Google Reviews vs Facebook Reviews: Which Matter Most For Nurseries?
The perennial question: do Facebook reviews matter more than Google reviews for nurseries? If you run a nursery, where should you be asking parents to leave reviews?
Our answer is pretty straightforward.
For most nurseries, Google reviews should be the priority.
That doesn’t mean Facebook reviews and recommendations are useless. Far from it. Facebook can be brilliant for reinforcing your reputation among local parents, particularly if your nursery already has an active following or regularly gets mentioned in community groups.
But if you have limited time, limited opportunities to ask parents for reviews and you want those reviews to help more prospective parents discover your nursery, we’d focus on Google first.
Here’s why.
Why Reviews Influence Nursery Choice
Choosing a nursery is very different from choosing somewhere for lunch or deciding which plumber to call.
Parents are choosing the people and environment they’re going to trust with their child.
Naturally, that makes it a high-trust decision.
A polished website can tell parents that your team is caring, your environment is nurturing and your children love coming through the doors every morning.
A review from another parent can help prove it.
That’s the real power of nursery reviews. They reduce perceived risk.
Imagine a parent has narrowed their search down to two local nurseries. Both appear suitable, both are conveniently located and both have professional websites.
One has dozens of recent reviews from parents talking about how well their child settled, how communicative the team is and how much progress they’ve seen.
The other has seven reviews, the latest of which was posted 18 months ago.
Which one immediately feels like the safer choice?
That’s why reviews shouldn’t just be treated as a nice collection of compliments. They’re part of your nursery’s wider enquiry and conversion journey.
What Google Reviews Do For Your Nursery
Google reviews have one particularly important advantage:
They can influence parents before those parents have even reached your website.
When somebody searches Google for terms such as:
- nursery near me
- nursery in Solihull
- day nursery Bromsgrove
- preschool near me
Google may show local businesses prominently within its Search and Maps results.
Your Google Business Profile can contain information including your location, contact details, opening hours, photos and, crucially, your review rating and review count. Google confirms that reviews appear alongside Business Profiles in Search and Maps.
That means a parent can compare several nurseries without visiting a single nursery website.
They can see your name.
They can see where you are.
They can look through photographs.
And they can see what other parents think about you.
If your competitors have strong ratings, plenty of recent reviews and well-maintained Google Business Profiles while yours looks neglected, you may be losing attention before you get the opportunity to tell parents why your nursery is different.
That’s a big reason we put Google first.
What Facebook Reviews And Recommendations Do
Facebook still has an important job to do, particularly because childcare is so strongly influenced by local communities and recommendations between parents.
Meta currently uses Recommendations and reviews on Facebook Pages. When enabled, logged-in Facebook users can publish recommendations, see a Page’s rating and view public recommendations and reviews. Meta also says Recommendations may make a Page easier to find in Facebook search.
For nurseries, Facebook’s value extends beyond the Reviews section itself.
Parents talk.
They tag friends in posts, ask for nursery recommendations in local groups, share experiences and pass nursery names between one another.
So if somebody sees your nursery recommended in a local parents’ group and then lands on an active Facebook Page containing more positive feedback, that social proof can strengthen the impression they already have.
But there’s an important distinction.
Facebook is primarily helping reinforce trust within a social environment. Google can reinforce trust while simultaneously putting you in front of people actively searching for a nursery.
That makes Google the more important starting point for most settings.
If You Only Focus On One, Which Should It Be?
Google. If you have the resources to build reviews across Google, Facebook and relevant childcare directories, great.
But we wouldn’t spread ten review requests evenly across four different websites simply for the sake of being everywhere.
For most nurseries trying to increase local visibility and generate more enquiries, we’d build momentum on Google first.
Why?
Because Google reviews combine two useful jobs:
Visibility + trust.
A prospective parent searching for childcare locally can discover your nursery through Google and immediately use reviews as part of their decision-making process.
Google also explicitly states that review count and review scores factor into local search ranking, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help a business’s local ranking.
That brings us to SEO.
Google Reviews And Local SEO For Nurseries
This is where we need to kill off a common misconception.
Getting 20 new five-star reviews does not automatically send your nursery to number one on Google Maps.
Local SEO doesn’t work like that.
Google says local rankings are mainly determined by three things:
Relevance, distance and prominence.
In simple terms:
Relevance: Does Google believe your nursery is a strong match for what the parent searched for?
Distance: How close is your nursery to the location associated with the search?
Prominence: How established and well-known does Google believe the business is?
Reviews can contribute to prominence, but they sit within a bigger picture.
For a nursery, strong local visibility is more likely to come from the combination of:
Google Business Profile + reviews + local relevance + your website + proximity + wider authority.
Your Business Profile should therefore be properly completed and maintained too.
That means accurate contact information and opening times, the right categories, useful business information and good photographs — alongside asking for reviews and responding to them.
That aligns with the approach we use at 3XM: your Google Business Profile isn’t an isolated marketing tactic. It’s one part of the system that helps local customers find, trust and choose you.
Don’t Spread Your Reviews Too Thinly
Imagine you’ve got 20 happy parents willing to leave you a review this term.
You could send five to Google, five to Facebook, five to one directory and five to another.
Or you could add 20 genuine Google reviews to the platform you’ve decided matters most.
For many nurseries, the second option will create more noticeable momentum.
We’re not suggesting you manufacture reviews, only ask your happiest parents, or dictate what people should write. Reviews need to reflect genuine experiences, and Google specifically prohibits offering incentives such as discounts or free goods or services in return for reviews.
What you can do is make leaving an honest review ridiculously easy.
Decide where reviews matter most and consistently point parents there.
What About Childcare Directories?
Google and Facebook aren’t the only places parents look.
Specialist childcare platforms can matter too.
For example, Daynurseries.co.uk allows parents to search and compare UK nurseries using information including reviews, while Childcare.co.uk also carries parent reviews of childcare providers.
If a particular directory features prominently when you search for nurseries in your town, it deserves attention.
That last sentence is important.
Don’t automatically add another platform to your workload because somebody has told you that “you need reviews everywhere”.
Look at the actual search results your prospective parents see.
If a directory repeatedly occupies prime positions for your target searches, improve your presence there.
If it doesn’t, it may sit further down your priority list.
A Simple Nursery Review Strategy
You don’t need a 28-page review acquisition strategy.
Start here.
1. Prioritise Google
Build your main review activity around your Google Business Profile unless your local search results give you a compelling reason to do otherwise.
2. Create a direct review link
Google lets businesses generate a link or QR code that takes customers directly to the review process.
Save that link somewhere your nursery team can access easily.
3. Identify positive parent moments
Timing matters.
Think about natural moments when a parent is already feeling positive about your nursery.
Their child has settled brilliantly.
They’ve just complimented a member of staff.
They’ve told you how much progress their child has made.
You’ve received a lovely message after an event.
You don’t have to launch into an awkward sales pitch.
Simply ask whether they’d mind sharing their experience in a review and give them the direct link.
4. Ask consistently
A frantic review drive once every two years isn’t much of a system.
Make review requests part of your normal parent journey.
The goal is a steady flow of genuine feedback over time.
5. Respond to reviews
Don’t let parents leave thoughtful reviews only to be met with silence.
Google recommends replying to reviews, and your responses are publicly visible.
A brief, personal response shows that there are real people behind the nursery.
6. Showcase reviews elsewhere
A great Google review doesn’t have to live only on Google.
With appropriate consideration for how you reproduce parent feedback, reviews can also become useful social proof on landing pages, enquiry materials, social content and other parts of your marketing.
Get more value from the trust you’ve already earned.
Audit Your Local Search Results
Here’s something useful you can do today.
Open Google and search:
nursery near me
nursery in [your town]
day nursery [your town]
Look closely at the nurseries appearing prominently.
Then compare:
- Their average rating
- Their number of reviews
- How recently people have reviewed them
- The quality and completeness of their Google Business Profile
- Their photographs and business information
- Their website and wider search presence
Don’t just ask, “Why is that nursery above me?”
Look for the gaps.
Perhaps you have 14 Google reviews and the nurseries dominating the results have built much stronger review profiles.
Perhaps your reviews are excellent but your Business Profile is half-finished.
Perhaps your profile looks good but your website gives Google very little locally relevant information.
That’s why local SEO needs to be looked at as a system rather than a hunt for one magic ranking trick.
At 3XM Marketing, Google Business Profile optimisation and local search visibility form part of the practical marketing support we can provide to nursery owners. Our aim is to help ambitious nurseries reach more parents, generate a steadier flow of enquiries, book more showarounds and ultimately bring more children into their settings.
Google Reviews Or Facebook Reviews? The Verdict
Facebook Recommendations absolutely still have value for nurseries.
They can strengthen community credibility, reinforce word-of-mouth and give parents another place to see evidence that families trust your setting.
But if you’re asking us where most nurseries should focus first?
Google wins.
Build a strong Google Business Profile.
Generate a consistent stream of genuine reviews.
Respond to them.
Then make sure the rest of your local search presence gives Google — and parents — plenty of reasons to choose you.
Because being a brilliant nursery is one thing.
Making sure local parents can find you, trust you and take the next step is another.
Want To Know Why Other Nurseries Are Outranking You on Google?
If you search for nurseries in your area and keep seeing competitors above you, there’ll be a reason.
And it might not simply be that they have more reviews.
Book a free Nursery Growth Call with 3XM Marketing.
We’ll take a look at what you’re currently doing, help identify opportunities to improve your local visibility and give you practical ideas you can take away and implement.
No strings. No obligation.
Just a useful conversation about how more of the right local parents can find your nursery, and what you can do next to turn that visibility into enquiries, showarounds and registrations.
Get help to grow your business, for FREE
Book a free 3XM Business Growth Call, and spend 30 minutes with a member of the 3XM team, where we’ll help you outline some straightforward actionable things you can do to improve your marketing and grow your business, no strings, no tie ins, and no purchase necessary.
During your Business Growth Call, we’ll:
- Take a look at the marketing you’re doing, and give you our two cents on how to improve it
- Tell you what we’d be doing if we were in your shoes
- Give you actionable tactics and strategies we’re using right now to get leads and customers for our clients
- Make sure you walk away with something you can take away and use straight away
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