What BrightLocal’s 2026 Survey Measured
BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey is an annual, disclosed-methodology study of general consumer behavior toward online reviews. Its 2026 edition found 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses when making decisions, and 41% say they “always” read reviews, up sharply from 29% in 2025.
The survey is general-consumer and cross-category. It contains no insurance-specific or explicitly business-to-business breakout, and that scope matters for how the rest of this page should be read: every figure below describes how people research businesses in general, applied here as a reasoned extension to a commercial insurance agency, not as an insurance-specific finding.
How Much Weight a Review Carries
Trust in reviews runs deep once someone starts reading them. The same 2026 survey found 49% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation from someone they know, a number that puts a stranger’s written review on comparable footing with word of mouth from a friend.
That trust translates into action in both directions. 85% of consumers say they are more likely to use a business after reading positive reviews, and 77% say they are deterred by negative ones, evidence that reviews are not a passive research step but an active factor in whether contact happens at all.
Recency Matters More Than a Star Average
74% of consumers surveyed said they prioritize reviews written within the last three months, over older reviews regardless of overall rating. A strong average built entirely on reviews from several years ago carries less weight with today’s researcher than a handful of recent ones, positive or negative.
For an agency, that finding argues for treating review activity as an ongoing practice rather than a one-time push. A cluster of reviews from three years ago, however good, is not doing the same work in a prospect’s research today that it did when it was fresh.
Review-Driven Trust Already Extends to Higher-Ticket Decisions
One further finding from the same survey is directly relevant to a purchase as consequential as a commercial insurance placement: 27% of consumers have spent over $1,000, and 13% have spent over $5,000, after reading reviews. Review-driven trust is not confined to small, low-stakes local purchases, it already reaches into decisions with real financial weight behind them.
This remains a general-consumer figure, not an insurance-specific or B2B-specific one, and should be read as directional support for the idea that reviews matter at higher price points, not as direct evidence about commercial insurance buyers specifically.
Why a Business Owner Researches an Agency the Same Way They Research Anything Else
This is reasoning, not a separately cited statistic: a business owner deciding whether to take a producer’s call, or whether to switch agencies at all, is a consumer in that specific research moment, even though the eventual purchase is commercial. There is no evidence a person’s review-reading habit turns off because the thing being researched happens to be a B2B service rather than a restaurant.
That inference matters more, not less, given how hard switching actually is in this vertical. A signed Broker of Record letter wins the account in less than 10% of competitive bid situations where it is contested, per Hylant’s own published guidance on the mechanic, meaning an incumbent has real structural advantage once a producer is in the conversation. Whatever gets a producer that conversation in the first place, including whether a prospect likes what they find when they search the agency’s name, carries outsized weight given how rarely the pitch itself flips a decision later.
What an Agency Controls Here
Star rating alone is not the lever the data above points to most directly. Recency is: a request for a review after a positive claims experience, a smooth binding, or a well-handled certificate request keeps the visible review history current, which the 74% recency figure above suggests matters more than chasing a marginally higher average.
Responding to negative reviews, rather than ignoring them, is a second lever the underlying research on consumer trust behavior generally supports, since a negative review left unanswered reads differently to a researcher than one with a calm, professional response attached.
A Review Doesn’t Replace the Conversation
None of this argues that reviews substitute for a real relationship or a well-run first meeting. It argues that reviews shape whether a prospect answers the phone, takes the meeting, or searches the agency the moment a cold call ends, before any producer has said a word.
Human + AI SDRs still have to earn that meeting through a real conversation once the call connects. What the data above suggests is that the conversation is not happening in a vacuum, a prospect has very likely already formed an impression before it starts.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.