15 Best Business Review Sites and Why You Need Them

With the takeover of the internet, the business world has changed.

Now, people research everything, and that includes companies and products.

So when potential customers hear about your business for the first time, they’re going to the search engines to find you.

This is why you need a solid online reputation.

When new customers go to business review sites to research your company, they want to see positive reviews and glowing customer feedback.

In this article, we’ll discuss customer review sites, their benefits, and the best review sites on the web.

What Is a Business Review Site?

A business review website is an online platform that collects customer reviews on the companies that sign up with it. It provides a space for customer feedback, allowing actual customers to tell others about their experience with the business.

Since these reviews are from real people, customer satisfaction is your top priority, as happy customers leave positive reviews and unhappy ones leave negative reviews.

The Benefits of Using Business Review Websites

While the idea of customer reviews can be scary for businesses as negative reviews can easily bring them down, customer reviews are too powerful a tool to pass up on.

There are many benefits to using business review websites, and some of them are as follows:

New Customers Can Find You

As a local business, online business reviews are a very important tool to attract new customers.

When people who are new to a place or visiting need to find a service, they search for local businesses offering that service.

To start with, search engine rankings depend on the review ratings of the businesses in local search results.

So if your business has many positive online reviews, you’re more likely to top the search results.

Once potential customers find your business in local search results, the next thing they’ll want to know is what other customers have to say about it.

This will lead them to look up your business and see what turns up on review websites. If they like what they see, they’ll patronize you.

Your Web Presence Is Improved

If you’re not the type who’s willing to write a blog post or two to keep your business relevant online, using a review site can take care of that problem for you.

Since the customers will keep talking about your business online when they post reviews, they’ll preserve your online presence.

This way, you won’t drop in the search engine rankings due to irrelevance.

The reviews will also ensure the information on your business doesn’t get outdated.

As more customers write reviews, the information on your business is updated, keeping things current for potential customers.

Your Business Gains Credibility

Studies have shown that 88% of consumers will trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

This is because people who leave reviews usually have nothing to gain or lose and simply want to share their experiences. As such, it’s expected that such reviews will be honest.

People are more reluctant to make purchases from businesses with reviews that are negative or too few.

Nothing speaks to your business credibility better than the testimonies of those who’ve experienced it.

You Prove Your Business Cares (When You Respond to Consumer Reviews)

People prefer to involve themselves with businesses that care. No one wants to spend their money at a place that doesn’t care what they want or bother to satisfy them.

When potential customers see that you respond to reviews, it tells them that your business is active and that your customers are important to you.

Many want to patronize businesses like that, and once they see that yours is one of them, you’ll find yourself accumulating customer loyalty.

You Get Detailed Feedback

When customers write reviews, they do so online and without looking at you.

It’s different from walking into your store, for example, and asking the customers how they’re enjoying your services. To be polite, most will smile and say they’re fine.

However, with online customer reviews, you’ll see their true thoughts and feelings.

You need proper feedback to know what you’re doing right so that you can keep doing it and know what you’re doing wrong so that you can stop.

When you can solidify your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses, your business is sure to grow.

15 Best Business Review Sites in 2023

After ample research, our top picks for the 15 best review sites are:

1. Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile (known as Google My Business) is a Google platform that allows you to list your business on Google Search and Google Maps.

This process is free, and you can add your location, hours, and contact phone number.

This way, when someone searches for a service in the area, your business shows up on the map.

Your customers can also leave google reviews after visiting your business place.

In fact, Google will usually prompt this process by asking the user how their experience was. So set up your business profile on Google to get started.

2. Facebook Page Reviews

Although Facebook started as a social media site, it has grown over the years into something much larger.

You now have the option to create a page for your business and even run ads to promote it to the timelines of Facebook users.

If you have a business profile on Facebook, you can allow people to leave reviews in the Settings and then invite your customers to share their reviews there.

3. Yelp

Yelp is one of the most popular business review sites on the web.

It boasts over a hundred million reviews on different types of businesses.

Yelp holds training for small businesses, teaching them how to respond to reviews properly, and provides data, such as health inspection scores on a business.

It’s widely used and trusted by the public as Yelp and its Yelpers have been known to give helpful reviews on businesses for newcomers.

As such, Yelp reviews hold a lot of weight in business.

4. HomeAdvisor

HomeAdvisor is a trusted online review site focused on helping customers find professionals to help them with home improvement projects.

After trying out their pick, the customer can then leave a review of how satisfied they were with the service.

People know they can trust reviews on HomeAdvisor because all reviews go through an extensive screening process to be verified before being displayed.

5. Glassdoor

Glassdoor is a little different from other online review websites as instead of allowing you to collect customer reviews; it allows employees to give reviews on their workplaces.

It’s used by prospective employees, investors, and potential customers who care about the inner workings of a company.

You’ll be able to see what it’s really like from the perspective of those who work there.

Employees share their interview experiences and what it’s like to work in your company.

With this, you can see what you need to improve on as well as how happy your workers are.

6. Foursquare Business Reviews

Foursquare is a search and discovery app that allows users to discover new places or businesses through searches and online recommendations from friends.

With Foursquare, you can share your favorite places with your friends as well as check the places your friends are visiting.

It allows users to leave reviews on the places they visit so that others can see how they liked it.

When you sign up for Foursquare as a business owner, it allows you to add tips of your own, access user analytics, and offer exciting customer rewards.

7. Angi (Previously Angie’s List)

Angi is a popular business review website focused on service-related businesses.

It’s known for accurate information on local businesses as it vets its users to make sure that the reviews are all legitimate.

Although you can register your business to be listed on Angi and look at deals from local businesses for free, Angi is a mostly paid platform.

This means that you have to pay to see a company’s information and ratings, as well as write reviews yourself.

The fact that Angi is a paid platform also helps in making sure that there isn’t much spam in review sections since not many are willing to pay to fool around.

8. Manta

Manta is a customer review site that focuses on small to medium-sized businesses.

Its aim is to help small businesses connect and grow their communities.

This means it connects businesses with each other for partnerships and with customers for sales.

Although customer reviews aren’t the site’s primary function, they’re one of its features.

As such, the search engine connected to this site doesn’t use reviews in its ranking but rather relevance to keywords.

9. Better Business Bureau

The Better Business Bureau is an online review site focused on helping people find and recommend businesses to others.

It’s built on trust, and as such, it’s one of the most trusted names in the online review industry.

The Better Business Bureau reviews can make or break a business, so it comes with an accreditation process to ensure that a business gets a chance to resolve customer complaints and respond to questions asked.

The company profile will consist of a short bio, the reviews given, and an A-F rating of the business.

10. Consumer Affairs

Consumer Affairs is one of the best business review sites, giving customers the option to rate their overall satisfaction on a scale of one to five.

The average rating for this scale is updated every time a new review is submitted.

The company’s page will include a list of all its reviews and the customer’s star ratings, along with short explanations of the scores.

Consumer Affairs stands out by allowing users to make a video review of two minutes, talking about their experience with a brand.

It’s more compelling to potential customers since they get to see the person speaking and expressing their genuine feelings about the company with facial expressions and body language instead of just words on a page.

11. The Yellow Pages

The Yellow Pages is a large online business directory with high traffic due to its popularity.

It’s owned by YP Holdings, which is a local marketing solutions manager focused on helping local businesses and the communities they’re in grow.

The Yellow Pages allows users to search for businesses easily and leave reviews on them.

It’s free to list your business in The Yellow Pages, but you can pay to get better placements in the search rankings and manage the reviews you get.

12. Amazon

Amazon redefined buying and selling as we knew it in 1994, and it was also one of the first online stores to allow customers to post reviews of products they bought in 1995.

It remains one of the most popular online stores to date, and its reviews are widely used as the benchmark for which products are better across several product fields.

If you’re looking to get more reviews for your product, be it a book or a bag, consider listing it on Amazon.

13. G2 Crowd

If your business is in the field of software and technology, then G2 Crowd is the online review website for you.

You don’t want to miss listing your software on this site, as over 5 million people use it to find software that caters to their needs, making it the perfect place to find exposure.

G2 Crowd is similar to Yelp, but it only deals with software.

Users give reviews on a five-star rating system, covering everything from ease of use to the UI and support systems.

When people try your app out, they’ll leave reviews helping others decide if your app is worth getting as well.

14. City Search

City Search stands out from other business review websites with its “best of” category for each city.

All you need to do is to add your keyword and search for the “best of” that keyword in your preferred city, and City Search will provide you with a list of businesses offering the best of that thing.

The rating system City Search uses is a very simple one, allowing users to either give a thumbs up or down on businesses.

Although there’s no middle ground between good and bad in the ratings, City Search is still popular due to its simplicity and functionality.

15. TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is a travel help site that doubles as an online review website for hotels, airlines, and restaurants in the travel industry.

It’s the largest travel website in the world, with over 225 million reviews posted by travelers.

It offers helpful content on the best ticket prices, travel guides, and rental listings, as well as an advice forum for almost every location in the world.

It’s a go-to for many travelers to get information as they plan their trip.

List your business on TripAdvisor today and get reviews from travelers that’ll not only give your business more visibility but also increase your customers.

How to Choose the Best Online Reviews Site for Your Business

The internet is full of business review websites, and as such, you need to make careful decisions when listing your business on any of them. Luckily, there are certain factors to look out for when choosing the sites to use. They are:

Competitors Focus

Your competitors are a template to learn from.

Before you choose a review site to use, look up your competitors and see which websites they’re listed on for their own reviews.

The places where they focus their efforts should be your first picks.

After that, you can look into other sites that fit your needs and have less competitor traffic.

Site Traffic

One of the most important aspects of reviews is the free advertising you get from a review. To maximize the effect of this free advertising, you’re going to need to work on a site that has a lot of traffic.

Look up the number of people who use the review website you’re interested in before you make your decision because the more traffic a site gets, the more people will see your business.

Site Reviews

Another thing to keep your eye on when choosing the site for your online reviews is the total number of customer reviews on the site in general.

A site might have the review feature but focus on something else, with the reviews aspect covering only a small portion of its use.

You need a site where reviews are popularly posted because it means that people will use the site specifically to find reviews, and you’ll get a lot more reviews for your business using this site.

Search Engine Optimization

Before you choose a review site, you need to see what sites come up first when you search for your business, products, or services.

For example, in a Google search for restaurants, Yelp and Facebook results may turn up first.

This will mean that Yelp and Facebook are more popular and respond better to keyword searches. As such, they’re the sites you should choose.

You should also pay attention to the search engines of the sites themselves.

Usually, with review websites, users are allowed to search for a particular service or a particular business.

Look up the keywords related to your business and see the values used in ranking results on that site.

Check if it’s the number of good reviews or keyword relevance, and optimize your listing accordingly.

Trustworthiness

When choosing business review websites, you must pay attention to the trustworthiness of these sites.

If a site is shady, it’ll do you more harm than good to have your business listed there.

If anyone stumbles into a shady website and sees a listing, it’s usually common sense to avoid such a listing as it’s most likely a scam.

So only choose review sites that are trustworthy so that your business doesn’t get blacklisted.

Another thing you should look out for is the trustworthiness of the reviews being posted.

Since reviews are so delicate and can make or break a business, you don’t want to join a site that’s full of trolls who’ll leave bad reviews on your business just for the fun of it, whether they’ve patronized you or not.

You should try to stick to review sites that vet their users and make sure that every review is an honest one.

This way, your business will get positive reviews for your hard work.

Wrapping Up

Since the internet came into play in the business world, reviews have become one of the pillars of sales and marketing.

Don’t miss out on all the benefits that having reviews can bring to your business. Use our tips and create your business profile on a review website today.