How to Check and Interpret Your Reputation Score Card

Knowing the reputation score of your brand is one of the first and most important steps to building a 5-star reputation.

What is a reputation score? Your reputation score is calculated based on your business performance across the top social media and business review sites, including Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Tripadvisor. It takes into account the user-generated content that shows up in search results when consumers search for your brand, as well as what customers publicly say in their online reviews and ratings of your business.

Remember: your customers are the ones who drive your reputation. A high reputation score points to a healthy brand. Lower scores, on the other hand, can cause growth stagnation and revenue loss.

If you’re not sure where your company stands, ReviewTrackers offers a free Online Reputation Score and Report Card. To generate your own, simply fill out the form below. Then continue reading this blog post to understand the implications of your score and interpret the contents of your report card.

What Does Your Online Reputation Score Mean?

ReviewTrackers’ Reputation Score and Report Card should help take the guesswork out of your reputation management strategy. The free tool instantly generates your brand’s online reputation report and provides a snapshot of your performance. This includes review highlights, ratings, keyword trends, review response rate and average response times, and more.

Let’s break down some of the information you’ll find on your reputation score card.

Your Letter Grade

Your reputation scorecard is marked with a letter grade that is based on your business performance across a variety of review-related reputation metrics: quantity of reviews, rating scores, review velocity (the rate at which your company is generating reviews), review response times, and more.

The letter grade is generated by a proprietary algorithm built into our reputation management software and serves as an accurate indicator of your brand’s online reputation across various business review sites.

You can select various date filters to check your performance over time. The reputation scorecard lets you choose from the following date ranges: 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, and 180 days. In “Review Sources,” you can also select a specific review site in order to see your reputation score, for example, on Google, Facebook, or Yelp.

It’s important to remember that you have significant control over your brand reputation. The key is to monitor your reputation score and leverage the data in the card to improve customer experiences.

Your Review Metrics

Under your letter grade is a set of review metrics on which your online reputation score is based. This includes:

Reviews: quantity of reviews posted on all or the selected review sites.

Average Rating: average star rating, based on a 5-point scale, across all or the selected review sites.

Response Rate: the rate at which your company responds to reviews on all or the selected review sites (measured in percentage).
Average Response Time: the average time it takes for your company to respond to reviews on all or the selected review sites (measured in the number of days).

Keep in mind that the above set of metrics displays data based on your selected date range. It also tells you whether your company’s performance is “above average” (green), “average” (orange), or “below average” (red). This is primarily based on benchmarks established by ReviewTrackers in its online reputation analysis report.

You may be wondering, “What does reputation score mean and why are my review responses taken into account?” It’s certainly true that what customers publicly say in their reviews have a big impact on online reputation. At the same time, learning how to respond to negative reviews as well as positive feedback can also spell a huge difference.

According to online reviews statistics:

94% of consumers say that a bad review has convinced them to avoid a business.
53% of customers expect companies to respond to negative reviews within a week. But 63% say that a business has never responded to their review.
45% of consumers say they are more likely to visit a business that responds to negative reviews.

Frequently Used Keywords

This section of your reputation score and report card brings to the surface the most relevant keywords used by your customers in their online reviews.

ReviewTrackers identifies these keywords by harnessing natural language processing technology. This technology can also pin down customer sentiment and accurately measure positive and negative language based on review data. This allows you to see clearly and instantly what customers like and dislike about your brand.

In the example above, words like “food” and “burger” are frequently mentioned in 4PM Happy Hour’s reviews and customers have great things to say in most instances. “Service” is also frequently mentioned, but customers aren’t necessarily happy about it: a signal that “service” should be an area of focus for 4PM Happy Hour as it works to improve brand reputation.

Why is this important? When customers review any of your business locations, they’re also sharing information more useful than what you’ll ever get from star ratings or letter-grade reputation scores.

Frequently Used Keywords helps crystallize this valuable information into insights — which can help you identify high-impact topics, trends, opportunities, and issues with the customer experience.

With ReviewTrackers’ Customer Experience Analytics feature, companies can dive deeper into analytical tools and techniques for reviews. The feature automatically categorizes and organizes large amounts of review data and unsolicited feedback from customers, helping brands anticipate, meet, and exceed customer expectations.

Review Highlights and Needs Attention

Review Highlights and Needs Attention, located just under Frequently Used Keywords in your Reputation Score and Report Card, are two sections that display recent reviews from all or your selected business review sites. The data displayed is also based on your selected date range.

Review Highlights automatically curates positive reviews (4- and 5-star ratings)

Needs Attention automatically curates negative reviews (1- and 2-star ratings)

Does it look like your company is achieving above-average performance? Your online reputation score is more than a badge of honor to wear at your next all-hands meeting. The Review Highlights section can reveal key insights about your strengths as a business — viewed through the lens of your customers.

It also provides a glimpse into the kind of reviews you can showcase across your digital properties, such as your company website, location pages, and social media profiles. With a tool like Amplify, you can leverage your best reviews as marketing assets and provide the type of social proof needed to establish a trustworthy brand reputation.

Needs Attention, on the other hand, displays examples of negative reviews your business should address. This section includes “Respond to review” links, which take you to the original review pages.

You must respond to these reviews in a timely manner. If a negative review was posted more than one month ago and still has not been responded to, your reputation scorecard will display a red exclamation triangle to emphasize the urgency of posting a response.

More importantly, you should act on the negative feedback and take the necessary steps to resolve specific issues raised by the reviews.

For actionable tips and real-world examples, read our popular guide on how to respond to negative reviews.

Improve Your Reputation Score Today

Whether you’re managing a small business or an enterprise-level brand with hundreds of business locations, your reputation score is a crucial business metric to monitor.

However, because reputation has little to do with your own perception of your brand, your score isn’t exactly a metric you can calculate on your own, without access to customer data found in reviews.

Generating your free Reputation Score and Report Card is a great first step you can take right now to achieve a deeper understanding of your company’s reputation. Not only does it help you instantly find out your business’s reputation score; it also helps you immediately discover highlights, trends, and patterns that define your customers’ experiences.