Reviews

Reputation visibility and review-response state in SG-Dashboard reporting.

Reviews is the SG-Dashboard surface for reputation reporting. It shows review counts, ratings, individual review records, and response state for each connected location. The data sources are the linked business systems — Google Business Profile is the primary connector.

Reviews is a reporting surface inside SG-Dashboard. It sits alongside other reporting bodies like Reports, Custom Reports, and the Google Business Profile reporting view, and inherits the same site-context and date-range controls.

What is this for?

Use Reviews when reputation is the question — how many reviews came in this period, what the average rating looks like, which reviews still need a reply, how local trust is trending across the linked locations.

Reviews tracks reputation outcomes only. It does not replace a generic support inbox, and it does not blur into broader business performance reporting.

Good use cases

• Weekly check on review volume and average rating across all locations on the dashboard.
• Spotting an unanswered review that needs a response.
• Investigating a rating dip after a local change (new staff, opening hours change, service update).
• Cross-referencing review trends with traffic or conversion signals during a campaign window.
• Per-location reputation audit before a quarterly business review.

What NOT to use this for

• General customer support ticketing — Reviews is reputation-scoped, not a ticketing system.
• Broad business-listing performance signals — those belong in the Google Business Profile reporting surface.
• Direct rating control. Reviews displays the records returned from the connected source; it does not edit or remove published reviews on the source platform.

How this connects to other features

• Google Business Profile — primary connector for review records and ratings. A location must be linked before Reviews shows data.
• Site Explorer — one-site review across traffic, search, business profile, and ads. Reviews is the reputation lens within that synthesis.
• Analytics — broader dashboard analytics. Reviews sits beside analytics, scoped to reputation only.

Before you start

• Confirm the location is linked to a Google Business Profile (or other connected review source) and the integration shows healthy.
• Confirm the dashboard user has access to the linked locations.
• Pick the date range that covers the period you want to inspect.

Where to find it

SG-Dashboard sidebar → Reviews. The landing view shows review summaries across every location the user has access to. Click a location to open its per-location review list.

What Reviews shows

Reviews exposes three layers of detail. Each answers a different operational question.

Ratings and counts

Each location surface shows:

• Review count — total reviews returned by the connected source for the selected date range.
• Average rating — mean star rating across those reviews.
• Period change — difference vs the previous period of the same length.
• Distribution — count per star (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) where the source provides it.

These are the headline reputation signals. Drill into the per-location list for the review records behind the numbers.

Response state

For each review record, Reviews shows the current response state:

• Replied — a response has been published on the source platform.
• Awaiting reply — no response has been published yet.
• Not applicable — the source platform does not expose a response field for this record.

Awaiting-reply records are the highest-priority items in the list. The standard reputation workflow is to keep awaiting-reply counts low.

Date range and grouping controls

Reviews uses the same date-range and grouping controls as the rest of SG-Dashboard reporting. Pick a preset range (last 7 days, last 30 days, this month, custom) and the surface re-loads the summary and the per-location list for that window.

Reviews vs Google Business Profile reporting — clear boundary

Two related surfaces, distinct purpose:

Both surfaces pull from the same GBP connector. The split keeps reputation conversations separate from broader local-presence conversations, so neither metric gets buried inside the other.

Steps

1. Open Reviews.

From the SG-Dashboard sidebar, click Reviews. The summary view loads with every linked location and the current default date range.

2. Pick a date range.

Use the date-range control at the top. Standard presets (last 7, last 30, this month) cover most checks. Pick a custom range when investigating a specific event window.

3. Open one location.

Click a location name in the summary. The per-location list loads, showing every review record for that location in the selected date range, with the response state on each.

4. Filter to awaiting-reply.

Use the response-state filter to narrow the list to records that still need a reply. This is the standard reputation-action queue.

5. Open an individual review.

Click a review record. The full body, date, attribution, and any published response load in the detail panel. From here, you have the context to plan or draft a reply on the source platform.

What success looks like

After the period you are reviewing:

1. The summary shows the review count and average rating for every linked location.
2. The awaiting-reply filter returns zero (or a known small backlog) for every location.
3. The per-location lists reconcile with what the source platforms (Google Business Profile, etc.) show for the same date range.

What to do if it does not work

Examples

Example 1 — Weekly portfolio sweep

A multi-location agency runs a Monday morning reputation check across every client location.

Open Reviews → set range to Last 7 days → scan the summary for any location with a rating drop or awaiting-reply count above the team threshold → open each flagged location → draft replies for awaiting-reply records on the source platform. Total time: ~10 minutes for a 12-location portfolio.

Example 2 — Post-campaign reputation read

A campaign promoting a new service ran for the last 30 days. The team wants to know if it moved the reputation needle.

Open Reviews → set range to Last 30 days → compare the period-over-period change on review count and average rating → open the locations with the biggest swings to read the review bodies → cross-reference with traffic data in Site Explorer for the same locations. The reputation read goes into the campaign retrospective.

Example 3 — Investigating a single-location rating dip

One location's average rating dropped by half a star in the past month.

Open Reviews → click into the location → set range to Last 30 days → sort by rating ascending to surface the low-rated reviews → read the bodies for a pattern (service issue, staff change, opening hours) → reply to the awaiting-reply records on the source platform → flag the operational root cause to the location operator.

Per-location vs portfolio views

Reviews works at two scopes by design:

The portfolio view is the scan. The per-location view is the action. Most reputation sessions start at portfolio, identify which locations need attention, then drop into per-location for the action.

Cross-referencing review trends with other reporting

Reviews shows reputation in isolation. The full picture often needs cross-reference with other reporting:

• Reviews ↔ Site Explorer — a review-rating dip on one location often correlates with traffic or search changes for the same site. Site Explorer is the cross-source view.
• Reviews ↔ Google Business Profile reporting — review counts are part of broader listing performance. A reputation drop and a listing-views drop together tell a different story than either alone.
• Reviews ↔ Reports — custom reports can include review counts and ratings as columns alongside other business signals, so the reputation read lands in the same place as everything else.

Permissions and access

Reviews respects the dashboard's per-user access model:

• A user only sees locations they have access to in the dashboard.
• A user with read-only access sees the data but cannot trigger connector re-syncs or change linkage.
• A user with no access to any linked review source sees an empty state with a prompt to request access.

If a user expects to see a location and does not, the resolution is usually a permissions fix at the dashboard level, not a data fix at the connector level.

Edge cases worth knowing

A few Reviews behaviors that surprise first-time users:

• Sync latency is real. Reviews shows what the connector last fetched. A review posted on the source platform five minutes ago may not appear until the next sync cycle completes. This is normal, not a bug.
• Average rating is unweighted by default. Each review counts equally regardless of age. Older reviews still influence the average. Use date range to scope to a recent window when recency matters.
• Replies are not authored inside SGEN. Reviews shows response state; the actual reply is published on the source platform (the Google Business Profile listing, etc.). SGEN tracks the state, not the authoring.
• A location with zero reviews shows zero, not blank. The empty state is informative — it confirms the connector ran and returned nothing. Blank fields indicate a connector or permissions issue, not an empty review set.
• The dashboard does not de-duplicate cross-source reviews. A review left on two platforms (e.g., Google + a third party connected later) counts twice in the totals unless the connector itself de-duplicates upstream.

Frequently asked questions

Can I respond to a review inside SGEN? No — Reviews tracks response state. The reply itself is published on the source platform. Once published, the next sync updates the state in Reviews from Awaiting reply to Replied.

Why is the average rating different from what Google shows me? Two common causes: date range and sync latency. Reviews scopes to the selected date range; Google's public listing shows an all-time average. Confirm the range, then re-check after the next sync.

A review is showing in Reviews but not on the source platform — what happened? Review removal on the source side is a destructive change. The connector picks it up on the next sync and the review will drop from Reviews then. If it persists across multiple sync cycles, open a support ticket with both screenshots attached.

Can I export the review list? Reviews ties into the broader Reports system. Use Custom Reports to include review counts, ratings, and response state in an export.

What happens if I lose access to the linked source account? The connector goes unhealthy and Reviews stops updating. Reconnect the source from the integration page to resume sync.

Why does response state say "Not applicable" on some records? Some review sources do not expose a reply field — only star ratings or counts. For those, response state has no meaning and the column shows Not applicable.

Glossary

Field reference — what each column means in the per-location list

When the per-location list opens, every review record is one row. The columns are the same for every connected source. Some sources fill more fields than others.

Empty cells mean the source did not return that field, not that the data is missing. A review with no body still counts toward review counts and ratings.

Reading order — how a reputation session typically flows

A real reputation-management session in Reviews moves in a predictable order. Once the flow becomes familiar, sessions tighten from ~15 minutes to ~5 minutes for a same-size portfolio.

1. Open Reviews. The summary loads.
2. Scan the summary row for any location with a rating delta or awaiting-reply count above the team threshold.
3. Click into the flagged location. The per-location list loads.
4. Filter to awaiting-reply. The action queue surfaces.
5. Open each awaiting-reply record. Read the body and existing context.
6. Switch to the source platform to publish the reply.
7. Return to Reviews. The state will update on the next sync.
8. Repeat for the next flagged location.

The flow is the same for a single-location operator and a 50-location agency — only the count of flagged locations differs.

Date range patterns that work well

The default range loads quickly but is not always the right one for the question. A few patterns that match real reputation work:

• Daily check during a campaign — use Last 7 days with Compare on. Sharp signal on whether the campaign moved reputation.
• Monthly portfolio review — use Last 30 days with Compare on. Good baseline for the standing-meeting read.
• Quarterly business review — use Last quarter with Compare vs the prior quarter. Lands in the QBR deck.
• Investigating a specific event window — use Custom with the exact date range bracketing the event. Avoids dilution from before/after periods.
• All-time reputation context — use Custom with a wide range starting from the location's earliest review. Useful when the average rating question comes from someone outside the day-to-day team.

Compare mode is mostly on. The only reason to switch it off is when the comparison period itself had no data (a new location, a connector that went unhealthy in the prior window), where Compare returns numbers that mislead more than they inform.

Related reading

• Google Business Profile — connector behind the review records and ratings shown here.
• Site Explorer — one-site synthesis across traffic, search, reputation, and ads.
• Analytics — broader SG-Dashboard analytics surface; Reviews sits beside it, scoped to reputation.

Scope

This Reference covers the platform-level shape of reviews: what the surface is responsible for, how it relates to neighboring surfaces, and the structural boundaries that hold across releases. Operator how-to and per-release change land on the linked operator-facing or changelog surfaces, not here.

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