Which Review Sites Matter the Most
One topic that we haven’t gone into as much depth as we could are customer reviews, and the particularities of the big three: Yelp, Google, and Facebook. Indeed, especially for small local businesses, online reviews are critical to establishing a positive reputation and they are often the first things that many potential customers learn about when searching for a particular business. According to one recent survey, 83% of adult respondents said they don’t trust ads but they do trust customer reviews. A different study found that 72% of customers trust online reviews as much as they do IRL ones.
So it’s clear that online reviews matter. But if you’re at a local businesses, chances are you don’t have all day to monitor reviews like the many SEO companies that offer the service. Let’s start with the basics. In terms of seeking out reviews from customers, Yelp discourages that practice and according to a company comment, it’s not the most unreasonable stance: “Let’s face it, most business owners are only going to ask for reviews from their happy customers, not the unhappy ones. Over time, these self-selected reviews create bias in the business listing – a bias that savvy consumers can smell from a mile away.”
Less understandable is the fact that Yelp does not publish all of the reviews that its users write, employing an algorithm that sets a certain limit on the number of reviews one gets. This algorithm is particularly unfriendly to new users, with Yelp giving clear preference to established users. Of course, this high bar of entry has helped Yelp maintain its status as the review site that matters and thus not only will planting reviews for your company not work, but it will ring hollow to the Yelp faithful. Thus, when it comes to soliciting reviews on Yelp, it’s best to do it indirectly. Whether you hang a “review us on Yelp” sign at your place of business, or add the review button to your site or email signature, there’s nothing unprecedented about those little nudges and indeed Yelp needs those to grow.
Google, on the other hand, allows you to review a sits the second it pops up in your search and it has a sophisticated algorithm in place to weed out fake reviews, maintaining a high level of quality. Additionally, whereas Yelp is a review site primarily that has been around since 2004, Google has only been accepting and publishing reviews since 2012 but the threat it poses to Yelp is clear. Having earned the general trust, not to mention the majority user base of online users through its voluminous services, Google’s status brings with it a seal of quality that make it a real influence in customer behavior.
Third but lastly, Facebook has also seen considerable growth in the past several years as research has confirmed the confidence many people have in the quality of review offered by their personally curated circle of friends. 68% of respondents polled by Vocus, the leading local search dashboard, stated that one of the primary reasons they use Facebook is to see how their friends review businesses. And while Facebook keeps the majority of its content behind walls, it allows for its reviews to show up in Google searches, increasing its visibility. In fact, research has demonstrated that people actually enjoy posting reviews on the platform, beating out Google and Yelp in user preference.
So if you only had to choose one platform, which one would it be? Like anything in SEO, the answer is complicated as it largely depends on the particular needs of a business. If you are a small business with limited marketing resources, Facebook is the platform to invest in as it tends to have the most readily apparent real world effects, and reviews show up in Google. Yelp is ultimately the last to spend time in as its reach is diminishing and it takes a considerable investment. But ultimately, the answer is for you to answer; you want to be where your customers are, so analyze their behavior in depth before making a decision.
