Whether you own a multi-location franchise or lead marketing for a major hospital system, one marketing truth prevails: We operate in a consumer-driven era in which the voice of the customer (VoC) is amplified like never before through online reviews.

The online ecosystem is crowded, complicated and dynamic. Prospective customers read reviews, map directions and learn about special offers and discounts before deciding to visit a certain business. Major online review sites such as Google and Facebook, along with industry-specific review sites such as Cars.com and Healthgrades, constantly add features, modify behavior and shift in relative importance, according to the ever-changing needs of the customer.

This makes the ability to monitor and manage online reputation a critical business function. That’s why we created the Reputation Score, a sophisticated measure that evolves with this constantly changing online review landscape, to help you understand your business’s online reputation.

Changes to the Reputation Score for Jan 2017 include:

In 2016, we invested heavily in the reliability of our Reputation Score, so is could be used as the single metric to assess a business’s online reputation and incentivize their workforce. For 2017, we honor our commitment to continually providing businesses with a real-time, holistic view of their presence across websites that matter most to your customers.

Accounting for the entire review ecosystem (requesting, monitoring, responding and promoting), we’ll add review responding as a new thermometer for the Reputation Score.

We’ve done a tremendous amount of work to capture review responses across the web, performed through and outside our platform. Responding to reviews is a powerful metric in boosting consumer confidence, and through this new thermometer, we can provide a full picture of reviews.

In addition to the new Review Response Thermometer, we’re enhancing the algorithm for the Search Impression thermometer. This thermometer will now include whether or not a Rich Snippet (a star rating and reviews total) is included within a business’s search listing. We’re also recalibrating the way we measure each search results page when looking for a business online.

About Reputation Score

The Reputation Score is calculated on the basis of a business’s performance across a variety of important online areas including review count, spread, visibility and so on. The Reputation Score also takes into account the local market and industry, enabling you to benchmark your business against the competition in terms of online reputation.

The Reputation Score is calculated on a 1,000-point scale, where 1,000 is the highest possible rating and 100 is the lowest. Reputation Score is included with all Reputation.com for Business subscriptions.