged greater numbers of fresh reviews, you’re falling behind your competitors.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Google wants text-heavy reviews because keywords within those reviews matter almost as much as raw star ratings. Bold review snippets appear in the map pack and local finder when a query matches up with the content of a user’s Google Business Profile (GBP)<\/a> review. Google also encourages business owners to respond to reviews (both good and bad), which is proven to increase the frequency of text-based reviews. A large volume of written reviews matters more to Google than star ratings alone, and bold keyword snippets extracted from reviews are known to have a significant impact on click-through rates.<\/p>\n

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