Imagine someone asks a friend if they could recommend a good local garage, and they replied: “I always use Jones’, couldn’t have had better service; I couldn’t recommend them high enough and I wouldn’t anyone else – but there’s Smiths on the corner opposite, but I’ve never used them and I don’t know anything about them”.

Which business would you expect is most likely to get chosen? It doesn’t mean that Smiths is no good: it just means that you do not know what their reputation is.

Now imagine that, that same person asked 10, 20, 40 or even more people, and every single one of them gave the same answer.

Your online reputation is just like that. If potential new customers look online and see that dozens of past customers are recommending one business, and none of them are saying they don’t know anything about other businesses in your area: You’d have a much higher chance of new customers choosing you purely because they know you have a better local online reputation than any other business that also appears in the search results that they have no idea what reputation they have.