Appearance
Reviews
Reviews are the single most-watched piece of any Google Business Profile. The platform centralizes every review across every client, with AI-suggested responses and saved templates for speed.
Two ways to access
- Per-profile: open a profile → Reviews tab. You see only that profile's reviews.
- Global (
/reviews): every review across every profile you have permission to see. The fastest way for an account manager handling many clients.
The global view is feature-flagged (globalReviewsView) — if you don't see it in the sidebar, your org has it disabled.
Every review the platform syncs is stored in its own database and kept even after Google removes it. See Review Backups for how removed reviews are marked, found, and exported.
The review list
Each row shows:
- Star rating (1–5)
- Author name and avatar (when Google provides it)
- Review date
- Snippet of the review text
- Reply status (replied, awaiting reply, no reply yet)
- Sentiment classification (positive / neutral / negative — AI-detected)
Filter by:
- Star rating
- Profile / business
- Sentiment
- Reply status
- Date range
- Has-photos / no-photos
Replying to a review
Click a review to open the response panel.
Two ways to draft a reply
- AI-generated — click Generate Reply. The AI uses the brand profile, the review text, and any saved guidance to draft a response in the brand voice. Edit before sending.
- From scratch — type your own.
Tone matching
The AI calibrates to the review's sentiment:
- 5-star: warm thank-you, mention something specific from the review.
- 4-star: thanks + light acknowledgment of the lower star.
- 3-star: empathy + offer to discuss.
- 1–2-star: apology, no excuses, invitation to a direct channel (phone, email).
Sending
Click Reply on Google. The reply posts to Google within seconds. The review row updates to "Replied" and shows your response below the original.
Editing or deleting a reply
You can edit replies in Google's interface (the platform doesn't expose edit-reply — Google's API limits it). To delete via the platform: review → ⋯ → Delete Reply.
Bulk reply
For an inbox of 40+ unanswered reviews:
- Filter to the batch you want to tackle (e.g. all 5-star, unreplied, last 30 days).
- Click Select All at the top.
- Bulk Reply with AI generates a unique response for each (in parallel).
- Review each draft inline; tweak as needed.
- Click Send All.
The platform spaces sends slightly (rate-limit safety) — typically 50 replies in ~2 minutes.
Automatic replies
The review-reply agent drafts replies to new reviews on its own, so an inbox doesn't build up between logins. It looks for unanswered reviews every hour and drafts a reply in your brand voice for each one it finds.
The agent can only act on reviews the platform has already pulled from Google, and that sync runs once a day. So a reply follows a new review by up to a day — this replaces the job of working through an inbox, not the speed of answering someone in the moment.
What happens to that draft depends on the mode you pick.
| Mode | What the agent does |
|---|---|
| Review every reply (recommended) | Every draft waits in the Approvals queue for a person to approve before it posts. Nothing reaches Google unattended. |
| Auto-post positive replies | Replies to high-rated reviews post automatically, with no one in the loop. Anything below your rating threshold goes to the Approvals queue instead. |
Reviews under 4 stars are never posted unattended. They always go to a person for approval, whatever mode and threshold you set — a 1–3-star review is a service-recovery conversation, not something to automate.
Turning it on
Automatic replies are off until you turn them on. Nothing is drafted or posted before that.
- Go to Settings → Review replies. You need the Manage settings permission.
- Switch on Review-reply agent enabled.
- Pick a Mode. Start with Review every reply and read a few drafts before you move to auto.
- For auto mode, set the Auto-post minimum rating — 4 or 5 stars.
Turning the agent on does not reply to your review history. Only reviews that arrived in the last 14 days are eligible, so switching it on won't fire replies at years of old reviews. To work through a backlog, use Bulk reply.
The agent drafts at most 10 replies per location per hourly run, so a burst of new reviews is worked through steadily instead of all at once.
Choosing which locations use it
The switch in Settings is the organization default. Every location follows it unless you say otherwise.
Under Turn on for specific locations, select locations and choose an action:
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Turn On | This location uses the agent even when the organization default is off. |
| Turn Off | This location never uses the agent, even when the organization default is on. |
| Reset to inherit | This location follows the organization default again. |
Use this to pilot the agent on one location before rolling it out, or to hold a sensitive location back from an organization-wide rollout.
Deadlines and reviewer routing
A queued draft shouldn't sit forever. Under Anti-stall SLA, set a Review deadline (hours) — 1 to 168, default 24 — and what happens when it passes:
- Escalate — notify the reviewer. The reply still needs a person. (Default.)
- Auto-publish the drafted reply — post it. This applies to 4-star-and-up replies only; negatives still escalate.
Under Reviewer routing, choose who gets told: organization owners and admins, specific team members, or an outside email address such as the business owner. A location that sets its own reviewer replaces the organization's routing for that location rather than adding to it.
What gets posted
An approved reply posts exactly as approved. The wording is frozen when the draft is created, so what the reviewer reads is what reaches Google — approving never triggers a fresh generation.
Automated replies are held to a stricter content standard than replies you write by hand: a draft that trips a content check is routed to a person instead of posted. See Google Guidelines.
Negative-review playbook
For 1–2-star reviews, the standard workflow:
- Reply publicly, briefly and apologetically. Don't litigate.
- Move offline. Provide a direct phone or email in the reply.
- Open a case in the platform to track resolution.
- If the review violates Google's policies (fake, harassment, off-topic), flag for removal via Review → Report to Google.
Spam & policy violations
Click Report to Google on a review the platform suspects is spam. You'll select a violation reason; Google reviews the report (1–7 days typically). The platform tracks the report status.
Email notifications
Review events surface in the dashboard activity feed and the per-profile Reviews tab automatically. You can also opt in to email notifications for the review events that matter to you, set per-user under Settings → Personal Notifications → Reviews:
- New review on any profile I manage — emailed whenever a new review lands on one of your profiles.
- New negative review (1–2 stars) — emailed only for 1- and 2-star reviews. Independent of the toggle above: you can subscribe to negative-only without getting every review.
- Review removed by Google — emailed when a review that was present disappears from Google. The stored copy stays; see Review Backups.
How the toggles work
Each toggle is three-state:
- Use org default — inherit whatever your organization set as the default for this event (shown next to the toggle). This is the default for every user.
- On — always email me for this event.
- Off — never email me for this event, even if the org default is on.
Org owners and admins set the organization-wide defaults under Settings → General (org-wide email notification toggles). All defaults are off (opt-in) unless an admin turns them on.
Who gets emailed
Emails go only to org members who manage the company the review belongs to — a member scoped to specific companies won't be emailed about reviews on profiles outside their scope. Owners and admins manage all companies, so they qualify for every profile. You'll get at most one email per review even if it matches more than one of your toggles (e.g. a 1-star review with both "new review" and "negative review" on).
Availability: Review email notifications are rolling out and gated per organization. If you don't see the Reviews section under Personal Notifications, the feature isn't enabled for your org yet — ask your administrator (or Simple SEO Marketing) to turn it on.
A fourth toggle — "Review reply approved by client" — is still on the Roadmap. The review-reply approval workflow it depends on has since shipped (see Automatic replies); the email toggle for it has not.
Next: Content Calendar