This page covers timing — how fresh and how frequent reviews should be. For collection tactics see how to collect Google reviews.
What Are Review Velocity and Recency?
Review velocity is how many new reviews you earn per period; recency is how old the newest ones are. Together they tell a buyer whether your business is currently good, which is a different question from whether it was ever good — and it is the question that actually drives the purchase decision.
Why Do Recent Reviews Outweigh Old Ones?
Because buyers read reviews as evidence about the present. A profile with 400 reviews whose newest is eight months old signals a business in decline; forty reviews with six from this month signals an operating, cared-for business.
The supporting data sits in online review statistics.
What Review Velocity Should You Aim For?
| Business type | Monthly target |
|---|---|
| Local service business | 2–5 new reviews |
| E-commerce store | 2–5% of completed orders |
| B2B SaaS | 2–4 platform reviews plus one case study |
| Marketplace seller | Match or beat category median |
How Do You Sustain a Steady Flow?
- Trigger the ask from a success event, not a calendar date.
- Keep one channel and one link, so the ask never adds friction.
- Rotate who asks — support, onboarding, account management — so it never depends on one person.
- Track velocity monthly next to conversion rate, so a slowdown is visible before it costs sales.
The same cadence logic applies to written proof — see testimonial refresh cadence.
What Happens When Velocity Drops?
A gap of more than 90 days reads as abandonment. Conversion impact usually shows up before ranking impact, because visitors see the dates directly on the page.
Recover by asking your most recent successful customers first, not your oldest ones.
How Should Recency Show Up on the Page?
- Show dates. Hiding them makes every review look old.
- Sort the newest first by default, with rating filters available.
- Surface the freshest review near the primary call to action.
- Aggregate sources so the newest across platforms leads — see review aggregation.
Key Takeaways
- Recency answers the buyer's real question: are you good now?
- Keep several reviews from the last 30–90 days visible at all times.
- Trigger asks from success events and track velocity monthly.
- Always show dates and sort newest first.