Reviews and reputation

Review request built into service, responses to comments and handling negativity — before it has a chance to grow.

• 6 hours – 2 daysLaunch
• individuallyScope
• MarketingArea

Problem

Reviews are left by two groups: very satisfied and very angry. Since the latter are usually more willing to write, the average falls below reality. On top of that, nobody responds to comments, and one unanswered complaint from six months ago sits right at the top of the profile and is read by every new client. The request for a review comes up when someone remembers it, which is almost never.

What we do

We turn review collection into a routine, and responding into a process with a deadline.

• Review request goes out automatically after the visit, while the impression is still fresh
• We respond to all comments, including bad ones — the next client reads that response, not the one who's already left
• Negative review triggers notification immediately, not during a monthly review

What's included

The review system collects, reputation management watches what's already online. They usually work together.

• Google review system: review requests, timing, SMS and email sequences, result tracking, response templates
• Reputation management: review monitoring, response strategy, negative alert notifications, monthly report

Timeline

Launch takes 6 hours – 2 days — that's how long it takes to integrate the request into the post-visit flow and prepare templates. First new reviews appear within a few days of launch. Noticeable change in average rating usually takes two to four months, because old entries need to be outweighed by new ones, and you can't delete them.

Pricing

Collecting reviews and watching what is already out there are two sides of the same work and in practice they go together — so the cost is counted from how many places have to be watched and how many visits a month turn into a request for a review, not from the number of modules bought. We do not buy or generate reviews — we ask real customers for them, because everything else ends with a Google filter and a lost business profile.

What you get

Number of reviews grows steadily, not in jumps after a failure. Higher rating and fresh entries boost position in maps, so the same work supports local SEO. Responses show someone is on the other side — and that often decides between two similar companies.

How the average rating is actually calculated, and why one bad review hits harder early on

The average rating on a business profile follows a simple formula: new_average = (old_average × N + new_rating) / (N + 1), where N is the number of reviews before the new one. At N = 5, a single one-star review can pull the average down by half a star; at N = 200, the same entry barely moves the chart. That is why a business with few reviews is fragile — not because its customers are worse, but because the denominator is small.

• 5 reviews, average 4.8 → one 1-star: new average 4.0
• 200 reviews, average 4.8 → one 1-star: average drops by 0.02

The practical takeaway: while review counts are low, every single case — good or bad — carries disproportionate weight. Building volume isn't cosmetic, it's mathematical protection against randomness.

Three paths to a review system: do it yourself, through an ad agency, through a management layer

The choice isn't obvious — it depends on how much time and process you already have in place.

• DIY: the owner or front desk asks for a review out loud, when they remember. Works unevenly and vanishes during the first week of vacation
• Ad agency: asks for a review as an add-on to an ad campaign. The system usually disappears along with the ad budget once the campaign ends
• Management layer (Aura): the request is built into the service process itself, whether or not an ad happens to be running

The difference isn't the tool — an SMS or an email can be sent any way you like. The difference is whether the request survives a month without supervision.

What this service does not do

We do not buy reviews and do not commission anyone to write them — not friends, not firms that offer this. We do not remove genuine negative reviews, because a real bad review cannot be removed, and trying to work around that ends in a Google filter and the loss of the whole profile, good reviews included. We do not promise a specific rating by the end of the month — a rating is the sum of real customers' decisions, not a counter we can set.

What we do instead is slower and honest: we ask real customers at the right moment and respond to what is already there.

What we need from you for this to work

The system runs on your data, not our guesses.

• Admin access to the Google Business Profile (or an invite for us as a manager)
• A point of contact with the customer right after the service — a phone number, email, or booking reference, so the request goes out while the impression is still fresh
• One person on your side who reads negative-review alerts and decides how to respond — without this, the alert goes nowhere

Missing one of these three doesn't stop the work entirely, but it slows it down — most often it's the missing third point, the decision-maker, that leaves a negative review unanswered for weeks.

When a review system doesn't pay off

Four situations where it's better to postpone this service:

• The business doesn't yet have a steady flow of customers — there's no one to ask for a review, so the system sits empty
• The model is purely one-off with no point of contact (e.g., sales through an intermediary), so there's nobody to send the request to after the transaction
• The profile already has hundreds of fresh reviews and a high, stable average — further automation adds little on top of what's already there
• The business is planning to close, rebrand, or change its name in the coming months — a review history built now would stay under the old brand

In each of these cases, the honest answer is: not now — not "let's buy a package and see."

How to check the effect after a month, without our report

All these numbers are visible directly in the Google Business Profile panel, free of charge, without logging into anything of ours.

• Number of reviews a month ago vs. now — a plain increase
• Share of reviews with a reply — how many of the new comments already have a company response
• Time between a review and the reply — visible in the date of each response
• Number of negative-review alerts that actually got a response

If these four numbers aren't moving, that's a signal to talk, not to wait another month.

The most common mistake when replying to a negative review

A defensive reply — making excuses, publicly arguing over facts, an "it's not our fault" tone. It isn't read by the review's author but by every next customer checking the profile before deciding. A defensive reply confirms exactly what they feared: that the business doesn't take criticism.

The cost of this mistake isn't visible right away — it isn't one lost sale, but a repeated loss of exactly the customers who read replies carefully before calling.

What we do when a review isn't from a customer

Google has its own mechanism for reporting reviews that break its rules — a fake account, spam, hate speech, a conflict of interest (say, a review from a competitor). This is not "removing negativity," it's flagging a policy violation, and the decision is always Google's, not ours.

We file the report through Google's built-in tool and let you know the status. We don't promise removal — Google rejects a share of reports even when a review looks suspicious, and that's a normal part of the process, not a failure.

When the problem lies elsewhere

If your problem sounds different, neighbouring areas of the same system stand right next to it — AURA connects them to each other rather than selling them separately:

• Google Ads — Campaigns billed by leads and orders, not clicks. With full measurement from day one.
• Meta Ads — Facebook and Instagram as a lead channel, not a bulletin board with a promoted post once a quarter.
• TikTok Ads — Short video as an acquisition channel, not a trend: native creatives, hook tests and acquisition cost calculated the same as in any other advertising.
• SEO and maps — Visibility in Google and maps exactly where the client is looking — within a few streets.