Reputation and review management in London

Review audit

Where you stand on each platform against the two nearest competitors: count, rating, how recent, reply rate, response time and the themes in the negative ones.

Profiles claimed and consistent

Google Business Profile, TripAdvisor, Trustpilot and the sector sites for your industry claimed, owned by you, with the same name, address and hours on every one.

A review request system

The right ask at the right moment: a QR code at the till or table, an SMS or email after the job with consent, and a two-line script for staff. Everyone is asked, not only the happy ones.

Monitoring and alerts

Every new review on every platform seen the day it appears, with negative reviews flagged to you immediately.

Replies in your voice

Every review answered within agreed hours, drafted to guidelines you approve, with complaints and anything sensitive sent to you first.

Policy-breach reporting

Reviews that break a platform’s rules (spam, a competitor, content unrelated to a customer experience) reported with evidence. Genuine reviews are answered, never contested.

Monthly report and feedback

Counts, rating, reply rate and response time by platform, plus what customers keep praising and complaining about, which is operational feedback worth more than the stars.

How we do it

Rules first. Google’s review policy forbids selectively asking only happy customers, offering incentives for reviews and discouraging negative ones, and the other platforms have rules of their own. UK consumer protection law treats fake reviews and concealed incentivised reviews as banned practices. Everything below is designed to work inside those rules, because a profile built outside them can be stripped of its reviews or suspended, and the business pays for it twice.

Then the ask. Most businesses have far more satisfied customers than reviews, and the gap is simply that nobody asked at the right moment. We find the moments in your customer journey (the end of the meal, the completed job, the collected car, the finished treatment) and put a frictionless ask there: a QR code on the table or the invoice, an SMS or email within a day with a direct review link, sent with the consent UK marketing rules require, and a two-line script for staff that asks everyone, not only the regulars. We watch the first month closely and tune timing and wording until the response rate settles.

Then the reply. Every review gets an answer within hours agreed with you, in your voice, drafted to guidelines you approve. Negative reviews are answered calmly, with an apology where one is owed and a route to resolve it offline; they are escalated to you the same day and never argued with in public. A thoughtful reply to a bad review is read by far more people than the review itself. Where a review breaks a platform’s rules (spam, a competitor, a review from someone who was never a customer), we report it with evidence and follow the case through; where it is genuine, we reply and move on.

Then the platforms that matter for your sector, because a Soho restaurant lives on Google and TripAdvisor while a Bromley heating engineer lives on Google and the trade directories, and spreading effort evenly across every platform helps nobody.

Who does it: our community and social managers draft and send the replies, named on the team page; Muhammad Ali, our SEO Specialist, connects the review work to your Google Business Profile and local visibility; and your account lead is the same person every month. The reviews themselves are written by your customers. We never write one.

What changes, and when

Requests produce responses within days of being sent, so the review count starts moving in the first month. The rating moves slowly, because it is an average over everything already written: a business with a long history and a 3.9 does not become a 4.5 in a quarter, and anyone who promises that is planning to break the rules. Reply rate and response time change immediately, and they are visible to every reader on day one.

The effect on local search follows the review profile: Technical fixes are usually re-crawled within two to eight weeks. Local search changes often show within one to three months. Competitive London head terms usually take six to twelve months. These are typical ranges from our own work, not a promise for your site, and we report progress every month so you can see which it is.

How it is measured

What we report: review count and rating on each platform, dated, with a link so you can check it yourself; how many reviews were received against how many requests were sent; reply rate and average response time; the themes customers raise, good and bad; and, from your Google Business Profile, calls, direction requests and website clicks alongside, because Google’s own guidance lists reviews among the factors in local ranking and the profile is where the effect shows first. The figures are your customers’ words on public platforms, so nothing in the report is ours to inflate. A written report arrives every month; every quarter we review it with you at Tower 42, by appointment, or on video.

What it costs to find out

Start with the free review. The free SEO audit is written by a person and delivered within two working days, and it includes a Google Business Profile check: categories, services, photographs, posts, review count and reply rate, and what the two nearest competitors’ profiles do better. The fit paragraph says plainly whether reviews are the gap, or whether the site or the profile needs attention first.

If we go ahead, the fee depends on the number of locations, the platforms covered, the review volume, the reply hours and whether we run the request system for you or train your team to run it. Prices and inclusions are on the pricing page. There is no minimum term, notice is 30 days from day one, and every profile is claimed in your name, so there is nothing to hand back. The before you sign page sets out every term. These terms are proposed and are confirmed in writing before you sign.

Get your free SEO auditA person reviews your site within two working days. Three fields, no call required.

Common mistakes we see on London profiles

• Buying reviews, or using "review cards" that only send happy customers to Google and the unhappy ones to a private form. Both break Google’s policy and the second is the kind of practice UK consumer law now bans.
• Offering a discount or a free dessert for a review. It is forbidden on Google and it shows in the reviews.
• Ignoring negative reviews, or answering them angrily. The reply is read by every future customer.
• The same template reply on every review, which reads as nobody listening.
• TripAdvisor or Trustpilot profiles never claimed, so the record is written entirely by others.
• Staff asking only the regulars, which Google treats as selective solicitation and which skews the profile.
• Several branches under one profile, so a complaint about one location sits on all of them.
• Never reading the reviews as operational feedback, when they are the cheapest customer research a business will ever get.

How it fits with other services

Reviews are one part of the local system. The Google Business Profile service covers the profile itself: categories, photographs, posts, questions and hours. Local SEO covers the whole picture, including the pages on your site for each place and service. Social media runs in the same month because the channel that shows the plates is the one that reminds happy guests to say so, and paid social sends people to check the profile before they book. Where the site should show your reviews, web design builds that in within the platforms’ rules. The guide to Google reviews for London businesses covers what you can do yourself first.

On proof: Blac, a restaurant in Whetstone, London N20, holds 4.6 stars across 341 Google reviews and 7.9 out of 10 on TheFork (figures as at 7 July 2026), alongside reels-first social and reputation work. The reviews belong to Blac’s guests; we do not claim to have produced them. Saloos in Manchester and York Cars in York show reputation work as part of a wider website and search scope, with no figures published. We have not yet published a London reputation case with a before-and-after figure, and we say so.