Google share slump shows just how vital professional review management has become

$500 billion - no company in the history of the US stock market has seen a fall of such magnitude

The cause? Let us quote Google itself: '...it revealed its own artificial intelligence (AI) summaries were hitting search advertising revenue. '

In plain(er) English: Businesses that feature in Google's AI search no longer need to pay for Google Ads.

Here's just one example:

Note the crucial words: '...based on local...reviews'

And here is the same search in 'full' AI mode:

Again: '...most highly rated and reviewed...'

Our advice going forward

Professional and service businesses must do everything in their power to achieve the highest Google score. As we first said last March, 4.9 has to be the aim. There will be internal and external factors:

Internal

Staff must be laser-focused on customer service. The days of ignoring customers because of personal issues are over; even the most irritating or demanding customer has the power to hurt your business. The fact that they have been totally unreasonable or unfair in their demands on your staff will not prevent them from writing a 1* review. They must be given no reason or excuse to do so. 

A member of staff should be appointed to coordinate reviews and review management. Targets should be agreed and set. No member of staff should be left out. Staff should be rewarded for gaining reviews in the same way they would be for achieving other targets and aims in the business.

Each and every review should be responded to, preferably the same day. Not only is this old-fashioned good manners, but the act of responding puts anyone tempted to play fast and loose when composing a future review that their version of the 'facts' will be challenged.

External

An independent moderated review management system, if not already in place, should be adopted. This has two functions, one more obvious than the other. The first is the actual moderation in and of itself, allowing factually incorrect, potentially misleading and plain unfair reviews to be addressed pre-publication, whether that be on the business's own website or onwards to Google. 

Until this year, some businesses relied on appeals to Google's own moderators to provide some redress and safety when such reviews were posted (indeed, we have helped many clients with such appeals); but since Google replaced its human moderators with AI moderation, such appeals now have a vanishingly small chance of success. 

As a result, a Google review, once posted, will remain unless it contravenes Google's very tight guidelines.

 

Secondly, looking into the future, businesses should retain ownership of their customers' reviews. It currently makes commercial sense that these are 'lent' to Google, but to rely solely on Google to use your customer reviews for your benefit in years to come would be to run an unnecessary and, in our opinion, greater commercial risk than necessary. Owning your own reviews adds value to your business's balance sheet and gives you maximum flexibility. Having them copied to Google is also vital - currently.

Conclusion

In 2026, more than ever, review management must be seen as core for every business, not a 'nice to have' addition to other marketing efforts. Properly implemented, it serves two vital functions: it supports every part of your marketing, and it protects your business's reputation.

Further reading

• Moderation - when just a single negative review, well written but inaccurate in content, malicious in intent, or simply the result of misunderstanding what can often be a complex transaction or service, can taint a raft of positive reviews, just like the proverbial bad apple in the barrel, moderation becomes an essential part of every professional and service business's reviews strategy*

*Why do we specify 'professional and service' here? Because product businesses, online retailers, for example, can weather negative reviews. The odd 'I didn't like the shirt/washing machine/camera' can be outweighed by 5* reviews. We have lost count of the number of urgent calls we receive when the victim of the 1* review is a professional business: 'Our phones have stopped ringing' is far from an unusual story.

• Compliance - even today, non-compliance with the CMA regulations - usually by cherry-picking or gating** - remains commonplace amongst businesses. The introduction of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, as revised, on 2 November this year, combined with the CMA's introduction of its own sophisticated AI detection software, has made investigation and sanction far more likely (a consumer protection enforcement case is currently ongoing into a major review site).

**Why is cherry-picking and gating, although expressly illegal, still commonplace? The answer is simple: in the tension between marketing (desperate for a great Google score and as clean a sheet as possible when it comes to negative reviews) and compliance, it so often tilts the balance towards the former. And, honestly, up until now the risk-reward equation has leaned in the same direction as well. But no longer. And thankfully, with moderation, there's little need for it. 

For more information, please don't hesitate to phone us on 0207 100-2233 or email info@helphound.com. Or right here, just use the 'Search this Blog' box on the right. With more than 1,000 articles, there's sure to be one that addresses your query. 

Reasons for NOT wanting to join HelpHound

Of course, almost any business solution has drawbacks, and review management is no exception. So rather than gloss over them, we wanted to address the reasons a business might not want to join HelpHound head-on. We hope businesses seeking a solution to their review management will appreciate our openness. 

In no particular order (as some will apply more to one business than another)...

Reputational risk

Proactive engagement with reviews, especially for businesses approaching the subject professionally and compliantly* for the first time, can be understandably alarming.

After all, inviting customers to leave reviews means accepting that not every review will be positive. The prospect of a damaging negative review — or, worse still, a succession of them — has historically led some businesses to shy away from engagement altogether.

Others have attempted to reduce the risk by selectively inviting customers they believe are likely to leave positive reviews, or by using some form of 'gating' — filtering customers according to their likely sentiment before deciding whether to invite them to post a public review.

The problem is that avoiding negative reviews doesn't make the underlying reputational risk disappear. And practices designed to influence which customers leave public reviews can create regulatory and credibility problems of their own.

This is precisely where professional review management earns its keep: encouraging genuine reviews while giving businesses the opportunity to identify and manage inaccurate or potentially misleading review content before it develops into lasting reputational damage.

* 'And compliantly': most businesses that we meet for the first time have addressed the subject of reviews in one way or another; they have asked their happiest customers to leave a review on Google or they have joined a review site, somtimes both. But they have almost always commited a breach of the CMA regulations in doing so. One of our first actions is to conduct a full audit of the business's current review exposure and management. For more on this increasingly important subject see 'The risk of getting compliance wrong' below.

 

Extra work/effort involved

If reviews are regarded as 'nice to have' rather than a core part of a business's marketing and customer relations strategy, then almost any work associated with them can understandably be seen as 'extra'.

Inviting customers to leave reviews, following up those invitations, monitoring reviews, responding appropriately and dealing with criticism all take time.

The question, therefore, is whether any return, in terms of new business acquired, customer retention and staff satisfaction justifies the effort.

For businesses where prospective customers routinely consult reviews before making contact (high value service and professional businesses especially), reviews have moved well beyond being a marketing accessory. They influence first impressions, enquiries and, ultimately, new business. They can also play a big part in ongoing customer retention (many clients ask for reviews on a periodic basis, simply because they find the approach works better than other forms of CRM).

An effective review management system should therefore reduce unproductive workloads rather than add to them.

 

The risk of getting compliance wrong

Businesses are becoming increasingly aware that reviews are now subject to consumer protection law and the attendant regulatory scrutiny (by the CMA in the UK) that has teeth*.

That awareness can itself create reluctance: Are we allowed to ask for reviews? Can we choose whom we invite? Can we moderate their reviews? What action can we take if a customer posts something unfair, misleading or inaccurate?

These are legitimate concerns, particularly as regulators have increased their focus on practices that may distort the impressions delivered to consumers.

But doing nothing is not necessarily the safest response. The objective should be to have a review process that is transparent, compliant and demonstrably fair to both the business and its customers. In full compliance with the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (which came into force on 6 April 2024) and the CMA's own enhanced regulatory and investigatory powers. 

For many businesses, having an independent review management process in place provides valuable reassurance on precisely these points.

*Teeth: up until the above mentioned Act of Parliament and the advent of AI investigative tools, the CMA had focused its regulatory efforts on the likes of big pharma and the construction industry; the combination of the greater powers in the Act (including the ability to fine businesses up to 10% of their annual global turnover) and the adoption of AI investigative tools working night and day, 24/7, means that all businesses are now in the crosshairs (we are monitoring this current regulatory action, which includes an investigation into a review site and one of its clients, and will report the resuts here, as we have done in the case of the recent EU 4 million fine imposed on Trustpilot for misleading consumers).

 

Conflict with an existing review solution

A significant number of UK businesses already pay for some form of review solution.

Those businesses may understandably be reluctant to question a system into which they have already invested considerable time, effort and money. Nobody particularly enjoys being told that something they have been paying for - perhaps for years - may no longer be the most appropriate solution.

But the relevant question isn't whether the previous investment was wasted. It is whether the solution being used today delivers what the business needs today: genuine reviews, regulatory compliance, effective management of customer dissatisfaction and maximum benefit from the review platforms that prospective customers actually consult.

Changing course doesn't invalidate what went before. Sometimes the market - often prompted by the law - simply moves on.

One important note here: Most review sites and solutions were in place before Google introduced its own reviews. Most would not have been 'invented' had they known that Google would come to domintate the reviews market to the extent it has. One major focus of our advice focuses on review management for the long term, and that often means Google, even if it sits alongside others. Google will almost certainly be here in five or ten years time; who remembers Qype (Europe's largest review site until it was swallowed up by Yelp! in 2012, Yelp! itself then withdrew from the UK and Europe in November 2016)? 

 

Cost

Google reviews themselves are free. Professional review management is not*.

There is a cost attached to independent moderation, customer feedback management, monitoring and the systems required to manage reviews effectively and compliantly.

So the calculation is straightforward: does the value justify the cost?

That value shouldn't be measured simply by the number of reviews generated. Businesses should consider the value of protecting their reputation, identifying dissatisfied customers, resolving complaints, improving their Google presence in search and converting more prospective customers into enquiries.

For some businesses, those benefits won't justify the investment.

For others, the cost of not managing their reviews properly may be considerably greater.

*Here are HelpHound's charges. And, just as importantly, our guarantee of success. 

So why join HelpHound?

We will show you abundant proof of concept before you decide whether or not to join, but just look at the example below and ask yourself, 'What would the impact on our business be of looking as good as this, in full compliance with the law, and without any ongoing costs apart from HelpHound's monthly fee?'

And the AI search for the 'best estate agent'?

The objections above are understandable and reasonable. If a review management company pretends there is no cost, no work involved and no reputational or regulatory risk (indeed, any of these), businesses would be entitled to be sceptical.

The point of HelpHound isn't to pretend those issues don't exist. It is to manage them.

Last, but definitely not least: in order to manage your reviews (through our moderation process), they will be posted to and hosted on your own website. And another significant bonus? Unlike Google or sites such as Trustpilot, you will retain ownership of your reviews.  

To help businesses safely invite genuine reviews without the need for cherry-picking (or gating); to prevent, as far as is possible within the rules, inaccurate, misleading, malicious or just plain unfair comments from seeing the light of day; to identify and resolve customer dissatisfaction; to reduce the administrative burden; to help businesses operate within the rules; and, ultimately, to turn reviews from something businesses worry about into something that actively supports their reputation and marketing. Something that makes all the stakeholders, from staff and management to customers, both existing and future, proud of their choice of business.

And that, we suggest, is the strongest reason to join.

Review gating - and why it is illegal in the UK

Forgive us for using Google's Gemini AI to answer many of the questions surrounding this subject, but it - and they - need to be taken seriously, so the answers, we suggest, are better coming from an open source and not just from us.

First, let's look at a definition of 'gating':

And the UK Competition & Markets Authority's attitude to gating?

And, while we are here, we might as well ask Gemini what HelpHound thinks...

Here is a better link than the one Gemini supplied above. 

The simple answer to this, and any other legal issue (cherry-picking being another major - and far more common - rule breach, that equally leaves a wonderful paper trail for the CMA's spanking new AI detection software to find), is to combine compliance with proactive review management. That way, the business knows whatever it does in relation to reviews will be legally compliant whilst at the same time being structured to maximise the benefits of online reviews. A great score and great reviews whilst minimising the risk of attracting inaccurate, misleading or just plain unfair reviews.

One final note: here is Google's own attitude to review gating:

You will note the 'risks' listed. Many businesses have, until now, had a justifiably relaxed attitude to the risk involved for their own business. After all, there are millions of businesses listed on Google; what were the chances of either Google or the regulators taking action against them?

We use the past tense - 'what were' - intentionally. Both Google and the regulators have recently massively enhanced human compliance with AI. AI can work 24/7, 365 days a year, analysing review patterns. You only have to look at the recent Trustpilot fine or Feefo investigation. They are a high-profile warning to businesses to stop flouting the law as it applies to reviews and consumer protection in general.

What do the review sites and global coffee chains have in common?

Last week, Which? published a survey of the major coffee chains. What it discovered may surprise some: the discrepancy in caffeine - the active ingredient most people are paying for - is not just of the order of double-digit percentages, say ten or even twenty, but multiples:

You don't need a maths degree to work out that Starbucks customers are being short-changed. Why would this be? Is there no limit to the lengths to which some of these massive, usually US-owned, chains will go to increase turnover and profits at the expense of the product they deliver to their customers? Do they not realise that people will, eventually, work out that 'there is a better way'? That better way? The independent cafes and coffee shops listed on Google.

It's the same in the world of reviews: why would a - any - business employ a review platform as opposed to a specialist such as HelpHound plus Google? Google provides:

• Unrivalled reach: to well over 95% of consumers in the Western world

• Unrivalled credibility: consumers, as evidenced by survey after survey, trust Google reviews over and above those hosted anywhere else

• Unrivalled access - for both businesses and their customers; every business has a Google account and so does every potential customer (OK, some people don't own a computer or a smartphone, but they are an increasingly insignificant minority)

And it's free!

Yes, we understand; Google is far from perfect, but it is so much more influential than its nearest rivals. A question we often pose to CMOs goes as follows...

'All other factors being equal (financial, mostly), where would you rather have a significant review score and presence? Google or [insert name of any other review site]?'

Yet over 30,000 businesses still opt to pay for one review site or another. Even when two of the most prominent, at least in the UK, have either been sanctioned by regulators (Trustpilot) or are currently under investigation by them (Feefo). 

The honest truth - and we have been all over this sector for nearly twenty years now - is that if Google reviews had existed twenty years ago, there would be no other review solutions. There would be services like HelpHound that helped businesses make the very best of their Google reviews, but there would be no need for any other review sites, be that Yelp, Trustpilot,  Trustatrader, Feefo, Reviews.io or any of the others that grew like mushrooms in the pre-Google-review darkness.

Action for businesses currently paying review sites

Be honest, you were expecting us to say 'Stop!,' weren't you? We respect the fact that it is never quite as simple as that. Management needs to be absolutely sure that any change of direction is going to be in the best interests of the long-term health and wealth of the business. The first thing to do is speak to us, and before that, it would be helpful if you made a list of your objectives in relation to the review management solution of your dreams.

HelpHound: as far from Starbucks in relation to review management as it is possible to be.

One final point

By now, most readers will be asking themselves 'Where does HelpHound feature in all of this?' The answer is quite simple and splits the business world neatly in two...

1. If you are a 'product-based' business (online or physical retail, for instance), you will need to ensure your score on Google is somewhere in excess of 4.0 out of 5. That may or may not require the input of a review manager such as HelpHound. If individual negative reviews are hurting business, then it is almost certainly time to consult us
2. If, on the other hand, you are a 'service-based'/professional business - 'professional' in the sense of being one of the acknowledged professions: legal, medical, accountancy, wealth management and so on - then you will know that your reviews are actively sought out and read before potential fee-earners make first contact, and that even a tiny proportion of inaccurate or unfair reviews will be unhelpful in the extreme, then you should be speaking to us as a matter of urgency*

*urgency? Yes. The review landscape has undergone a fundamental shift in the past year. First, and most important of all, the UK regulator, the CMA, has been given new powers and tools to sanction businesses that are in breach (usually for cherry-picking and/or gating), and we estimate that well over half of all UK businesses that actively engage with reviews are currently in breach. 

Secondly, AI search has meant that scoring 4.8 or 4.9 is vital if a business is going to be consistently returned in any given search, whether that be Google Gemini or any other, and the only way to be sure of attaining and sustaining such a score going forward (cherry-picking has been used to achieve it historically) will be by adopting moderated review management.

The next step? Have your business audited today.

This common mistake is costing businesses £thousands

This business is listed on Google, and this is what shows up in every single search for it:

Ouch!

So what did it do? It signed up to a lead generation website...

...where it looks beyond brilliant. 10/10 all the way.

So what did it do wrong? It did what so many businesses, large and small, do. It failed to address the core issue.

And that core issue: its presence on Google. Google reviews don't go away. On top of that, Google reviews are invariably returned first in search. And consumers have, over nearly twenty years, come to rely on them.

What should the business have done?

First and foremost, it should have responded to the review. Next: it should have invited all its customers - the ones who have written the 182 reviews to CheckaTrade - to write their reviews to Google. 

Better still, it should have asked all its customers to write a review on its own website, where it could have had them all moderated for factual accuracy by someone like HelpHound (which would then automatically invite them to copy their review to Google).

Like this:

Top left: the 807 reviews and counting that have all been moderated by HelpHound (top right)

And this:

leading to the kind of score and presence in search (legacy first)...

...AI next:

That keeps the customers rolling in. Without paying for a review or lead-generation site. Without paying for Google Ads. 

It is never too late to begin saving money whilst at the same time adopting a strategy that will see your business thrive in the years to come. Welcome to HelpHound.

Further reading:

• Our fees

• Our guarantee of success

• Moderation - a full description

• Reviews in 2026 - a comprehensive guide

Meta is fined $17 billion. Why should review sites - and the businesses that use them - be concerned?

The face of a man who has just been let off the hook? We are not so sure

Hot on the heels of the New Mexico court fining them $567 million earlier this month, bringing the total in that case to just shy of $1 billion, Meta has now been ordered to pay all 52 US states their share of a nearly $18 billion settlement. 

Now, the cynics - and a few realists - among us will say, "Well, they can afford that anyway; after all, the business is currently valued by the market at just shy of $1.5 trillion." And they would be right - in part. We won't be seeing the back of Facebook or Instagram any time soon. But with Meta's share price currently trading 23 per cent lower than it was 12 months ago, this action and fine cannot have been welcomed at 1 Hacker Way. 

There must be some reputational damage for both Meta and TikTok, as well as Alphabet, the owners of YouTube; Meta depends on advertising spend for over 97 per cent of its revenue (Alphabet derives just over 75% of its revenue from advertisements), and there are bound to be some mutterings in agencies and their clients' boardrooms as to the desirability of climbing into bed - or remaining in bed - with a business that has been compared, by a state supreme court judge, to "a factory, with advertising and content as its product and the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children to be the pollution that must be abated."

All these social media businesses were launched on the back of Web 2.0, itself driven by President Clinton's arguably naive decision to enact Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in the United States, which exempts social media companies from responsibility for user-posted content on their platforms. 

Parents and siblings of nearly 600 children who they allege died as a result of engagement with social media, protesting outside the courthouse in Oakland, California. 

One might even argue that these businesses let the protection of Section 230 go to their corporate heads, encouraging them to allow all kinds of frankly corrosive antisocial content and interaction at the mild end of the scale and the downright harmful, right up to and including users' lives (as these courts have begun deciding - under pressure from parents' and responsible citizens' groups) at the other. Which leads us to our answer to the question posed in the second part of the headline of this article.

What does all this have to do with reviews?

What is happening now, precisely thirty years on, is that legislators and courts are increasingly concluding that businesses must take responsibility for what they have allowed their platforms to become. Meta will doubtless appeal, but there are few parents of teenage children out there who, regardless of the ultimate outcome of this and other cases in the pipeline, would argue that it is a universal force for good in its current form.

Likewise, review sites and platforms. We can all agree that allowing children to come to harm is a bad thing. We would also suggest that platforms that host reviews and promote those reviews as worthy of the trust of consumers when they are then found wanting (as Trustpilot has recently been) in that respect are equally as guilty, albeit in the main of colluding with businesses to unfairly enhance the business's reputation to the detriment of the consumer and law-abiding competitor businesses. 

This kind of behaviour, whilst unlikely to result in deaths, must result* in people being misled into using the wrong...

• Financial Adviser

• Medical practitioner

• Legal adviser

• Estate agent

* 'Must result': every review platform on the planet markets itself on the basis that looking good and scoring well will drive more business to the business concerned; if that is the case - and we would say it most definitely is - then the reverse must be true: businesses that use mechanisms to artificially inflate their scores must attract consumers away from honest businesses.

...and so on. We are sure you get our drift. Being misled into using a business that is playing fast and loose with reviews to look better at what it does than it would if it obeyed the law is not a trivial matter. 

The world of online reviews has similarly 'benefited' from Section 230. Online review platforms have hidden behind phrases like 'freedom of speech' and 'the public good' for far too long. In the same way that Facebook, Instagram and TikTok could easily have diverted some of their massive profits - those profits, by the way, make the economics of running a Colombian drug cartel look like hard labour by comparison - to ensuring standards of probity and behaviour on their sites. Instead, they made them into the kind of swamp no right-minded person would want their mother-in-law to enter, let alone rely on.

Now these days we all spend enough time on social media to know that there is a very wide range of opinions of what is acceptable and what is not. But what relevance does this have for reviews? We would argue that this level of tolerance for language that no person would use in a face-to-face conversation is now seen in reviews and in Google's own responses to appeals from businesses who find themselves being harmed by such language. 

Google has made it far more difficult for businesses to challenge reviews based on foul language or insults - directed at the business or, in many cases, to individual members of staff. Manual processing of reporting and appeals has increasingly been taken away from humans and delegated to AI. The same goes for sites such as Trustpilot.

What does this shift mean for businesses?

It means that negative reviews, whatever their merit or lack thereof, are far more likely to remain on whatever platform they have been posted on, whether that be Google or any of the review sites. 

This, in turn, makes it imperative that businesses:

 1.  Do everything in their power to initiate the review themselves (reviewers use far milder language when the review has been prompted by the business, and they will often ameliorate their score as well). 

2.   Employ independent moderation (more below) to resolve errors of fact or misleading statetments before they are published, anywhere, but especially on Google

That does not mean that businesses have to invite every known 'Mr/Mrs/Ms Angry' to write a review, but it does mean giving them a mechanism to do so (not doing so will see the business in default of the CMA's core regulations). Here's an example:

That button gives the business the moral ascendancy: 'We did invite you to write a review/you could have gone to our website at any time and written a review.'

Moderation now becomes absolutely imperative, especially for professional and service businesses. Businesses now have to assume that most customers, especially those prone to venting, will find a platform to exercise that inclination, be it Facebook or Reddit, Google or Trustpilot. Best to allow them to do it through the business's own website, where their post will benefit from moderation.

Moderation

Our clients know all about moderation, and regular readers will know plenty about it, but for those new to HelpHound, here's a brief synopsis of the process

1.  The business initiates the review, preferably by email, or the customer (or other stakeholder*) follows the button highlighted in the screenshot above

2.  The review is written

3.  Our moderator - a human, not AI - reads the review

4.  If any errors of fact or potentially misleading comments are identified, our moderator reverts to the reviewer, allowing them an opportunity to correct their review

5.  The review is published on our client's website

6. The reviewer is sent a link enabling them to copy their review to Google

The net effect? By injecting the invitation element, more satisfied customers will write reviews and, importantly, far fewer less-than-happy customers will write factually incorrect, unreasonable, downright rude, or potentially misleading reviews. It is often the case that the act of moderation will actually save a customer who might otherwise never have used the business again.

The numbers prove this point beyond a shadow of a doubt:

• 73 in 1,000 reviews require intervention by a moderator

• Of those 73, sixty-five will accept the moderator's invitation to modify their review

The results? Something along these lines. First, on the business's website:

One additional key point: although reviewers may choose to use a nickname or avatar, both HelpHound and the business know their real identities. This ensures the reviews are an honest and genuine reflection of their experience of the business under review. Adding value for everyone concerned - future customers, the business and Google

Next, on Google:

We should also  say that any foul language, rude comments about staff or threats of any kind are against HelpHound's terms and conditions, so they won't make it into print either, on the client's site or on Google 

In conclusion

Businesses cannot wait for governments to act (although see below!); they must take their own review management in hand and ensure, for the benefit of all - customers, staff, suppliers, shareholders and stakeholders of every kind - that they have the most effective solution in place.

This article details the new powers that UK regulators have been given to investigate and punish businesses, in much the same way as the Italian regulators have in the Trustpilot case. There has never been more urgency for businesses to adopt effective and compliant review management.

Meta and Alphabet - how, together, we can we make sure your business adds the fewest possible £££s to their $billions

Recent court cases have taken some of the shine off these two leviathans of the tech world. Is this just a blip, or could the rest of the business world now begin to look at Meta and Alphabet's colossal revenue streams and wonder if some of their own hard-earned cash might not be better employed elsewhere?

Some facts:

There are around 200 million businesses listed on Google Maps, of which around 7-10 million regularly buy Google ads.

Of a similar number using Facebook and Instagram, around 12 million are paying.

Alphabet's gross revenue was $400 billion in the last 12 months: roughly 75% generated by advertising across Google and YouTube.

Meta's gross revenue was $230 billion in the last 12 months: 98% generated by advertising across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.

That's 500 billion of ad spend by businesses. If we assume that spend is spread across 20 million businesses, we arrive at an average annual spend per business of $25,000. Now we know that's just an average; there will be businesses spending a whole lot more, and plenty spending far less, but that is still an impressive number. 

Thank you, DigitalMunkey, for these numbers

So let us take a vertical we all know well (in the case of HelpHound, because we have clients of long standing in that vertical, and for all our readers, because they will invariably have first-hand experience of using such businesses): estate agency.

The next obvious move is to research the most-bought Google Ads search terms:

Now things are getting interesting. Let us see which business shows up for each of those searches:

"Estate agents in [Location/Postcode]":

"How much is my house worth in [Location]":

"Sell my house in [Location]":

Or:

Note: In this search, only the HelpHound client has a review score/stars under its listing; that is because they host their own reviews on their own website, and we have enabled the Google schema, which pulls that information from their website through to local search. When we first introduced this, we weren't quite sure if clients would value it, until one day Google accidentally switched it off, and we had to field the calls!

"Letting agents in [Location]":

"Property Management in [Location]":

We even asked Google Gemini, 'How many agents cover the Kingsbury/London NW9 area?' and it returned this:

Let us not ignore the most popular independent AI platform; here's ChatGPT's answer...

Just as a 'by the way': this business had just 5 Google reviews when it joined HelpHound. And just in case anyone thinks these results are simply a function of the business's Google score, read this (also from ChatGPT):

Every one of those 800 reviews has been subject to HelpHound's moderation before being published on the business's website, whereupon the reviewer has been automatically invited to copy their review to Google (as well as any other destination that matters to the business). We estimate that our moderation adds between 0.2 and 0.5 to a well-managed business's Google score; as with this search, it makes the difference between coming at the top and being an also-ran in search

Now we are going to make a simple pitch: would you rather your business be returned like this in search results for free, or would you prefer to keep paying for Google Ads*?

The options for businesses in 2026 and onwards:

1. Pay for advertising on one or more of these platforms
2. Pay less for advertising as a direct result of adopting professional review management
3. A hybrid of 1 and 2

It would be unfair to ask you to answer that question without first telling you what our moderation and review management service currently costs. Here are the numbers.

*You may wish, completely understandably, to continue to do both, at least for a trial period. That is entirely up to you. At least you will have the HelpHound guarantee to reassure your CFO that it won't be money wasted.