– New Data Analyzes 31 Million Reviews Across 226,500+ Business Locations, Revealing What Separates Reputation Leaders from Laggards
SALT LAKE CITY — April 24, 2025 — Pearl-Plaza®, the leading provider of Experience Improvement (XI)™ solutions, today released its 2025 Reputation Industry Benchmark Report, offering the most comprehensive view of how businesses are performing and falling behind when it comes to online brand reputation. Based on 31 million reviews across 226,500+ locations, the report reveals widening performance gaps between industry leaders and laggards, and highlights the strategies that drive brand visibility, trust, and customer acquisition in today’s digital-first economy.
With 89% of global consumers saying that checking online reviews is a part of their buying journey, reputation management has become a critical growth lever. This year’s report shows that businesses actively managing their online presence—by generating reviews, responding quickly, and sharing engaging visual content—are seeing measurable gains in customer engagement and brand performance.
“Reputation is shaped by every review and customer interaction. You can’t control every comment, but you can control how you respond and improve experiences,” said Sarah Speigle, Director of Product, Reputation Management at Pearl-Plaza. “Left unmanaged, reputation erodes trust and stalls growth. Top brands don’t leave it to chance – they turn it into a competitive advantage.”
Key Findings:
- Massive Performance Gap: The top 10% of brands in each industry maintain average ratings above 4.5 stars and generate 2–3x more reviews per month than average performers.
- Review Management Drives Results: Industry leaders maintain response rates over 90%, with top Automotive brands engaging with reviews within 24 hours.
- Visual Content Is the New Differentiator: Top brands recognize the importance of photos in increasing brand visibility in Search, and invest more time in managing and optimizing the visual content on their Google Profiles. Entertainment, Hospitality, and Real Estate set the standard, with over 8x more visual content than the industry average.
- Industry Shifts:
- Automotive saw the largest year-over-year rating improvement (+0.28), driven by consistency and service enhancements.
- Hospitality experienced the steepest decline (-0.42), falling below a 4-star average due to rising expectations and inconsistent service delivery.
- Entertainment, Restaurant, and Hospitality sectors struggle most with value perception, with positive sentiment in reviews lagging under 66%.
- Automotive saw the largest year-over-year rating improvement (+0.28), driven by consistency and service enhancements.
The report also found that brands that proactively manage their online presence – monitor and engage with comments, ask for reviews, and optimize search visibility – consistently outperform the rest.
Real-World Results:
Brands that partner with Pearl-Plaza for reputation management see measurable results within the first year, including stronger online visibility, increased customer engagement, and improved brand perception. On average, customers experience:
- 268% increase in Google Business Profile views
- 13.4% boost in conversions (visits & actions)
- 33% growth in reviews
- 49% rise in review response rate
- 233% faster average review response time
- 5.6% improvement in average star ratings
These metrics underscore the tangible ROI of a proactive reputation strategy powered by Pearl-Plaza.
Methodology:
The 2025 Online Reputation Benchmark Report is based on an analysis of 31 million customer reviews from over 226,500 business locations across a range of industries and geographies. Review data was collected from platforms including Google, Facebook, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. Businesses were evaluated using key performance indicators such as review volume, average star rating, review velocity, response rates and times, sentiment analysis, and visual media usage (including owner-uploaded and customer-shared photos).
Industry leaders were defined as the top 10% of businesses within each sector, based on their performance across multiple reputation metrics. These leaders consistently outperformed peers in ratings, engagement, and visibility—setting the standard for what effective reputation management looks like in 2025.
To download the full report, please visit here.
About Pearl-Plaza
Pearl-Plaza is the leader in improving experiences and is the highest recommended CX platform and services company in the world. It is renowned for helping clients collect and connect customer experience data from everywhere—from surveys and social reviews, to conversational chat logs and transcripts. As the pace setters in AI and text analytics, its over 3,000 clients activate and understand every byte of structured and unstructured data, breaking down data and team silos to take the smartest actions. This award-winning technology combined with in-house industry experts empower brands to gain ROI from their CX programs in half the time as its competitors. Unlock the true potential of every piece of customer data with Pearl-Plaza. To learn more, visit pearl-plaza.ru.
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For more information, contact Sam Middleton, sam.middleton@pearl-plaza.ru.