The three most-reviewed groomers a customer searching in Edina is shown carry 476, 407 and 391 Google reviews — files of a similar size — and the reply columns behind them are not similar at all. Pampered Pooch Playground answered 10 of its last 10 reviews against 407 in total. Woof Central answered 8 of its last 10, on 476. Bubbly Paws answered 3 of its last 10, on 391. Same shelf, three different habits.
Boarding around Edina overlaps with grooming at the top: Pampered Pooch Playground and Woof Central lead there too, joined by Dogtopia of Bloomington at 8 of its last 10 on 385 reviews. Boarding is the thinnest of the three trades by the middle of the pack — a median of 70.5 reviews across the 20 we read — while the single most-reviewed boarding listing in the set carries 1,127. Set those two figures side by side, 70.5 and 1,127, and the shape of the trade is easier to see than any label would make it.
Veterinarians hold the deepest files. The median across the 20 we read is 252.5 reviews, and the three largest are 2,261, 902 and 839. Woodlake Veterinary Hospital answered 10 of its last 10 on 839 reviews; Westgate Pet Clinic answered 9 of its last 10 on 471; Lake Harriet Veterinary answered 6 of its last 10 on 902. A deep file and a full reply column are clearly not the same thing, and one does not arrive with the other.
Star ratings do almost no separating work in this group. The median is 4.8 for grooming, 4.9 for boarding and 4.8 for veterinarians. Across the businesses we measured around Edina, a typical one had answered 72% of its recent reviews, on 56 measured. That figure is not universal here: among the 20 barbershops a searcher in Edina is shown, not one had answered any of its recent reviews, despite a median of 175.
What to do about it
Three medians of 4.8, 4.9 and 4.8 mean a pet owner comparing two listings learns very little from the stars. What is left on the page is whether the reviews have anything written under them, and that is the thing these numbers show varying most.
Start from the most recent ten rather than the oldest unanswered ones. The count we measure covers the recent end of the file, not the whole of it, so working backwards from the newest review is where a short session goes furthest. Answer the good ones as well as the difficult ones; a five-star review with a real sentence under it says something a silent one does not. Write each reply as yourself, naming what the visit involved, because a paragraph reused across ten reviews reads as one reply repeated rather than ten.
If your file runs to several hundred, treat this as a habit rather than a clear-out. Keeping the recent ten answered is a far smaller job than clearing a backlog once and drifting again.
Pet grooming
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pampered Pooch Playground | 10 of 10 | 407 | 4.8 |
| 2 | Woof Central | 8 of 10 | 476 | 4.9 |
| 3 | Bubbly Paws | 3 of 10 | 391 | 4.6 |
Pet boarding
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pampered Pooch Playground | 10 of 10 | 407 | 4.8 |
| 2 | Woof Central | 8 of 10 | 476 | 4.9 |
| 3 | Dogtopia of Bloomington | 8 of 10 | 385 | 4.7 |
Veterinarians
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Woodlake Veterinary Hospital | 10 of 10 | 839 | 4.8 |
| 2 | Westgate Pet Clinic | 9 of 10 | 471 | 4.8 |
| 3 | Lake Harriet Veterinary | 6 of 10 | 902 | 4.9 |