Online reputation

Key takeaways

• Online reputation is the part of a business's public record written by others — reviews, ratings, coverage and commentary.
• Review-reading is near universal: only 4% of consumers never read business reviews (BrightLocal, 2025).
• Trust in reviews fell from 79% to 42% between 2020 and 2025, which rewards credible patterns and visible responses over raw star counts.
• AI assistants summarize the reputation record when asked whether a business is good, so recurring themes become the stated answer.