81.1% of Real Estate Agents Have Fewer Than 20 Google Reviews vs 58.2% of Local Businesses

A couple planning to sell their house searches for a real estate agent in their town. Google's map shows three agents, each with a star rating and a review count, and a list of others below. The couple has never met any of them. The reviews are the first evidence of who sells homes well, and they are shown on the Google Business Profile, the free listing with a business's reviews, rating, hours, phone number and website in Google Search and Maps.

For a seller, the sale is one of the biggest transactions of their life, and they choose from a shortlist of names. A listing with written reviews from past clients answers the question every seller has: did this agent get other people a good price, and were they easy to work with?

Most agents give sellers little to go on. 81.1% of real estate agent profiles have fewer than 20 Google reviews, the highest share of 18 local business categories, and the median agent has 2. 36.3% have none. The bar at the top is low, though: agents in Google's top three Maps results have a median of 21 reviews.

We used two samples of US real estate agents, collected on September 23, 2026. The first is 513 real estate agent Google Business Profiles, where we recorded the number of reviews, star rating, website, opening hours, description, claim status, business categories and photos. The second is 546 real estate agents with at least one review, for which we collected up to 20 of their newest Google reviews, 5,527 in all, with each review's star rating, text and any owner reply. We compare every agent figure with the average of the 18 local business categories in the same study.

A profile is unclaimed when no owner has verified it with Google, so the business cannot edit the listing. An agent "never replied" when none of their 20 newest reviews has a reply from the owner. Negative reviews are one- and two-star reviews. The median is the middle business: half have more, half have fewer. The 18-category average is the simple average of the 18 category figures.

That is the highest share of the 18 categories, where the average is 58.2%. The median agent profile has 2 Google reviews against 27 across categories, 36.3% have none (twice the 18.3% average), and 3.1% have 100 or more, against 20% on average. An agent closes a limited number of sales a year, so each review has to be asked for, and most agents do not ask.

Few reviews make ratings fragile. 52.6% of rated agents have a perfect 5.0, against a 35.7% average, because a profile with two glowing reviews is easy to keep spotless. At the same time 15% sit below 4 stars, above the 13.8% average: on a profile with a handful of reviews, one unhappy client can pull the rating under 4.

Claiming the listing matters here too. Claimed agent profiles have a median of 6.5 reviews against 0 for unclaimed ones. Momentum is building: among agents with 20 or fewer lifetime reviews, review volume rose 12.3% over the last 12 months compared with the year before, though 22.4% received at least a third of their reviews in a single month.

52.4% of agents never replied to any of their 20 newest reviews, in line with the 52.8% average, and 40.5% of recent agent reviews carry a reply, exactly the 18-category average (8th of 18). The gap is in which reviews get answered: agents reply to 42.8% of five-star reviews but 27.1% of one- and two-star reviews, 12th of 18 categories on negative replies, where the average is 30.8%.

Agent reviews are long, averaging 65.3 words over the last 12 months, because clients describe a months-long sale. Of five-star reviews, 42.6% use the word "recommend" and 28.4% say "professional". Of English-language one-star reviews, 30.1% mention price or cost and 23.7% mention rude or unprofessional staff. When agents reply they take 4.3 days on average and a median of 3.4 days.

40.5% of agent profiles list no opening hours, against a 28.6% average. Half have no description (49.5% against 43.9%), 32.6% are unclaimed (against 29.2%), 67.8% list only one business category (against 55.2%), and the median profile has 2 photos against 18. Agents do better on websites: 27.1% have none linked, against 35.1% on average.

In a separate Suff Digital study of 3,160 Google Maps searches across 79 US cities, the top three results for "real estate agent" had a median of 21 reviews, against 12 for listings ranked 4 to 20. A profile with a couple of dozen reviews already matches the agents Google ranks first. 93% of top-three agent listings linked a website, against 87.8% at ranks 4 to 20.

Location decides a lot. Adding "near me" to the search changed the top three in 78.5% of cities, so the agent a seller sees depends on where they are standing. Chains held 3.4% of top-three spots: independent agents, not national brands, win the map.

Ask every client for a review at closing, when they are happiest, and send a direct link by text or email the same day. With a median of 2 reviews across the trade, an agent with 20 detailed reviews already stands out, and that is close to what the top three Maps listings carry.

Complete the profile: claim it, add hours (even "by appointment"), write a description that names your towns and specialties, add secondary categories and upload photos of recent listings and yourself. Reply to every review, and answer the critical ones first, since sellers read how you handle a complaint as a preview of how you will handle their sale.

Your Google profile and your website work together in local search. Suff Digital's real estate seo programs build reviews, Google Business Profiles and neighborhood pages for agents and brokerages.

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