Five Top Online Review Sites You Should Know About
For many small businesses today, online customer review sites can be a double-edge sword. Positive reviews can be instrumental in helping you get the attention of new customers, while negative reviews can significantly damage your company’s reputation.
However, online review sites can ultimately be great for your business by giving you constructive criticism for improvement and helping you create a positive online presence. This is why every company should claim their local listing review pages; this way, you can monitor the reviews you are receiving and manage them accordingly.
The best place way to start is by visiting some of the most popular pages on the web to set up an account for your company. The more complete your account is, the more effective it will be.
With this in mind, make sure that you take the time to write a powerful company description, upload pictures, and post all of your contact information on every profile you make.
Here are some of the top sites to start with for online review profiles:
Google+ Local
While the official name is “Google+ Local,” many know this review site as Google Reviews, Google Places or Google Local. No matter what you prefer to call it, these reviews are the ones that pop up first whenever a customer performs a Google search for a local business. Reviews, along with your company’s contact information will show up, which means a completed profile with clear contact information can go a long way.
Insider Pages
Insider Pages is a local review site that has been offering free reviews for customers and businesses since 2004. Millions of viewers visit this site every year to see the comments and five-star rating system that past customers post about local establishments.
Yelp!
Yelp! is perhaps the most popular review site on the web today for local reviews. Customers can rate their experiences with virtually any establishment on a five-star scale and leave comments for other potential customers. Due to some recent issues with false reviews and shady practices, the site has been cracking down on anyone who attempts to post a false review in an attempt to better the reputation of their platform.
Citysearch
Citysearch is a free user-generate review site that is very similar to Insider Pages. With this site, potential customers can review the five-star rating of your business, read comments and compare your business and your reviews with your competitors.
Yahoo! Local
The Yahoo version of Google+ Local, is known as Yahoo! Local. Here, past customers can also post reviews of different businesses with a five-star rating system. While many people have been ignoring Yahoo! in favor of Google, a large portion of the search engine market is still owned by Yahoo, so it shouldn’t be dismissed entirely.
These are just a few local review sites you can use, but there are many others out there as you will start to see as you embark on your local listing journey.