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 

[Bronze_Palms]

Google has been filtering my reviews like Yelp does! They do give me a lot of business so I wouldnt go without them, but they all have their own advertising game you have to play if you want to be relevant with them. Even with quality SEO, it is not easy to stay relevant on these two platforms.

[JTPets]

I despise yelp, they hide reviews they dont "believe"  even when they are from verified customers, and they hound you for extra services. In Canada yelp is not that popular, however Google is great. I update my google page constantly as I consider it a huge resource for customers to organically discover me.

[Twpchair]

Hello, I am in retail furniture and I have used it and for me, I am not the best at computers, I did not like it unfortunately it was difficult to update your hours for winter and holidays at the time then it's been a couple of years it took 7 days to be approved for the changes, I could never reach a human in fact then they MAILED the update information, not even an email and found if you didn't do changes a month in advance it was a 50% shot if it changes. It's been a while since I used it so maybe it has changed and more user-friendly. I will see if others chime in myself if you don't mind and if it has changed I might give it a try again. I hope I was somewhat helpful with an outdated response. Good luck with it, I did have very good traffic with it, but the hassle wasn't worth it so I focused more on Google. Good luck! The White Pallet Chair

[Theofficeparty]

Have been on Google My Business for a number of years now. It helped greatly especially before we have the website up. 

Two things I dislike about Google My Business are - automatic updates to our store business hrs and inability to remove a 360 degrees shoot which is about 10 yrs old (we have renovated and grown since)! If anyone knows how to get rid of the old pics on Google please do let me know.

I absolutely love the idea of registering with Apple and will give it a try so Thank You so much @Twiggy .

Cheers everyone!

[JTPets]

You could try to open a support ticket with google, you can submit one through the help function

[AskRalph]

Yes I find my free advertising via google and YELP help me.  Yelp people read reviews which I share constantly and try me out.  People are amazed Im glad to say and then refer sometimes others to me.  I tried using Paid Yelp but they did not bring in the extra clients I need.  So look up my company , look at reviews, ie where I helped a lady with her mother in law in hospital, got her charging cable and charger.  or the one where a lady left items behind at a hotel.   People see these reviews go wow this guy is it.  They then contact me and either yes take my service or sometimes regret and try someone else.  One person, went for lower price and lost a $ 2 million bid because the gig person decided not to go out of town that day, yes time was money, ie needed to be in Banff for 2 or 4 pm today not when you feel like going, etc.

[yalhar01]

Google has been essential to our business, we get a lot of tourists and new customers that walk into our shop because they're looking for new things to do in the area - it also leads consumers to our website, and gives them all info they need to contact us if they have any questions. Not to mention, our Google Reviews make us credible.

Yelp however, has not necessarily been helpful. They've harassed endlessly to run ads with them, regardless of mentioning that it isn't in our budget, they also have no shame in being extremely aggressive about it. I noticed they hide reviews that aren't long enough as well. I've noticed that generally Yelp usage has dropped in the passed years, if the website is still relevant I would say its geared toward restaurants more than anything. 

[Twpchair]

Same for ours Google is far more popular than yelp. Facebook is still our number 1 for our business retail furniture store.  I ask new customers as well how they heard about us and it's usually Google, Facebook or word of mouth. I don't do much of anything on yelp. 

[repopgifts]

Yelp sent me an email saying I had 8 leads in the last 30 days, Google says my profile had 6597 views, so that makes google over 800 times more effective for me. When we ask people how they found us it is always google, sometimes Tripadvisor or Atlas Obscura, I can only recall one person in 8 years that said yelp. 

I checked Yelp to see if I had any new reviews to respond to, immediately they begin calling to see if I want to advertise. I refuse to use Yelp as a consumer because of their tactics, they hide reviews and bully businesses into paying for advertising, the sales calls are relentless. 

On Yelp we have a 5 star rating with 24 reviews (that's roughly 3/year since we opened, but there are more that they won't show), Google we have a 4.8 with 459 reviews.

I do make sure my listings are up to date with store hours, and try to add new photos regularly to google, yelp won't even let you choose which photo represents your business unless you pay them. 

[PerroneTech]

I absolutely loathe Yelp. They are scammy and have a paywall on every single feature. It could be such an awesome site for businesses, but instead of using ad revenue to make those features free, they harass you to pay into advertising relentlessly.

I told a salesman I am not interested, a day later someone else called and tried again.

I fell for it one time. Paid for advertising. After I canceled, the two 5-star reviews I got while paying for the service suddenly disappeared.

You have to pay to upload your business logo. Imagine that. I wish Apple didn't integrate them into their software. I wait with baited breath for the day I see news about Yelp being purchased and revamped.

I 100% love Google Business listings. I don't use the social features as much, but it is great for getting the information I need out there for people to find me. Then being able to see all the metrics for free helps as well. Nothing is behind a paywall except ads, because well.. duh. When I do pay for Google Ads, I immediately see an uptick in leads.

[Twpchair]

I could ditto every one these post regarding Yelp! SMH horrible business practices and you are right, they will blow up your phone and email trying to get you to pay for the full service. Which BTW is just as bad!

[rtfulk]

We’re mobile and work across the country, so Yelp doesn’t help us any. We never stay in one place long enough 2 weeks is about the max, except for Texas we work 24 days straight there.

[Bronze_Palms]

They definitely help our business! We request reviews from clients weekly and post weekly on Google to stay relevant. 

[Twpchair]

We do the same with Google. They provide decent data back on how many clicks it generated, how many people called the number etc. 

[atMerchant]

Google has helped my business get noticed and I try my best to keep it updated. I do need to post more on google as I believe it provides more exposure. And why not, it's FREE!!

Though I have listed with Yelp, I do not do much with it. Does not offer as much as Google does.

[mike-sf]

Yelp used to be relevant for me a few years back but now Google Profile is what gets me the most in-store traffic. I am located in the city and new customers are just go right up Google Map search most of the time. 

[Twpchair]

Yelp absolutely horrible anymore and useless for us! Google much better for our business.  I'm retail furniture if that helps.