How many Google reviews do I need? Data from 80 UK searches

If you have ever typed "how many Google reviews do I need" into a search bar, we now have a measured answer. On 20 October 2026 we ran 80 searches across eight trades and ten UK towns, and the typical business in Google's top three map results had 98 reviews. That figure moves a lot by trade, from 54 for accountants to 426 for dentists, and six businesses held a top-three spot with a single review.

Say Dave runs a two-van electrical firm in Sidcup and has 23 Google reviews. A marketing email has told him he needs 100 before Google will take him seriously, so he has stopped thinking about it. In the Sidcup electrician search we ran, the three businesses Google showed in the map had 18, 53 and 24 reviews.

Dave isn't miles behind. He is level with two of the three. This post sets out what we found for each trade and each town, the smallest review counts that still made the top three, what Google itself says decides the map, and what this data cannot tell you. The full method is at the end, so you can check it or run it yourself.

Key Takeaways

• In 80 UK map searches run on 20 October 2026, the median business in Google's top three map results had 98 reviews, and half of the 240 top-three spots were held by businesses with between 47 and 213.
• The median review count in the top three ranged from 54 in searches for "accountant" to 426 in searches for "dentist", with solicitors at 194 and plumbers at 149.
• Six top-three map spots were held by businesses with a single Google review on 20 October 2026, and all six came from searches for "locksmith".
• In 49 of the 80 map searches run on 20 October 2026, the business in first place had fewer Google reviews than at least one of the two businesses shown below it.
• Google's help page says local results are "mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity", and it lists review count as one input to prominence, alongside how many websites link to a business.

How many Google reviews do the top three map results have?

Across all 80 searches, the middle business had 98 reviews. Half of the top-three spots were held by businesses with between 47 and 213 reviews, and the rest sat either side of that.

All 80 searches showed a map with businesses under it, which gave us 240 top-three spots. A handful of businesses turned up in more than one town's results, which is what you would expect where towns sit next to each other.

Google reviews	Top-three spots	Share
Under 20	24	10%
20 to 49	40	17%
50 to 99	58	24%
100 to 199	50	21%
200 to 499	45	19%
500 or more	23	10%

Shares are rounded, so they add up to 101%.

Two numbers from that table stand out. Just over a quarter of top-three spots (64 of 240) belonged to a business with fewer than 50 reviews. And only 13 of the 80 maps had all three businesses on 100 reviews or more.

The ratings were bunched near the top. The median was 4.9 stars, 107 of the 240 spots showed a perfect 5.0, and only 17 showed less than 4.5. The lowest rating we saw in a top-three spot was 3.9.

If you are short of reviews, the first job is making it easy to ask. Our free Google review link generator finds your business by name and gives you a direct review link and a printable QR code, with no signup.

How many Google reviews do you need for your trade?

It depends heavily on the trade. Dentists and solicitors in the top three had far more reviews than cleaning companies, accountants or locksmiths, so a single target for every business would be wrong for most of them.

The last column is the one to look at if you are behind. For each search we took the smallest review count among the three businesses shown, then took the middle value of those across the ten towns. It tells you what the third-strongest business on review count typically had.

Search term	Maps found	Median reviews in top three	Lowest	Highest	Median of the smallest in each map
dentist	10	426	43	4,100	155
solicitor	10	194	23	764	77
plumber	10	149	4	893	54
electrician	10	76	4	270	35
roofer	10	67	5	174	46
cleaning company	10	67	12	819	61
locksmith	10	66	1	812	1
accountant	10	54	5	202	19

Medians are rounded to the nearest whole review. Each trade row covers 30 top-three spots.

We searched "cleaning company" rather than "cleaner". In a first run the same morning, "cleaner" gave 12 of its top-three spots to dry cleaners, so it did not measure cleaning businesses. All 30 "cleaning company" spots went to cleaning firms.

Picture an accountant in Orpington with 30 reviews who assumes the top three is out of reach. In our Orpington accountant search, the three firms shown had 202, 37 and 17 reviews. One firm was far ahead, and the other two had about as many reviews as she does, or fewer.

That pattern was common. In 42 of the 80 maps, at least one of the three businesses had fewer than 50 reviews.

Does the number change from town to town?

Yes, though less than it changes by trade. The median review count in the top three ran from 45 in Sidcup to 152 in Manchester, using the same eight search terms in every town.

Town	Top-three spots	Median reviews
Manchester	24	152
Bromley	24	151
Bristol	24	149
Leeds	24	127
Cheltenham	24	121
Croydon	24	81
Lewisham	24	80
Orpington	24	76
Beckenham	24	69
Sidcup	24	45

We did not measure anything that would explain these differences, such as how many businesses compete in each town, so we are not offering a reason. With 24 spots per town, one very well-reviewed business can move a town's median noticeably.

Neighbouring towns also share businesses. One Bromley plumber with 893 reviews appeared in the top three for Bromley, Beckenham and Orpington. If you work on the edge of a bigger town, part of your competition may be based in the next town along.

What is the lowest number of reviews that made the top three?

One. Six businesses held a top-three map spot with a single Google review, and every one of them came from a "locksmith" search: in Beckenham, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Orpington and Sidcup.

Outside locksmiths, the lowest count we saw was 4 reviews, held by an electrician in the Beckenham search and a plumber in the Lewisham search. Next came 5 reviews, for a roofer in Bromley and an accountant in Leeds.

We did not look into any of those listings beyond what the search returned, so we draw no conclusion about them. What the data does show is narrower and still useful: a small review count did not stop a business appearing in the top three, in any of the eight trades we checked.

Do more Google reviews put you higher on the map?

Not on their own. In 49 of the 80 maps, the business in first place had fewer reviews than at least one of the two below it, so review count did not set the order in most of the searches we ran.

The middle business in first place had 123 reviews, the middle business in second place had 91, and the middle business in third place had 85. First place tended to have more, but second and third were close, and plenty of searches broke the pattern.

Google's own help page on local results says local results are "mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity". It then describes three factors:

• Relevance: "how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for."
• Distance: "how far each business is from the customer who's searching."
• Prominence: "how well-known a business is", which Google says is "also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have."

The same page says "more reviews and positive ratings can help", and that there is no way to pay Google for a better position. So reviews count, and Google says so. They are one input to one of three factors, and our data fits that: count alone did not decide who came first.

We can't go further than that. We didn't measure distance, categories, links or anything else Google uses, so nothing here proves that adding reviews will move any particular business. What we can say is how many reviews the businesses already in the top three had on the day.

For the other two factors, our guide to showing up in the Google Maps local pack covers categories, services, service areas and photos.

How do you work out how many reviews you need?

Run the same check we did, for your own trade and your own patch. It takes about ten minutes and gives you a number that fits your market better than any national average.

1. Search for your trade the way a customer types it, using the plain trade name, from somewhere your customers actually are. Your own phone at home is fine as long as your customers live near you.
2. Write down the review count of each of the three businesses in the map results.
3. Circle the smallest of the three. On that day, from that spot, that count was enough to share the top three.
4. Repeat from two or three other places you serve, because the map changes with the searcher's location.
5. Repeat a week later. One search is a snapshot, and we saw a map change within a few minutes.
6. Compare your count with the smallest number you circled. If you are below it, close that gap first. If you are above it, look hard at the rest of your profile too.

Take Jo, a roofer in Leeds with 70 reviews. In our Leeds roofer search, the three businesses shown had 112, 161 and 64 reviews. Jo has more than the third business, so if Jo is not appearing, the next thing to check is the profile itself: the category, the services listed and the service area.

If you are below the smallest number, the fix is a habit: ask every customer, by text, soon after the job. Our guide on how to get more Google reviews covers who to ask and how to reply. If you would rather the asking and the reminders were done for you, Review Management sends the requests by email, follows up once, and drafts a reply to every review that comes in.

What this data does not show

This is one morning's snapshot of 80 searches, and it has limits worth knowing before you quote it.

• It is a single day. All 80 searches ran on 20 October 2026, between 09:19 and 09:33 UTC. The map changes over time.
• It is personalised. Google's help page says that if a customer does not share where they are, "Google uses what it knows about their location". Our searches were set to each town as a whole, not to a street, so someone searching from a particular road may see different businesses.
• It is desktop only, with one short search term per trade. Searches like "emergency plumber" or "plumber near me" may show different maps.
• Ten towns are not the whole UK. Six are in South East London, so London suburbs carry more weight in the overall figures than they would in a national sample.
• We measured how many reviews, not how recent. Two businesses with 80 reviews each can look very different to a customer if one has had none this year.
• It shows who was in the top three, not why. No figure here is evidence that more reviews caused a business to appear.

We also ran each of the eight Bromley searches twice, between 19 seconds and about three minutes apart. Seven came back identical. The accountant search came back with a different map, with only one firm in both. That is why step five above says to check more than once.

The question of what changes at particular milestones is answered separately: see what happens when you hit 100 reviews on Google and how many 5-star reviews it takes to cancel out a 1-star review.

How we ran the searches

We used DataForSEO's Live SERP endpoint for Google, which its documentation says provides "real-time data on top search engine results". The settings were the same for every search.

Setting	What we used
Date and time	20 October 2026, 09:19 to 09:21 UTC (the ten "cleaning company" searches at 09:32 UTC)
Search engine	Google, English language, desktop
Search terms	plumber, electrician, roofer, locksmith, cleaning company, dentist, accountant, solicitor
Places	Bromley, Croydon, Lewisham, Orpington, Beckenham, Sidcup, Manchester, Bristol, Cheltenham, Leeds
Searches	80 (8 search terms in each of 10 places)
What we read	The map results block, taking the first three businesses and the review count and star rating shown for each
Spots counted	240 (80 maps of 3)

A few rules we applied, so the figures can be checked:

• Three maps showed four businesses (dentist in Cheltenham, roofer in Orpington, cleaning company in Sidcup). We used the first three, as shown.
• Ads were not counted. We read only the map results block.
• Where a median fell between two whole numbers, we rounded to the nearest whole review.
• We publish totals only. The search-by-search file names businesses, so we keep it internal.

To cite this data, please use: SEO Pages, "How many Google reviews do I need? Data from 80 UK searches", 20 October 2026, with a link to this page.

So how many Google reviews do you need?

Enough to match the smallest count in your local top three, for your trade, from where your customers search. In our 80 searches that number was often well under 100, and for half the trades it was under 50.

• Check your own map from two or three places, on two different days.
• Note the smallest review count among the three businesses shown, and aim to pass it first.
• If you already have more reviews than one of the three, work on your profile's category, services and service area next.
• Keep asking every customer, so the count keeps rising rather than stalling.

For the bigger picture of how reviews fit with your profile and your website, read how local businesses get found on Google, or our page of local search statistics. And if you want help with all of it, see how we help local businesses get found.