Field guide
Practical essays for small businesses thinking about reviews, local discovery, and the slow shift from Google search to AI search. No SEO clichés, no ranking-factor lists — just the work we wish someone had handed us.
The exact words to use at the till, the chair, and the job site — plus receipt one-liners, SMS templates, and the two compliance lines you must never cross. Copy, paste, adapt to your voice. No gating, no incentives, no "rate us 5 stars," ever.
Original research from our own 349 city leaderboards: the median "cost of entry" to a top-10 ranges from 283 reviews (gyms) to 1,158 (restaurants), 62% of top-ranked businesses hold 4.8★ or better, and in two categories the #1 spot has FEWER reviews than the #10. Data open under CC-BY-4.0; every number recomputes with each quarterly re-scrape.
At I/O 2026 Google launched Search agents that monitor the web 24/7 and book local services on your behalf — even calling businesses directly. What changed, and the structured-data checklist that decides whether an agent surfaces your business or your competitor.
A step-by-step tutorial that gets a scannable Google review QR on your printed receipts in under 20 minutes. Covers thermal printer specs, POS configuration (Square, Toast, Clover, Lightspeed, Stripe Terminal), QR size and placement, scan testing, and the failure modes nobody documents.
Nine tools small businesses actually consider when adding a Google review QR to receipts and counter signage. Prices verified, use-cases named, no affiliate scoring. BigLove is one of the nine — we wrote this because somebody had to.
A small-business owner Googling "review gating tool" is rarely trying to break the rules. Here's what review gating actually is, why Google buried it in 2024-2026, and what works now.
Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, Google AI Overviews and Claude all answer local queries differently — and reviews are only one input. A field guide for small businesses navigating the post-Google search landscape.