Reading Velocity Patterns

The four patterns

Earned profiles show seasonality: gyms spike in January, restaurants on weekends, contractors after storms. Managed profiles show smoothing: uniform weekly counts with no relationship to any calendar. Suspicious spikes follow marketing events the business never ran. And cliffs — sudden losses — mark removal waves.

Learn to see these four and you can read any profile in your market in under a minute.

Graphing your own profile

Export your review timeline monthly and plot it against your customer count. The two curves should rhyme. Where they diverge — reviews lagging after a busy season, for instance — the fix is operational: more asks at the right moments, not more pressure on happy customers.

Keep the spreadsheets. If a filter ever misreads your growth, twelve months of your own data is the fastest appeal evidence you can produce.

Keep reading

• velocity safety
• timelines
• earned vs bought

Where the details come from: Online reputation overview and Word of mouth and FTC on fake reviews and deceptive endorsements.