Glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms we use throughout ReviewDrop.
- Review Funnel
- A customer flow that routes 4–5 star experiences to public review sites (like Google) and 1–3 star experiences to a private feedback channel the business owner sees directly.
- Star Filter
- The component inside a review funnel that decides which customers are routed to Google versus which are routed to private feedback, based on a star rating they give first.
- Review Gating
- The practice of selectively soliciting reviews only from customers expected to leave positive ones, or discouraging unhappy customers from leaving public reviews. Google's content policy prohibits gating.
- Review Request
- A message sent to a customer (usually via SMS or email) asking them to leave a review of their recent experience. The message typically links to a review funnel or directly to the business's Google review page.
- Negative Feedback Interception
- The practice of capturing unhappy customer feedback through a private channel before it becomes a public negative review — while still allowing the customer to review publicly if they want to.
- Google Review QR Code
- A QR code that, when scanned with a phone camera, opens the business's Google review page directly — letting a customer leave a review in about 30 seconds.
- Google Business Profile
- The free Google product (formerly Google My Business) that powers a business's listing in Google Search and Google Maps — including the photos, hours, posts, Q&A, and reviews shown when someone searches the business name or its category.
- Google Review Link
- A direct URL that opens the Google review form for a specific business. Pasting this link into an email, SMS, or QR code lets a customer leave a review in one click.
- Google Place ID
- A unique identifier (starting with 'ChIJ…') that Google assigns to every place on Google Maps. You need it to generate a direct Google review link or to use most Google Maps APIs.
- Local SEO
- The discipline of getting a local business to rank in Google's local results — the map pack, Google Maps, and 'near me' searches — rather than the general organic web results.
- Local Pack
- The block of three local-business results (with the map) that Google shows at the top of search results for queries with local intent — also called the 'Map Pack' or '3-Pack.'
- NAP Consistency
- Whether a business's Name, Address, and Phone number are spelled and formatted identically everywhere they appear online — Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, the business's website, industry directories, etc.
- Review Velocity
- The rate at which new reviews are added to a business's Google profile. A business that earns 8 reviews per month is widely understood to rank better than one earning 2 per month — even if both end up with the same total over time.
- Review Recency
- How recently a business's most recent reviews were posted. A profile whose newest review is 18 months old is widely cited as ranking worse than a profile whose newest review is from last week — independent of total review count.
- Average Rating
- The mean star rating across all of a business's Google reviews, displayed prominently on the listing. Most businesses target 4.5 or higher; below 4.0, customers commonly self-report skipping the business in favor of higher-rated competitors.
- Review Response Rate
- The percentage of reviews a business publicly responds to. Higher response rates correlate with better local rankings and dramatically influence how prospective customers perceive the business.
- Review Schema Markup
- Structured data (Schema.org Review and AggregateRating types) added to a webpage's HTML so search engines can display star ratings and reviewer information in search results — the 'rich snippet' stars.
- First-Party Reviews
- Reviews collected directly by the business and hosted on its own systems (or a tool acting on its behalf), as opposed to reviews left on third-party platforms like Google, Yelp, or Trustpilot.
- Third-Party Reviews
- Reviews left on independent platforms — Google, Yelp, Facebook, Trustpilot, Tripadvisor, BBB, industry-specific directories — that the business doesn't own or control.
- Review Monitoring
- The practice of tracking new reviews across all the platforms where a business has a presence (Google, Yelp, Facebook, industry-specific sites) so the business can respond quickly — usually via automated alerts.
- Review Widget
- An embeddable component (typically JavaScript or iframe) that displays a business's reviews on its own website — usually pulled from Google or an aggregation of multiple sources.
- 10DLC
- 10-Digit Long Code — the US carrier framework that allows legitimate business SMS from a normal 10-digit phone number, after the sender registers their brand and use case. Unregistered business SMS is heavily filtered as spam.
- TCPA Compliance
- Operating within the Telephone Consumer Protection Act — the US federal law that governs commercial calls and SMS. Violations carry statutory damages of $500 per message, treble to $1,500 for willful violations. Plaintiffs' lawyers routinely file class actions.
- CAN-SPAM Compliance
- Operating within the CAN-SPAM Act, the US federal law for commercial email. Requires accurate headers, a non-misleading subject line, a physical mailing address in the email, and a working unsubscribe mechanism. Statutory damages are up to $50,120 per non-compliant message (2024 inflation-adjusted figure; the FTC updates the cap periodically).
- FTC Reviews and Testimonials Rule
- The FTC's 2024 rule (16 CFR Part 465) banning specific deceptive practices around consumer reviews — including fake reviews, undisclosed incentivized reviews, suppression of negative reviews, and certain forms of review manipulation. Civil penalties can reach over $50,000 per violation (2024 figure; the FTC updates the cap periodically for inflation).
- Review Attribution
- Knowing which review came from which marketing channel — whether a new Google review originated from your SMS request, your QR code on receipts, your email campaign, or organically. Practical attribution is messy because Google doesn't show the source.
- Review Sentiment
- An aggregated reading of whether reviews skew positive or negative, often broken down by topic (food, service, parking, wait time). Most review-monitoring tools extract sentiment via NLP and surface trends across many reviews.
- E-E-A-T
- Google's quality framework standing for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Used by Google's human quality raters and reflected in algorithm updates. Reviews and ratings contribute heavily to the 'Trustworthiness' dimension for local businesses.
- Aggregate Rating
- The Schema.org type (AggregateRating) used in structured data markup to declare a summary rating — a ratingValue (e.g., 4.7), a bestRating (typically 5), and a reviewCount — for a product, service, or business.
- Review Embed
- A specific implementation of a review widget — an HTML snippet (often a script tag or iframe) that a business pastes into its website to display reviews, typically with the styling controlled by the embed vendor.