Discover essential online reputation management statistics, highlighting the impact of customer reviews, social media, and search engine results on business success and trust.
The Internet is an unforgiving place, and a single negative review or news piece can break your business. That’s why you need online reputation management or ORM. In this article, we will discuss why online reputation management is so important for a business and study some key statistics to further understand its significance.
We know that online reputation holds incredible power. A single piece of information on the Internet can change the course of your business, which is why online reputation management is extremely important for businesses.
Online reputation management is a way to control how your business is perceived by people on the Internet. Its sole aim is to neutralize the negative attention your business gets while highlighting its positive aspects. Building a positive online presence is key to succeeding in today’s competitive environment.
It focuses on developing positive sentiments among customers and building a brand name. Some key strategies used for effective online reputation management involve responding to negative online reviews, correcting misinformation about your brand, and enhancing your website’s search results.
A positive reputation on the Internet will help you build trust and credibility with your target audience. When your customers research your brand, they will come across reviews, feedback, and opinions. When your overall reputation on the Internet is positive, you will be able to build trust and credibility with your customers.
Your online reputation is one of the most crucial factors that helps you rank on search engines. When people have good things to say about your products or services, the likelihood of you appearing at the top of the search results also increases.
When you have a good online reputation, your target audience will trust you, which will lead to an increase in sales and revenue. So, a good ORM is important for a business’s success.
The market is likely saturated with products similar to yours. Companies must gain their customers’ trust if they truly want to make a mark in this competitive era. When you have a good ORM, your customers will start feeling more confident about you as a brand, and you will witness tremendous success and growth.
Reviews are a powerful form of social validation that helps you gain the trust of your potential customers. In this online era, people are likely to trust a stranger as much as they trust a close friend. So, when people post positive reviews about your business, you can gain more trust and credibility, which will help boost sales and revenue.
So, it is extremely important for businesses to manage their ORM and obtain positive reviews from past customers if they want to attract new customers and build a good brand image.
There is no denying that the Internet is one of mankind’s best inventions. But every good thing has drawbacks. The same is true of the Internet. Although it offers numerous advantages, it can make or break a company’s reputation.
Individuals look for all kinds of information online, including details about your business. For instance, if you own an Italian restaurant, people are going to search for the “best Italian restaurants near me,” including directly googling your business name. So, you must strategically work toward getting your business to appear at the top of the search results.
From 2013 to 2025, Google consistently led the market share for desktop search engines, averaging 88%. On the other hand, Bing also saw an increase in desktop search engine market share, peaking at 8.61% in 2023.
Other search engines, such as DuckDuckGo and Yandex, also grew, reaching 0.72% and 1.87%, respectively.
According to a recent study, Google is still leading the desktop search engine market share with 85% of the total search volume.
The website that ranks #1 on Google gets approximately 27.6% of all clicks. So, if you can get your website to rank at the top of the search engine results, you will be able to generate good profits for your business.
Also, only 5% of users click on the second page of Google. This means that if you are unable to put your website on the first page of the relevant search results, you are missing out on many business opportunities.
According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, 63% of consumers trust online search engines the most when researching a brand or business. Traditional media ranked second on the list, with 59% of consumers trusting the source.
This shows that trust in media has declined, with more and more people becoming aware of paid ads and news. This skepticism, particularly in social media, is high due to various factors, including:
A page that ranks #1 on Google gets around 31.7% of the total organic traffic. This is a highly competitive age, and if you are not #1 on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), you will not have enough organic traffic exploring your website. Your website must show up for the relevant keywords on search engines. Otherwise, you will miss out on valuable business.
Research shows that traffic dwindles with the decrease in search engine ranking, and the page that ranks at the tenth position only gets 3% of organic traffic.
The first result gets 10x higher traffic than the one that is in the tenth position. So, even a slight difference in your ranking can lead to you losing several opportunities.
Informational keywords have risen in popularity, leaving behind transactional keywords. Now, you may ask, what are informational and transactional keywords? Transactional keywords are keywords that focus on purchase, while informational keywords focus on finding valuable information and details about a business or product.
Search queries that look for the “best of a particular product” have increased by 125% in the past two years. Hence, your content marketing strategy must focus on more informational content rather than transactional content.
Google prioritizes effective link-building and high-quality content as the top criteria for ranking on SERPs.
So, what is high-quality content? Such content engages the audience, provides information through storytelling techniques, and inspires readers to take action. So, just taking care of the technical aspects of search engine optimization will not get you results. You have to think beyond this and focus on creating content your audience would love to read.
From the above discussion, we can gauge that content is the most valuable resource for any business. In fact, 81% of marketers believe it is the core component.
Marketers have gradually started acknowledging that content should not solely aim to sell a product to users. It must focus on effective storytelling and creating a relationship with the target audience based on trust and credibility.
Although studies show that consumer trust in various social media platforms is constantly declining, trust in Google is at an all-time high. So, your reputation on Google matters a lot.
A feature that impacts your online reputation on Google is the “autocomplete feature.” For instance, you want to learn about a particular brand. However, once you write the brand name in the search bar, you see a list of suggested keywords that lead to a negative new piece of information.
An autocomplete feature that suggests negative content is bad for your online reputation. This changes people’s perception of a particular individual or brand.
Your business’s online reputation is also impacted by the reviews it gets. Customers can add reviews on many different pages, but the most popular ones are Google, Yelp, Trip Advisor, Facebook, and Reddit.
Most individuals and brands do not understand the importance of online image for their business. So, if you have a negative review online, it is important that you tactfully deal with it without making it a full-blown fiasco. Moreover, remember that it is easier to deal with a negative review than a media trial.
About 95% of customers read online reviews before buying a product or engaging with a brand. This shows that online reviews greatly influence your potential customers’ purchase decisions.
Around 85% of customers agree that they trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations. This means that people will trust a stranger if the review is genuine and based on true experiences.
Another study shows that 3 out of 4 customers will trust a business that has positive reviews online. This is an eye-opener for business owners who think online reviews are unimportant. Even one negative review can cause you to lose up to ten customers, whereas it takes fifteen positive reviews to compensate for the damage caused.
About 60% of consumers state that negative reviews have prompted them to not engage with a business. Another study shows that a business needs at least a four-star rating for customers to trust it. This shows that merely appearing on the top search results for a query is not enough. Your customers will read, on average, seven reviews before forming an opinion about your business. So, you must be mindful of how you deal with comments.
Around 88% of customers appreciate a business that responds to reviews. People also appreciate businesses that are transparent in their dealings, accept their mistakes, and strive for improvement.
Moreover, even if you do not think from a customer’s point of view but simply look at it from a business perspective, responding to feedback actually helps a business grow.
An increase in Yelp’s star rating will help improve business revenue by 9%. Yelp reviews are more valuable to your business than you imagine. Your customers do not have to go anywhere to view your Yelp stars. It is seen on the results page and the webpage.
So, what can you do to get your customers to add a good star rating? Ask them to rate their experience and appreciate their honesty.
While discussing star ratings, it is also important to note that your customers do not appreciate perfection. If you have a five-star rating on any of the review platforms, it will most likely be perceived as fake. However, any rating between 4.0 and 4.7 is considered optimal.
Wikipedia is the encyclopedia of the Internet. So, if users want to learn something about a specific topic, they are most likely going to find it on Wikipedia. Around 1.9 edits are made on Wikipedia every second worldwide. Hence, you can imagine the amount of data that flows through this channel every day. Wikipedia’s popularity is due to its fast loading time and easy availability of information.
If you search for any information on the Internet, there is a 60% chance that the first search result will be Wikipedia.
The page ranks for a whopping 99% of internet search results. Due to its extensive knowledge base and continuously updated pages, Wikipedia appears at the top of many organic Google search results.
The chances of Wikipedia appearing on Google snippets are 10 times higher than on any other page. This means that even before the top search results, you will see Wikipedia snippets of the search query that you have typed. Now, Wikipedia’s popularity can be attributed to its accuracy. The information on the platform is 80% to 85% accurate, making it one of the most reliable sources of information.
We all know that Wikipedia runs on voluntary content, which means that people add content to the page globally voluntarily. However, it is worth noting that the total number of female global contributors to the content seen on Wikipedia is only 15%.
Today, hiring managers scan the Internet before making recruitment decisions. As an aspiring employee, you must be extremely mindful of what you like or post on social media platforms, such as your personal Facebook profile, LinkedIn, X, and Instagram.
You don’t want to send a wrong message to your hiring manager when they conduct a “character verification” survey. So, you may want to steer clear of anything negative or incriminating on social media.
A significant 95% of companies and businesses rely on social media platforms to find suitable employees. This is a strategic move because it is convenient and cost-effective. Most young individuals are on social media, so a single post about a vacancy can land them thousands of candidates.
Online recruitment has grown by 54% in the past five years. Many companies employ social recruiting strategies, and this trend seems set to stay.
About 69% of job seekers said they would reject a job from a company with a bad reputation. Even if they are unemployed, they would prefer to work for an ethical and trustworthy organization.
Social media is an important tool for building social capital. It helps businesses build networks, relationships, and guidelines that enable them to work together. Social media helps you gain trust, credibility, and cooperation from your group of followers.
It also helps convey specific information to your followers that convert them into buyers.
According to a study, 87% of customers gather product information from different channels before buying a product. Comparative shopping is on the rise, and your target audience uses multiple channels to view information about a product. Hence, cross-channel marketing is the most convenient way to reach a broad audience group.
Around 71% of customers agreed that they are more likely to recommend a brand to their family and friends if they had a positive experience on a social media platform. Positive brand experience on social media consists of the following:
About 78% of customers are influenced by social media posts when making a purchase decision. Most people use social media to connect with brands, check out new products, and form opinions. If your social media game is strong, you will be able to attract a majority of your target audience and convert them into paying customers.
How people talk about a particular product, its ratings, and reviews influence the purchase decisions of most of your customers. In fact, 75% of customers rely on social media to learn about a product and form an opinion about whether they must make a purchase.
Depending on the age group of their target audience, brands must focus on different social media platforms to promote their products. For instance, the younger population is most active on TikTok and Instagram, while the older groups are mainly found on Facebook and X. Moreover, 85% of customers between the ages of 18 and 29 are found on one of the other social media platforms. The percentage decreases as the age of the audience increases.
Around 39% of customers say they will trust a brand that interacts with them. Interaction humanizes a brand and makes it more approachable, so interacting with your customers should be integral to your brand strategy.
About 83% of customers agree that trust is the most important factor connecting them to their favorite brands. So, if a brand can cultivate trust and credibility with its customers, it is more likely to succeed.
Customers trust brands with strong ethics and principles. They like brands that work toward the overall development of society. Businesses that integrate social and environmental concerns into their operations instead of solely focusing on profit receive admiration and appreciation.
About 93% of customers agree that they view a business in a positive light and trust it if it works towards a social cause and contributes positively to society.
Around 87% of customers will buy a product from a company that advocates for a social cause that they strongly believe in. For instance, if a brand strongly supports the LGBTQ community, they are most likely to have customers who belong to or support the group.
Nearly 62% of customers believe that a company’s reputation is the most crucial factor affecting purchase decisions. About 35% of customers believe that it is somewhat important, while 3% of customers believe it is not important. From this, you can gauge that your company’s reputation is vital to customers.
Online reputation management is expected to undergo drastic changes. In recent years, we have seen brands relying more and more on social media for promotion. Even if a business has a brick-and-mortar store, it still has a social media page.
Apart from social media, we can expect Artificial Intelligence (AI) to play a significant role in ORM. AI can analyze large amounts of data and use it to understand customer sentiments, which can then be used to manage ORM.
In addition, online reputation management strategies will also use personalization to target a specific audience and build trust and credibility among them.
The future of online reputation management will witness technological advancements in terms of tools and strategies. These new tools will allow accurate data collection, which will help in advanced data analytics. All these developments will ultimately help businesses manage their online reputation better.
Online reputation management is crucial if a business wants to succeed. Effective ORM enables a business to grow and confidently tackle challenges along the way. A negative reputation can cost a business more than one can imagine. So, work consistently to build a good reputation and see the magic of a positive brand image unfold.
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