--- title: Review Velocity — definition and why cadence beats total | Siite description: "Review velocity explained: why recency and steadiness outrank a high review count, and how to build a review habit that stays inside the rules." url: "https://siite.co/dictionary/review-velocity" type: static generatedAt: "2026-10-22T08:21:10.841Z" --- Reputation # Review Velocity The rate at which a business earns new reviews over time — a steady, recent flow, rather than a large total collected years ago. Also goes by Review cadence, Review growth rate [![Siite](/images/layout/logo.svg)Written by Siite](/about/)Updated September 8, 2026 ## Entry contents [All Terms A to Z←Browse the full dictionary](/dictionary/) Review velocity is the rate at which new reviews arrive, rather than how many you have collected in total. A business earning a handful every month has velocity. A business with four hundred reviews, nearly all from three years ago, has a large number and none at all. Both Google and the person choosing who to call pay attention to the difference. > **Briefly explained** > > - The pace of new reviews, not the total. > - Recency is read as evidence about the business that exists today. > - A steady trickle reads as real. Forty in one week reads as something else. > - Gating, buying and incentives all breach the rules, and the cleanup costs more than the reviews were worth. ## What does velocity actually measure? It measures three things at once, which is what makes it more useful than the total. - **Rate:** How many arrive in a month, compared with the businesses you compete against rather than with your own last year. - **Recency:** How long ago the most recent one landed. - **Steadiness:** Whether the flow holds through a quiet season or stops with it. ## Why does recency beat the total? Because both audiences read it as evidence about now. A customer comparing two companies treats last month’s review as a description of the business they would be hiring, and a three-year-old review as history. They are right to. Staff change, owners sell, standards move. Google treats it similarly. Reviews feed the prominence side of local ranking, and [Local Services Ads](/dictionary/local-services-ads/) use review score and count directly. A profile that stopped collecting looks like a business that stopped trading. ## How do you keep the flow going? The mechanics matter more than the intention. Nearly every business means to ask and nearly none do it reliably by hand. - **Ask after every completed job**, not when someone remembers. - **Ask at the moment the work is finished** and the customer is pleased, not days later from the office. - **Ask through the channel they already use.** For most of them that is a text with a direct link. - **Make it one tap.** Every extra step loses a share of the people who meant to help you. - **Reply to all of them**, including the short five-star ones. The habit is what the next reader sees. ## What breaks the rules? The same practices keep appearing, and every one of them is expensive. - **Gating:** Screening customers and only sending the happy ones to the review link. Against Google’s policies and against FTC guidance on endorsements. - **Buying:** Purchased reviews are detected in bulk and removed in bulk, usually along with the ones you earned. - **Incentives:** A discount or a gift card for leaving a review breaches platform rules even when you do not ask for a good one. The downside is not only removal. A review profile that has been cleaned out once is harder to rebuild than one that was slow and honest from the start. ## What do the terms mean? - **Velocity:** The rate new reviews arrive. - **Gating:** Filtering who gets asked, based on how happy they seem. - **Response rate:** The share of reviews you have replied to. Visible to anyone reading. - **Review request:** The message that carries the link. Usually a text. - **Prominence:** The part of local ranking that reviews feed, alongside citations and links. ## What should you check every month? - How many arrived, against the same month last year - Whether anything is unanswered - Whether the ask is actually firing after every job, or quietly failing - What the critical ones have in common, which is usually more useful than the rating itself Owner questions ## What owners ask us about Review Velocity ### How many reviews should I ask for each month? +Enough that the flow never stops. Tie the ask to completed jobs rather than to a monthly quota, so the pace matches the work you actually did. ### Is it against the rules to filter out unhappy customers? +Yes. Review gating violates Google's policies and FTC guidance on endorsements. Ask everyone, and answer the critical ones in public. ### Do I have to respond to reviews? +You should. The reply is read by the next customer comparing you to someone else, not by the person who left it. ### What happens if we stop asking for a few months? +Nothing dramatic at first. Then the most recent review starts to look old, and a profile with a strong total but nothing recent reads as a business that has wound down. ### Can I offer a discount for a review? +No. Incentives breach platform policies and FTC guidance whether or not you ask for a good review, and the reviews can be removed along with the goodwill.Put this to work ## Guides that use this Step-by-step playbooks from the team, written for owners doing the work themselves. No sign-up and no email required. [### Why Austin roofing reviews matter 3× more than HVAC reviews Roofing buyers research more and weigh reviews harder than any other home service category. The data — and the review-velocity playbook that wins the job. Read the guide→](/articles/roofing-reviews-matter-3x-austin/)[### Dental review velocity: targets that beat Austin's corporate chains Corporate dental chains dominate the map pack with review-velocity engines. Here's how independent Austin practices outperform them with the right targets. Read the guide→](/articles/dental-review-velocity-corporate-chains/)4.9191 reviewsWhere this turns into work ## Reviews that keep arriving An ask that fires after every completed job, replies written in your voice, and a flow that holds through the quiet months instead of stopping with them. [See the service→](/services/reputation-management/)[Ask us about it](/contact/) ![Christian Barnbaek, Client Director at Siite](/images/team/panel/christian-barnbaek.webp) *Our client director* ## Related entries - [### Google Business Profile The free Google profile that controls how your business appears in Maps and the Local Pack — hours, categories, service areas, photos, reviews and messages.](/dictionary/google-business-profile/) - [### Local Pack The block of three local businesses Google shows above the organic results for searches with local intent, pulled from Google Business Profile data rather than from your website.](/dictionary/local-pack/) - [### Missed-Call Text-Back An automation that sends a text message the moment a call goes unanswered, so the caller gets a reply instead of dialing the next business on the list.](/dictionary/missed-call-text-back/) - [### Local Services Ads Google's pay-per-lead ad format for local service businesses, shown above the Local Pack with a Google Guaranteed badge, where you are billed per lead rather than per click.](/dictionary/local-services-ads/) [All terms A to Z Browse every term A to Z Open the dictionary→](/dictionary/)