The Ohio Valley Digital Report · Edition 1 · July 2026
Fourteen businesses hold half the valley’s reviews.
I checked 117 Ohio Valley businesses on Google. The valley rates better than most cities. It is also, in large part, invisible.
The first visit is free: 30 minutes at your place. You leave with the first three things I’d fix. No obligation.
Blake Porterfield Fisher College of Business, Ohio State, 2015
As seen in The Intelligencer and The Times Leader
Free to read · Free to quote, with credit
The report in four numbers
- 4.6★Average rating across 117 businesses, higher than most metro markets
- 14Businesses hold half of all 11,201 reviews counted
- 24Sit under ten reviews, where Google stops counting you as an answer
- 23Are rated 4.8★ or better with fewer than 25 reviews
Finding 1
Attention is not distributed like quality.
Half the valley’s reviews belong to fourteen businesses
| Businesses | Share of reviews |
|---|---|
| 14 businesses | 50% |
| 103 businesses | 50% |
Each stripe is one business. Ohio Valley sample, 117 businesses, July 2026.
Google shows the busy few first, and nearly all the clicks happen there. A listing nobody keeps current slides to page two.
Where the valley actually sits
| Google reviews | Businesses |
|---|---|
| 0 to 9 | 24 |
| 10 to 24 | 17 |
| 25 to 49 | 21 |
| 50 to 99 | 25 |
| 100 to 249 | 18 |
| 250+ | 12 |
Median across the sample: 43 reviews. Highest: 696.
Under ten reviews, Google stops treating you as an established answer. Getting past ten is the first job.
Finding 2
The valley’s best-kept secrets, plotted.
Rating versus reviews, all 115 rated businesses
Green dots are hidden gems. Red dots fall below 4.0 stars, the line most people filter at. No business is named.
HIDDEN GEMS: 4.8+ stars, under 25 reviews (23 businesses). Dashed line: 4.0, most people filter below this.
| Rating | Under 25 reviews | 25 to 99 | 100 or more |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.8 to 5.0 | 23 | 19 | 8 |
| 4.5 to 4.7 | 7 | 18 | 12 |
| 4.0 to 4.4 | 7 | 7 | 10 |
| Below 4.0 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
A business with six reviews isn’t disliked. It has six neighbors who spoke up instead of sixty.
businesses in this sample carry a perfect 5.0 rating with fewer than fifteen reviews.
Finding 3
The trades: the valley’s least visible work.
Median reviews per business, by category
Categories with at least three businesses in the sample.
| Category | Businesses | Median reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Insurance | n=3 | 4 |
| Contractors | n=4 | 4 |
| Pet grooming | n=11 | 24 |
| Florists | n=9 | 29 |
| Heating & cooling | n=5 | 37 |
| Coffee shops | n=13 | 39 |
| Barbershops | n=9 | 41 |
| Retail / gift | n=5 | 51 |
| Auto repair | n=13 | 55 |
| Salons | n=15 | 56 |
| Hardware | n=6 | 93 |
| Restaurants | n=22 | 152 |
Contractors average 4.4 stars and hold a median of four reviews each, in the work where customers most want reassurance before they call.
Also found
Some of it is simply broken.
- 11hrsOne listing closes eleven hours before it opens on Saturdays
- 2pairsOf listings share one phone and address, splitting one business’s reviews
- 5Businesses list no phone number at all
- 12Listings post no business hours
Method
How it was measured.
117 independent businesses, 13 categories, public Google data, July 2026. No business is named, ever.
Reporters: (740) 310-9000 · blake@willowcreek.group
The sample
117 active independent businesses across 13 categories, from public Google Business Profile data in July 2026. Belmont County, Ohio (74): St. Clairsville, Martins Ferry, Bellaire, Bridgeport, Barnesville, Shadyside, Powhatan Point, Belmont. Ohio and Marshall Counties, West Virginia (43): Wheeling, Benwood, McMechen, Moundsville, Glen Dale.
What was held out, on purpose
Sixteen listings outside the valley that surfaced in category searches, including one in Barnesville, Georgia and one in Wheeling, Illinois. Five national chain locations, whose listings are corporate-managed and would flatter the results. Two listings I could not verify as operating. And one listing whose recent reviews report a disconnected phone and a dark storefront during posted hours. Closed and dormant listings are exactly what would inflate every problem number in a report like this.
Limits of this edition
The West Virginia portion of the sample is smaller than the Ohio portion and leans slightly more toward coffee shops and salons, so any cross-river comparison is indicative rather than definitive. Ratings were nearly identical on both sides: 4.63 stars in Belmont County against 4.60 in West Virginia.
Press use
The report and every chart on this page are free to quote or reproduce with attribution to Willow Creek Group. I’m available for interviews and will run the tool live on any business you name, including your own. The study is repeated quarterly, so the next edition can report whether the valley’s numbers moved.
Where does yours sit?
Run the free audit on your own business: up to 51 checks in about twenty seconds. Then bring what it finds to a free visit.
Blake Porterfield St. Clairsville, Ohio