What happens when you actually respond to every review within two hours

A personal injury law firm in a competitive metro market. Four attorneys, solid reputation, but their GBP had 89 reviews while competitors had 200 plus. They'd respond to reviews maybe once a week. Ranking position for "personal injury lawyer" plus city hovered around position 8-11 in Map Pack. January 2024, we started the experiment.

Before: Average review response time of 4.3 days. Monthly review acquisition of maybe two reviews. Local pack visibility at 8 percent for their core terms. The managing partner thought reviews didn't matter much because they got referrals.

The change: We set up alerts and responded to every single review within two hours during business days. Not templates—actual personalized responses referencing specific details from each review. We also implemented a systematic request process via email 48 hours after case intake.

After six months: Review count jumped to 187. Average response time of 1.8 hours. Here's what moved: local pack visibility increased to 23 percent. More interesting, the click-through rate from impressions went from 4.1 percent to 9.7 percent.

The rankings themselves only improved to position 6-7, but the CTR change meant actual lead volume doubled. Turns out response speed signals engagement to Google, and potential clients reading the review section see you're active.