Owners answer praise more often than criticism: reply rates in 11 trades
We read 190,953 Google reviews of US local businesses, and the 111,350 replies their owners left. Owners answer most reviews, and quickly. But they answer the five-star ones more readily than the one-star ones, in all but two of 11 trades.
The gap, trade by trade
Across the 190,953 reviews we read, owners replied to 58%. For one- and two-star reviews the figure is 48%. In 9 of the 11 trades, owners answer praise more often than criticism. Only auto body shops and locksmiths answer negative reviews at least as often as the rest.
Funeral homes have the widest gap. They reply to 45% of reviews but only 26% of negative ones, about one in four.
Some of the gap is understandable. A negative review can be hard to answer, especially in funeral care, where the reviewer may be grieving, or in health and legal work, where privacy rules limit what an owner can say. But a reply can be short and still say a lot.
The unanswered review is often the one people read
32% of businesses show at least one one- or two-star review among the reviews Google shows first. 45% of those leave at least one of them unanswered. And 28% of all businesses have no owner reply on any of the reviews shown.
Those first-shown reviews are what a new customer reads before calling. On a profile where nine reviews in ten are five stars, the one complaint stands out, and so does the silence under it.
Check the reviews Google shows first on your own profile, the way a customer would. If there is a negative review without a reply, that is the one to answer today.
Replies come fast, when they come
The median reply arrives 1 day after the review, and 49% of replies arrive within a day. Locksmiths are fastest, with a median of 0.7 days; funeral homes are slowest, at 2.0 days.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Trade | Within a day | Within a week | Median reply time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Locksmiths | 59% | 79% | 0.7 days |
| Emergency plumbers | 55% | 79% | 0.8 days |
| AC repair | 54% | 79% | 0.8 days |
| Roofers | 51% | 72% | 1 day |
| Moving companies | 50% | 77% | 1 day |
| Property managers | 48% | 71% | 1.2 days |
| Personal injury lawyers | 47% | 72% | 1.3 days |
| Auto body shops | 44% | 78% | 1.5 days |
| Medical spas | 43% | 72% | 1.8 days |
| Funeral homes | 32% | 79% | 2.0 days |
Businesses that reply have more reviews
We compared businesses with 50 or more reviews inside each trade: those that reply to most of the reviews shown against those that never reply. In every trade, the businesses that reply have more reviews. In some they are also rated higher: property managers who reply to most are rated 4.26 against 3.98 for those who never reply, and funeral homes 4.73 against 4.52.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Trade | Rating: reply to most | Rating: never reply | Reviews: reply to most | Reviews: never reply |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Property managers | 4.26 | 3.98 | 187 | 122 |
| Funeral homes | 4.73 | 4.52 | 136 | 87 |
| Emergency plumbers | 4.83 | 4.73 | 377 | 128 |
| Medical spas | 4.86 | 4.81 | 196 | 160 |
| AC repair | 4.85 | 4.80 | 414 | 141 |
| Personal injury lawyers | 4.85 | 4.82 | 201 | 135 |
| Auto body shops | 4.66 | 4.64 | 251 | 112 |
| Locksmiths | 4.72 | 4.71 | 169 | 159 |
| Moving companies | 4.75 | 4.74 | 322 | 181 |
| Roofers | 4.85 | 4.85 | 148 | 98 |
This is an association, not proof that replying raises a rating. Owners who reply are probably also the owners who ask for reviews, and the data cannot separate the two.
How to answer a negative review
- Reply within a day or two. Most owners who reply manage that, and a prompt answer shows the next reader you are paying attention.
- Thank them, name the problem they raised, and say what you did or will do about it. Keep it short.
- Don't argue in public, and don't share details of the job or the customer. In health care and legal work, don't confirm that the reviewer is a patient or a client at all.
- Offer a way to carry on the conversation: a named person, and a phone number or email address.
- Write each reply fresh. 6.8% of the replies we read repeat another word for word, and under a complaint a pasted reply reads as not listening.
- If a review breaks Google's content policies, for example it is about a different business, you can report it through Google's own tools. Google decides whether it stays. A reply is still worth writing in the meantime.
More from this study
- We read nearly 200,000 Google reviews, and this is what we found: what the reviews and the owners' replies say.
- We reviewed nearly 30,000 Google local businesses, and this is what we found: the whole study, from star ratings to market structure.
- All articles
How we did this
Axio-CRED, our own collector, searched Google Maps for 11 trades (for example, “locksmith in Denver CO”) in 50 US cities on 24 and 25 September 2026, and recorded the public Google Business listings each search returned, typically 60 to 120. That is the visible part of each market, not every business in it: 28,814 businesses in all. For each one we read the star counts Google shows and up to eight of the reviews Google shows first, with any owner replies: 190,953 reviews from 28,562 businesses. Ratings and counts are as displayed on those days. One of the 11 trades is included in the totals but not named in the charts.
Negative means one or two stars. Replied means the review shows an owner reply on the day we collected it. Reply time is the gap between the dates Google shows for the review and the reply. Reply to most and never reply describe a business's replies across the reviews Google shows first.
- One snapshot, taken on 24 and 25 September 2026. Nothing here measures change over time.
- Up to eight reviews per business, in the order Google shows them. Figures from the reviews describe what a searcher sees first, not every review.
- US only: 11 trades in 50 cities. Other trades, places and smaller towns may look different.
- A missing reply may have been removed, or written after collection. Replies waiting for Google's approval do not show.
Patterns here are signals worth checking, not verdicts about any business or reviewer, and we name none of them.