thread Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔 in Retail & eCommerce

Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

ElisabethB — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 21:53:33 GMT

How do you feel about third-party review services like Yelp and Google Business? Do you think having a presence there has helped your business or brought in new customers who might not have heard of you otherwise? Reply and share your thoughts and experiences with us below!

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Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

Doran — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 18:45:21 GMT

Yelp was great pre-pandemic but I don't get much from them these days. Google Business sends me walk-in traffic but not much to my website.

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

JUYBoutique20 — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 19:29:03 GMT

I usually look at reviews on the business website. I guess I should probably look more into doing a third-party review service for my shop.

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

Katie_Jane — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 20:22:02 GMT

Retail business owner here (opened May 2021) with my two cents. Based on working for other businesses and signing up myself, Yelp will harass call you the second you sign up and I find you get very little traction from them, even if you pay into using their service. I highly recommend Google Business. I follow the analytics and get customers in from general searches and have light website traffic. If you stay active and post and add photos, it tends to help with traction. Hope this information helps you in your decision process.

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

pessosices — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 20:43:15 GMT

Great question @ElisabethB !

I've found having profiles on Yelp & Google Business absolutely essential to having a business presence on the interwebs.
I constantly search for places both on Yelp & Google Maps, and without setting up and updating a business profile on there, it would be a lot harder to make sure potential customers can know that I exist and get accurate info about my shop.

I hiiiighly recommend every business owner sets them up and keeps them updated with any changes.

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

LLCafe — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 01:33:27 GMT

Google Business has been the most beneficial for us, we get quite a bit of traffic from it.

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

lashesbysandey — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 02:33:35 GMT

Highly recommend having a google business listing which puts your business on the map. I have had my listing on GB for over 10 years, Yelp is a marketing company but it is still helpful to have a listing with reviews. I own a lash and brow bar and so many people like myself find businesses through google business.

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

DinaLRosenberg — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 02:39:09 GMT

We use both Yelp and Google Business. Maybe this is outdated but I always heard having reciprocal links helps with SEO- especially google rankings- so when we started we made sure to set up @ all the directories- even bing (lol- does anyone bing?).

Google is the most important- we have our phone number linked through google so we can see how many people call us from the google listing- it's quite a bit!

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

ElisabethB — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 13:35:13 GMT

These are fantastic insights - thank you all for sharing! 🙌
I'm not a business owner, but as a consumer/potential customer, I rely heavily on reviews and ratings. I have spent hours researching online when I need to choose a business for a service or something similar. I also check and compare customer ratings and reviews when selecting a product and there are multiple similar things to choose from. I appreciate when businesses put in the extra time and effort to maintain their web presence as it makes it much easier for me to decide.

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

ForgetMeNot — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 14:36:43 GMT

Google has been great - lots of traffic and a good spot on the list for folks who look us up online. Yelp however is a nightmare! They will call day after day trying to make you pay for ads and when you stop paying for them, suddenly every good review you had is listed as Not Relevant and no longer pops up for people to see in your average. Even better, when you call to ask, they will say they can totally fix it if you're a premium member...Stay away from Yelp unless you plan on paying for ads for the foreseeable forever.

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

spkeasy — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 15:49:08 GMT

NOPE! Tony said it perfectly https://youtu.be/kRRK4loO6xQ

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

Bronze_Palms — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 17:02:17 GMT

YES!

When I follow up with clients and they loved their service, I thank them for their time and ask if they'd be open to copy and paste that into a review. Then I say "Thanks in advance for considering! [link to Yelp or Google]"

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

RPSINVEST — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 23:11:27 GMT

Yelp is where people go to complain. It is not an avenue for increased web or foot traffic. Hasn't been for a very long time.

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

GoldenHourTreat — Sat, 09 Apr 2022 14:24:26 GMT

As a small business owner, reviews do matter! It really helps customers decide to visit a location, and if you have higher than 4 stars customers will pay attention and want to visit your location. I really enjoy Google because it is authentic and easily accessible with just typing what your looking for in a web browsers search engine.

My issue with yelp is they hide reviews!!! Reviews that customers take time to write and genuinely care about your business having a good reputation. Yelps automated bulls**** scans fake reviews or “rants” if it calculates it is not an authentic review it will block those. I feel as a business owner that was such a disappointment towards a small business. Customers wrote raving reviews about our business yet yelp decided to cover nine reviews and leave 2 reviews on our page! Mind you this is after the fact we stopped paying for their services that was also bulls***.

Long story short love Google reviews!

I get that people write fake reviews but what really matters is did my consumers enjoy their products? Not everything is for everybody but reviews help you work on things. Positive reviews help you continue with customers are raving about including customer service. I know now that my business will only hire the best in customer service nothing short of that and we take pride in that experience.

I could go on about this but I’m going to end it here!

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

ProsperityPools — Sat, 09 Apr 2022 20:03:58 GMT

YES, also Angi's is another one that calls incessantly!

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

spnick — Sun, 10 Apr 2022 23:42:07 GMT

google has more positive reviews and yelp is a manipulative piece of **bleep**

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

fsalazar — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 10:52:56 GMT

Google Business is great, fairly accurate and a good representation of our business. As others have mentioned, Yelp is looking for ad dollars - if you say no to spending money with them, they manipulate the reviews. Mind you, as a customer I had no idea this was a thing, and assumed all valid reviews are shown. They are not, they hide good reviews when they are trying to push you to spend money with them. I was shocked to discover that, looked into their terrible business practices, they have been sued repeatedly but basically courts have ruled that their extortion is allowed as a legitimate business model. However, if you just never respond to their calls they seem to leave it alone.

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

andy1993 — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 14:42:58 GMT

For our cafe definitely Google Business! Yelp makes big claims of how all the serious people look on their platform and the call asking for money. We flushed some money down the big red toilet called Yelp, but saw no results so we of course stopped. ... and then they had the gall to call back and tell us that the first ad we ran had problems and we should fix it by flushing more money down the big red toilet!!?? 🙄 For every 1 person that comes in and tells us that they found us on yelp 5 come in and say that they found us on google. We'll keep a decent yelp page, but pay for ads??? No sir!!

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

mysticcoffee — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 16:09:12 GMT

You make a good point. I wouldn't say Yelp drives business to my web site. But in the same way that some people might check the BBB, there are people who check yelp before making a purchase to make sure we really do exist and that we're on the up & up. I wouldn't say it's essential though. Google business is much more effective.

Re: Are services like Yelp and Google Business helpful for your business? 🤔

Ladya28 — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 16:32:56 GMT

I have used Google for my business since 2011 and I think having the business Google page definitely helps in growing my business. I add new content, pictures and videos often and traffic to my website has increased! I also have yelp, but didn't like them as much, I felt they were more pushy with trying to force sale so I'd rather not deal with them as far as using them for advertising. With yelp we update our information on their free business page for clients that use yelp for reviewing our business. However Google has brought in new clients for us so we use them more.