Why does a competitor with fewer reviews outrank me?

A competitor with fewer reviews outranks you because review count is one input into Google’s local ranking, and they are ahead on one of the others. Google describes local results as based on relevance, distance and prominence. Reviews are part of prominence. That leaves two whole factors, and the rest of prominence, where a business with a fraction of your reviews can be ahead.

What Google says about reviews

Review count and review score are taken into account in local ranking, according to Google, and more reviews and positive ratings can help. Google doesn’t say how much, and it publishes no weights. So reviews count for something, and nobody outside Google can tell you they count for a set share of the result. Anyone who gives you a percentage is passing on an estimate.

Where the competitor may be ahead

These are the usual explanations, roughly in the order I’d check them.

• They are closer to the person searching. This is the most common reason, and no number of reviews removes it.
• Their primary category matches the search more exactly. A profile set to “Electrician” and one set to a narrower category won’t behave the same for every search.
• The service being searched is named on their profile and on the page it links to, and is missing or buried on yours.
• Their prominence comes from somewhere other than reviews: they have been around longer and have more links and mentions from local websites, suppliers and associations.
• Their reviews may be more recent, or describe the job in more detail. In practice a steady flow of new reviews appears to matter more than a large total collected years ago, though Google doesn’t document this.
• A business name that contains the service or the city is widely observed to help. If those words are part of their real name, that is their good luck. If they were added to the profile only for ranking, it breaks Google’s rules, which is the other half of whether keywords in a business name help ranking.

An example of how it plays out

Imagine an electrician based in Vista with several hundred reviews, and a newer one in Oceanside with a few dozen. A homeowner near the Oceanside pier searches for an electrician. The Oceanside company is a short drive from that searcher and the Vista company is across town and inland. Google can reasonably show the nearer one first. Run the same search from central Vista and the order is likely to flip. Both owners, each searching from their own office, would see themselves on top and wonder what the other is complaining about.

What your reviews still do for you

A customer looking at three businesses in the map pack reads the ratings and counts before choosing whom to call. A company in third place with many more reviews, recent ones among them, and an owner who replies can get the call ahead of the company in first. Ranking decides whether you’re seen. Reviews have a great deal to do with whether you’re chosen, which is why I treat review management as ongoing work and not a campaign.

What to do about it

Find the real gap before spending anything. Compare the two profiles on the points above, and measure where each of you ranks across the area, not from one spot. That comparison is how to find out why a competitor outranks you.

I wouldn’t chase the review count harder with shortcuts. Buying reviews, rewarding customers for them, or asking only the happy customers all break Google’s rules, and reviews gathered that way can be removed. Keep asking every real customer, and put the effort into the factor where you’re behind, whatever you conclude about how many Google reviews a local business needs.