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

[ElisabethB]

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! 

 Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash 

[spkeasy]

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

[Bronze_Palms]

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]"

[GoldenHourTreat]

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! 

[spnick]

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

[fsalazar]

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. 

[andy1993]

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!!

[Ladya28]

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.

[animityhealth]

I believe, with any business, there is not a one-size-fits-all application to using these services.  For example, I own a business in a small town, so Yelp doesn't benefit to work with because there is only two of my type of business in my town.  Personally speaking, the person who tried to get me to sign up from Yelp was rude, basically shaming me for not using it, so then I had to spend the next ten minutes explaining that people don't use Yelp in my small town to figure out who to go to for my particular type of business.  I even pointed out that when I did a Google search my business was already showing up as the top-rated business in Yelp for that category, and I didn't even have to pay to be listed in Yelp. 🙂

Google Business - absolutely recommend regardless of the size of town you live in.  If you're not showing up in a search when people are looking for your business that's putting you behind, in my opinion, and these days, makes it look like you're not up on your technology and antiquated (and maybe don't care?).  

Those are my two cents.  In a small town I don't see the benefit of Yelp, but in larger cities where you're trying to do everything to stand out, there may be benefits of using that service, but I would reach out to others who have had experience for their thoughts.  I just know sometimes these forums are skewed toward bigger cities and sometimes the small town business perspective gets overlooked.

[JupiterGames]

We have found our Google Business listing to be invaluable. We also have our Bing Business page configured to automatically pull in any changes that we make to our Google Business page, which means more reach with no need for duplicate updates. 

My experiences with Yelp mirror those charged by many in the comments, and we now have their numbers blocked on our phone system and their emails sent directly to SPAM. 

[Twiggy]

Google

Google maps is a great asset if you have bricks and Mortar Stores.  It can be a bit of a hassle if you have 2 businesses in one premise as they don’t like this.   Also if you have 2 companies at one address it will link all the reviews to the main business name you request in your business profile.    If you own a google phone you have access to a lot of services IOS and Android don’’t offer - local guides. Etc. It’s also good to see what your listing looks like on each OS - as before your listing looks totally different on a Samsung to and IPhone and totally different on a google phone. Google maps is great for showcasing your product or store front - though sometimes a customer photograph will be showing first.   Google will also remove a bad review - like one submitted by an angst ex employee or rival if you follow their procedures… this can be lengthy.  If you do get a bad review then it’s good to respond to all your reviews and for the bad one star anom trolls - state you do not recognise the transaction or sale name.

If you decide to use google ad words they will offer you like £150 free but in order to get that you have to spend £150 first and be careful about your keywords as they’ll eat your budget………

I don’t work for google - well I used to supply their flowers a long time ago.  

Yelp

Yelp in the UK has not taken off as much.  It’s hard to get your listing correct and up to date if you’re not a food store. We have tried!!!!!!!

I’ve not had much success with this. - if you want Siri to know where you are then sign up to the apple business register. 

Link here

https://register.apple.com/business/ui

[ElisabethB]

Ah, registering with Apple is an excellent suggestion! Thank you, @Twiggy! 🙌 

[Twiggy]

Forgot to say - Do not put an in store shot of your business unless you have a 360º google approved photographer (google phones are approved for this) as Google automatically uses this image to interact with maps and uses this image first.. Well it's a google thing why wouldn't they ! - so you go right on inside ...... xxx

[Twpchair]

I agree 100% and I am retail furniture brick and mortar store. Google is a huge asset to my business. 

[amazingbead]

I only sell at shows and I am working at getting my business online. Yelp and google are of no help to my business

[MetroGallery]

The rise of the Karen/Ken have ruined the review sites. They feel entitled to everything free or at a reduced price.

[Cpassetto]

I deleted my google business. It kept declining items so would post to sell. Wasn’t worth the headache it gave me.

[Juniorjewelry]

I've only had a handful of leads from google business.  I do think its worth it as a reference point for new customers.  They can easily access reviews and information pertaining to your business.  Someone else may be able to speak on the efforts on paid marketing which I have not yet tried.  

[letsrankseo]

Every backlink will help with your overall SEO strategy. Look up citations and every website and/or business will want about 60-75 of the top citation websites. 

[Twpchair]

Google wow yes! I would have to go back to my weekly and monthly trends but I have over 30k followers on google and the biggest ones are location, hours, and call. I stay on top of Google and Facebook daily. Yelp ugh it's ok not nearly like the other 2 

[atMerchant]

Just a small hometown shop owner here that loves what google has to offer free of charge. Plus they have yet to ever bug me repeatedly via email nor phone. I can not say the same for Yelp. I've got tons of pics on google, yet yelp wanted to charge me a daily fee for pics. Nope! Not going to happen.

Google is so easy to navigate and update my shop information. Yelp, well could not tell you. See I stopped once they wanted a fee to continue to setup my business. But that is okay with me as it seems more of my customers seem to use google. So that works out good for me.

I am unable to provide any feedback on paid advertising through google though, as I've yet to try that.

[SparkPlug-Jake]

I used to work in the property management industry, and we used to hire contractors (painters, general contractors, etc.) based on their online reviews, so from a customer's perspective, I think Google reviews have an immense impact on businesses because it's what drives customers to get their foot into your door. We also looked at Thumbtack when looking for contractors.

Of course, we don't trust all reviews that we read on the internet, so it is still somewhat a gamble (this is where the quality of service comes in, but that's another topic for discussion). But if it helps bring in new customers, it means it's working.