Hi everyone,

Quick question: when did you last read your own reviews? Not to respond to one. Just to read them the way a stranger would.

Here’s why it matters more than it used to.

For years, reviews did one job. They helped a potential customer decide whether to trust you. A person read them, felt reassured or put off, and made a call. That job hasn’t gone away. But your reviews just picked up a second one, and most businesses haven’t noticed.

Giphy

AI is reading your reviews before your customer does

When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google’s AI for a recommendation, the AI doesn’t flip a coin. It pulls from what’s publicly available about you, and reviews are one of the richest sources it has. It reads them, weighs the sentiment, and decides whether to put you on the shortlist it hands back.

So the question is no longer only whether your reviews convince a customer. It’s whether they convince the AI to mention you at all.

This isn’t theoretical. In the last year, the share of consumers using AI tools to find and choose businesses went from 6% to 45% (BrightLocal 2026). More than 8 in 10 now read AI-generated summaries of reviews, and 42% trust an AI’s recommendation as much as a traditional review. The machine in the middle has become part of almost every buying decision.

What this means for you, whatever you sell

A thin, stale, or ignored review profile used to cost you a few wavering customers. Now it can keep you out of the recommendation entirely, because the AI has less to work with and less reason to trust you.

The businesses that show up are the ones doing the unglamorous work:

  • Recent reviews, not a wall of five-year-old ones. 74% of consumers only care about reviews from the last three months, and AI weighs freshness too.

  • Reviews across more than one platform, not just Google. Google’s share of where people read reviews is slipping, and AI pulls from everywhere.

  • Responses to reviews, the good and the bad, because that signals an active, real business to both people and machines.

  • Accurate listings, so the details AI repeats about you are actually correct.

None of this is new advice for earning trust. What’s new is that ignoring it now makes you invisible in the exact place more of your customers are starting their search.

Want to see where you actually stand?

Reply to this email with the words “Review Reality Check” and the names of your three closest competitors, and we’ll compare your reviews to theirs and see whether AI recommends you or them when someone asks. We’ll pull it together and send it your way.

My team runs these all the time, and the findings tend to surprise people.

Talk soon,

Iulia Vasciuc

CEO, ScaledOn

P.S. Different topic, same principle: growth comes from being where your customers already are. On Wednesday, July 23 at 12pm ET, our Amazon Director, Dominic, breaks down the Prime Day 2026 results and what they mean for any business, even if you don’t sell on Amazon. Register here →

🚀 More from ScaledOn:

  1. 💬 Your buyers search differently now. See where your marketing is losing them. Book a 30-min call.

  2. 🔎 Invisible in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI? Most brands are. Get an AI Visibility Readiness Audit.

  3. 🎙️ Marketing changes fast, and it's hard to keep up. Our ScaledOn Sessions break down what actually impacts your business, with the team live in the chat to take your questions. Subscribe on YouTube.

  4. 🤝 Know a founder who needs us? Refer them and earn up to $500.

Keep Reading