Google Review Calculator

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Desired rating should be greater than current rating

Do you need more 5-star reviews? Contact us to learn how we can help you.

Use our free Google Review Calculator to calculate how many 5-star reviews your business needs to improve your overall star rating to reach your desired goal.

You can use the calculator for any review rating platform to help figure how many more positive reviews you need to improve your rating.

In this post, I’ll also provide my Google Review Management guide, so that you can improve your overall Google review rating.

We can now delete bad Google reviews.

Google Review Management Guide

  1. Why Your Google Review Rating Is Important
  2. How To Collect More 5-Star Google Reviews
  3. How To Turn a 1-Star Review Into A 5-Star Review
  4. Can I Delete a Bad Review From Google?
  5. Can You Hide Reviews On Google?
  6. Can I Turn Off Google Reviews For My Business?
  7. Wrapup

Why Your Google Review Rating Is Important

I think it goes without saying, but when someone Googles your business, the first thing they see plastered to the right of the search results is your Google Business Page.

And there is your star rating, complete with gold stars and a clickable link so users can read the content of all your reviews.*

google business page shows reviews when you are google

 

On mobile phones, the star rating is even more in your face. They’re right at the top.*

 

google reviews as shown on mobile phone

*Note, we have no affiliation with this business. They were chosen at random. I was actually going to use McDonald’s for this example, but McDonald Worley makes more sense for the readers of this article.

Not only is your star rating front and center when someone does research on your business in Google, Google is the most trusted review platform.

A study by ReviewTrackers shows that 65% of customers prefer Google to get reviews on a company.

So, invest the time into putting a system into place that allows the owner or someone with authority to address and fix any negative reviews you get.

How To Collect More 5-Star Google Reviews

    1. First, grab Whitespark’s Google review link. This will allow you to provide customers with a direct link – not only to your Google Business Page, but to a window that will open up for them to write their review.
    2. Share this link (and QR code) everywhere – on your website, social media and email signatures of all your employees.
    3. Communicate the importance of 5-star reviews to your entire staff. Run a contest for all staff to win something if the team hits a certain number of reviews.
    4. Add the Whitespark QR code to printed materials for easy distribution to customers.
    5. Use a software service like Podium to help automate your review collection process.
    6. Treat your employees well, so they treat your customers well and you avoid bad reviews.
    7. If you do get a bad review, follow our guide below on turning a 1-star review into a 5-star review.
    8. Offer direct incentives to customers to leave positive reviews. You can run an enter to win with a big prize or just offer modest perks if someone will leave you a review.

How To Turn a 1-Star Review Into A 5-Star Review

I worked in minor league baseball for twelve years and during that time, we had plenty of upset customers.

Often, I was the one called in to try to calm down someone who was already angry for whatever reason.

Here are the strategies I recommend for turning an upset customer into a happy one.

  • Do it in person or by phone
  • Don’t give the responsibility to someone else and if you do, give them the authority to do what’s needed to fix the problem
  • Listen and put yourself in their place. You MUST see it from their perspective. I encourage you to review David Burns’ Five Secrets of Effective Communication – it’s my gold standard for communicating more effectively
  • Don’t get emotional and even though it might feel personal, don’t take it personally
  • Calmly repeat their problem back to them to make sure you understand it (and they feel heard)
  • Once you understand the problem, be honest and explain how it happened, then….
  • FIX IT!

When you feel the customer is once again happy, you might then explain to them how badly the 1-star review hurts your business and online reputation and how hard you work to maintain it. You’ll have to feel your way here, but if you think the time is right, you might even ask them if they’d consider changing the review rating.

Hopefully, you won’t have to ask at all. The customer will be so elated that the owner of the company reached out (quickly), listened and solved their problem, that they will update the review and change the rating without you having to say anything.

Can I Delete a Bad Review From Google?

There are three ways to remove a negative review from Google.

  1. Report the review to Google
  2. Ask the reviewer to delete or change the review
  3. Hire a company to remove the review

Method #1 – Report the review to Google

In my experience, reporting a review to Google is a waste of time.

Unless the review content violates Google’s review policy, Google is not going to remove it.

But it doesn’t cost anything to report a review, so you might as well give it a try.

  1. Begin by tapping the 3 dots next to the review you want to report.
  2. Then click “Report review
  3. Click the most appropriate reason why you’re reporting the review, or click the option for Legal Help
  4. Tap on “Send report”

how to report a google review

Method #2 – Ask the reviewer to delete or change the review

This is my favorite method because it builds good will and can create a customer for life.

The Harvard Business Review conducted a study of over 400,000 customer service-related tweets to airlines and wireless carriers between March 2015 and April 2016.

The study concluded that customers who received fast, personalized responses to their complaints were willing to pay MORE for services in the future.

Psychologically, we’ve all become so conditioned to not being heard, that to be heard makes us feel like we matter and our brand loyalty goes up.

There are two ways to correctly respond to bad reviews on Google.

  1. Respond genuinely in a public way so everyone can see it
  2. Call the customer immediately to resolve the issue

In the sample review below, we can see the owner is using both strategies.

how to respond to negative google reviews online

And in this example, the owner decided to call the customer directly to address their bad experience.

call negative google review customers

For an even more detailed strategy, please read my advice for turning a 1-star review into a 5-star review on this page.

Method #3 – Hire a company to remove the review

This is my least favorite method because it rarely works.

Online reputation management companies specialize in removing negative content from the internet and some of them guarantee to remove Google reviews or you don’t pay.

This sounds great, but I know from experience their success rates are very low.

Instead of getting your hopes up, my advice would be to use Method 2 and follow our guidelines on turn a 1-star review into a 5-star review.

Can You Hide Reviews On Google?

No.

Unlike Facebook, which gives business owners the option of hiding their reviews from the public, Google does not provide an option to hide reviews.

Can I Turn Off Google Reviews For My Business?

No.

There is no way to turn off Google reviews for your business.


Wrapup

I hope you enjoy using the Google Review Calculator at the top of this page.

You can use it to compute how many 5-star reviews you need in order to meet your desired star rating on your Google Business Page.

Getting a steady stream of good reviews is a nice way to showcase your business and happy customers.

Even bad reviews give you an opportunity to show how well you operate your business.

Put a plan in place and keep collecting those great reviews!