Metrics
Review recency
Review recency is how recently a business's most recent reviews were posted, and how heavily those newer reviews are weighted by both platforms and readers.
Consumers discount old reviews sharply. Survey work by BrightLocal has consistently found that most people consider reviews older than roughly three months to be of limited relevance, and many filter explicitly for the newest first.
Platforms lean the same way: recency is a factor in how prominently reviews are surfaced and in how a rating is presented.
In practice
Treat recency as a maintenance metric. A profile with a strong average and nothing new in a year is weaker than a slightly lower average that is clearly current.
Common questions
- How old is too old for a review?
- Readers begin discounting at around three months and heavily by a year. There is no hard cut-off, but a stale profile reads as a stale business.