Twenty recent reviews beat two hundred old ones
A lot of Edmonton business owners treat reviews like a scoreboard. Get the number up, keep it above four stars, done. But the person reading your Google profile before they call you isn't adding up your total. They're scanning the top few, checking the dates, and looking for someone who had the same problem they have right now.
Say you run a furnace repair company. A homeowner in Terwillegar has a dead furnace in January. They open your profile. Your most recent review is from 2022. What does that tell them? That either you've slowed down or nobody's bothered to say anything nice about you in two years. It doesn't matter that you've got 180 reviews from 2019. Old reviews read like an old photo. Nice, but not proof you're any good today.
Google reads it the same way. Recency is part of how the local pack gets ordered. A steady trickle of new reviews signals a business that's still busy. A big pile that stopped three years ago signals the opposite.
Specific beats glowing
Here's the difference between a review that sits there and one that books you a job.
"Great service, highly recommend!" That's fine. It bumps your count. It convinces nobody, because it could be pasted onto any plumber, dentist, or dog groomer in the city.
"Called Tuesday morning when our hot water tank flooded the basement in Rutherford. Someone was here by 2pm, hauled the old tank out, and didn't charge extra for the after-hours quote we'd been dreading." That one does work. It names a neighbourhood, a real problem, and a specific worry the next reader probably has too. When someone with a flooded basement finds it, they feel like it was written for them.
You can't script these. But you can nudge them out. When you ask, don't say "could you leave us a review." Ask something that points at detail: "If you get a minute, it really helps if you mention what we came out to fix." People are happy to answer a specific question. They freeze up in front of a blank box.
When to ask
Timing is most of the game. Ask right after the moment the customer is happiest, not a week later when the job is a fuzzy memory and their inbox is full.
For a contractor, that's the walkthrough at the end, when they're looking at the finished bathroom. For a restaurant, it's while they're still at the table telling you the meal was great. That's the window. Say something out loud, in person, and then follow it with a text or email that has the actual link.
One link. Send people straight to your Google review form, not to your homepage where they have to hunt. In your Google Business Profile there's a "Get more reviews" button that spits out a short link. Use it. Every extra click loses people.
How often? A couple a week is plenty for most local shops. That keeps your recent reviews genuinely recent without looking like you bought a batch. Don't blast every customer you've ever had in one afternoon. Ten reviews landing on the same day looks staged, to readers and sometimes to Google.
And don't offer a discount for a review. Google's rules are clear on it, and it corrupts the thing you're trying to build. A review someone was paid for reads like one.
The bad ones
You will get a one-star eventually. Someone will be angry about something that wasn't your fault, or was, or is just how they are. The instinct is to argue or ignore. Both lose you future customers, because the next reader is watching how you handle it more than what the complaint says.
Respond within a day or two. Stay short and calm. Name what happened if you can, own your part if there is one, and offer to sort it offline. "Hi Dave, sorry the crew left the site messy on Friday. That's on us. I've texted you to come back and finish the cleanup this week." That reply is worth more than the review costs you, because the person reading it thinks: if something goes wrong, this owner deals with it.
What you never do is get defensive, dredge up the customer's payment history, or write a paragraph proving you were right. You might win the argument and lose the reader.
One real complaint you answer well beats ten perfect reviews at convincing a skeptic. Skeptics assume the five-stars are cherry-picked. The one-star and your reply are where they decide you're honest.
What to actually do this week
Open your profile and look at the date on your newest review. If it's older than a month, that's your problem, not your star rating. Then pick your next three finished jobs and ask each customer in person, at the end, and follow up with the short link the same day. Mention what you fixed so they mention it too.
Do that steadily and in six months your profile shows a working business with real, dated stories on it. That's what turns a searcher into a phone call.
If you'd rather have the review link, the ask template, and your profile set up so this runs on its own, tell us where you're at.