32 Local Review Sites to Help Your Small Business

With local SEO being more important than ever for small businesses, it’s important to make sure you have a good online profile for reviews. There are two reasons why optimizing your presence on local review sites can play such a big role.

First, because the number of reviews and average review score for your local business is a major local ranking factor. Second, because online reviews have a big role in customer buying decisions.

If you want an edge on your competition, you should look into making sure you have good reviews on the major review sites. Here are the best websites for local reviews that might be a good fit for your business.

What are the Best Local Review Sites?

Not every website on the list below will work well for every business. Some of them are for specific industries or countries. It’s a good idea to pick the ones that sound like they might work for your business and then do more research into them.

If you want to start your research, the following 32 local review sites are a great place to start:

1. Angie’s List

Angie’s List started as a local review site for contractors and similar local businesses. Compared to other local listings websites that have reviews, it is more friendly to consumers than businesses. However, you should not ignore it as a business.

It is one of the bigger and more popular local review sites out there, and it also gives you a direct line to consumers with complaints. It gives you the chance to resolve the conflict and turn complaints into positive PR.

2. Better Business Bureau

Better Business Bureau, or BBB for short, is one of the biggest and most well-known local review sites in the world. The idea with their platform is that when businesses sign up to have their listing on BBB.org, they agree to adhere to certain conduct.

Part of that is making changes to your business in order to be more friendly to consumers, especially from complaints. This is never dramatic, and BBB will not ever be able to force you to make changes you don’t want to make. What they can do is remove your listing from their site.

This helps give them a sense of trust among consumers, making it very valuable to businesses that have listings with good reviews.

3. Bing Places

Bing Places is one of the largest local listings and review websites online, right up there with Google My Business. It is free, so you can have any store or location of your company searchable from Bing’s search engine.

When you have a Bing Places listing, you can include a link to the same location’s Yelp profile. That will allow your Yelp reviews to appear next to your Bing Places listings in searches.

4. Facebook

Facebook has had business pages for a long time, and part of that includes the ability for people to leave reviews for them. Considering the millions of users who are on Facebook every day, you can interact with your customers directly.

That means you can respond to complaints to resolve them publicly. You can maybe get former customers to take down negative reviews or update them to 5 stars. It’s a great way to turn a negative into a positive and establish trust among potential customers.

5. Foursquare

Foursquare is built around the idea of people “checking in” to locations they stop at. That could be a landmark or tourist attraction, or a local business. Over the years, they’ve updated their platform with new apps and integrations to give incentives for their users to check in more often.

With a user base of over 75 million people, and the ability for people to leave reviews, it’s a great local review site to be on. It’s a great way to increase foot traffic to your store, and if you have good reviews you will get even more.

6. G2 Crowd

G2 Crowd is a review site mostly for software providers. It has over 100,000 reviews for various software products from different brands and developers. Unlike most other review sites, you cannot do much to engage with reviewers and complaints to have them updated.

While that does make it more limited in what you can do with G2 Crowd, it is still very useful for monitoring your brand sentiment among customers. It is now becoming more of a B2B website, so if your business provides software to other businesses you should not ignore it.

7. Glassdoor

Glassdoor is a site for employees to review your business as an employer. This is still very valuable for you. Being able to attract good talent for employees is important. Many younger employees will check before accepting a job with you.

8. Home Advisor

Home Advisor is like Angie’s List, in that it is a review site for contractors related to home construction, improvements, and renovations. You have the ability to create a listing for your business and add relevant location information, and you can start receiving reviews.

9. HundredX

HundredX is more of a local review software tool. You can sign your business up, and it will connect with your customers to ask them to review your business. This can be very effective for a small business that struggles to get customers to leave reviews at all. It does cost money, but it makes leaving reviews much easier for customers so you get more good reviews.

10. Merchant Circle

Merchant Circle is built as a business directory, with the ability for users to leave reviews. People can search for businesses by type and location if they are shopping around, making it similar to Yelp. It also allows ads by businesses on their site, making it less user-friendly. But it can still be worth creating a free listing to get more reviews from their local users.

11. SiteJabber

SiteJabber is a platform for people to leave reviews about anything and everything, from specific products to businesses or even just websites. You might even find your business is already listed on the website, even if you didn’t create the listing yourself.

It can be problematic as the user base seems much more negative than others. However, that makes it more important to be diligent in how you resolve complaints and turn them into positive reviews.

12. SuperPages

SuperPages is a comprehensive local review platform, covering all industries and most countries in the world. Their focus is more on being a search engine for customers to find businesses, and less on reviews. However, reviews are a function that users can submit about your business so be prepared to receive and respond to them.

13. TrustRadius

TrustRadius is like G2 Crowd, in that it is a review site focused on the tech industry — specifically business software. However, it also has a business directory, profiles, and blog. That gives you more ability to engage with your potential customers than you can with G2 Crowd.

14. Which?

Which? is a search engine for businesses and reviews, specifically for the UK. However, they also have reviews on specific apps and software that people will use in other countries. If your business is in the tech field that can have clients in the UK, it may still have some use for you.

However, most of their other services to get the most out of the platform will not help you unless you have UK locations.

15. Yellow Pages

Yellow Pages is one of the biggest local review platforms you will find in the world. Like SuperPages, it spans all industries across the globe. It allows you to create business listings, and have customers directly message you and leave reviews. You can pay for enhanced listings, which can be useful if you are in a highly competitive market.

16. Yelp

Yelp is a direct competitor for Yellow Pages. It is also a valuable search engine for businesses of all industries and several countries, it allows customers to directly message you, and you can pay to enhance your listings.

It is mostly known for its reviews of local businesses, however. If you want to get a good start on earning more reviews, Yelp should be one of the first local review sites you start with.

17. Yext

Yext is like HundredX. You can add business listings, and it can also help you find other directories that have reviews. It’s a great way to expand your online presence to make sure you aren’t missing valuable opportunities. It has a free service to just find opportunities, and paid services to build listings and manage reviews for you.

18. Amazon Customer Reviews

If your business is in the e-Commerce sphere, either partially or completely, you need to be on Amazon. It will put your products in front of millions of people, and also gives them the opportunity to review your products. Having a lot of good reviews for your products will have a big impact on the amount of trust you get from customers.

19. Choice

Choice is a review website funded entirely by its members. It is also strictly for Australia. It is similar to Consumer Reports, in that it independently tries products and services and reviews them based on their own neutral opinions. They also let members to review products and brands with each other.

20. Trustpilot

TrustPilot began in Europe, but has expanded to North America as well. As a review platform it is driven by their growing community of customers. However, it also has a paid feature for businesses to invite users to review them with customized messaging. They also have a free version so you can create a listing and get reviews. It is a good emerging platform.

21. TestFreaks

TestFreaks is like TrustPilot, but it is focused on helping businesses connect with customers and get them to review their products. It also has a Q&A feature similar to Amazon, where people can ask questions about the function, quality, and dimensions of a product. It is much more friendly to businesses than TrustPilot as a result.

22. ConsumerReports

Consumer Reports is one of the most trusted product and service review sites on the internet. This is because they are strictly independent, which is great for customers being able to trust reviews they read about your products. However, businesses have no control over what is said. It is still good for a brand monitoring tool.

23. TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is one of the best review sites for businesses related to the travel and tourism industry. That means hotels, restaurants, bars, cafes, and other forms of entertainment or tourist attractions. It allows people to leave reviews for these businesses, which can be invaluable if you need to attract more tourists.

24. Google My Business

Google My Business is THE first local review site you need to get on. First, because your free profile will have so much more value and use outside of reviews. Second, Google reviews will likely get more attention and views from potential customers than any other platform mentioned here. You can use services like Yext, Podium, HundredX or others to get more reviews on Google through your My Business listings.

25. Yahoo! Local Listings

Yahoo! has a local business listing platform similar to Google and Bing, however it is only for American businesses. The functions and tools available are similar, and even if it doesn’t have the same level of exposure it is still useful. You can create listings for free and get valuable reviews for Yahoo!’s users.

26. FinancesOnline

FinancesOnline is a platform for software reviews in the B2B and SaaS sphere that generates thousands of reviews on a monthly basis. The user base is authenticated through LinkedIn to give more of a guarantee of legitimacy behind each review.

Their reviews are a bit different in they are built off of in-depth questions related to each software service or tool. If you are in the tech field this is one of the best platforms to be on.

27. Influenster

A great platform for businesses in the health and beauty sphere that sell products. Reviews can be very detailed, including different types of images for the products. It has a very good platform for getting your customers to review the products you sell.

28. Salesforce AppExchange

If your business creates or has an app that is part of Salesforce’s App Exchange, you can get reviews for them on their website. The reviews are based heavily on transparency, and the site has made it very easy for people to find reviews for apps based on date, helpfulness, rating, and so on.

29. Manta

Manta is a review site that applies to all industries, but with a focus on small businesses in the USA. They also display reviews in a unique manner compared to others mentioned in this list, as they focus on connecting customers with businesses.

When a customer searches for a type of business, the search results show reviews based on the keywords they use. Each review will also include the business and their contact information, allowing people to contact the business they choose easily.

30. Capterra

Capterra is another review site with a focus on software providers. Unlike the others listed it includes B2C businesses. Their search feature lets users search by industry, company name, and type of software. It includes a comparison feature, which will also show reviews and ratings of whichever software products are being compared.

31. Twitter

Twitter is one of the best social media platforms for engaging with customers as a business, especially in a “Support” role. If people are having an issue with a product, service, or want to file a complaint, they can in real time. Product owners can also search brand and product names to see what people are saying.

It is quick and easy for you to respond to reviews and complaints in real-time, ask to take it offline to resolve their issues, and turn it into a positive result.

32. Your Own Website

Finally, we get to the easiest place to manage reviews and testimonials—your own website! Social proof is a valuable tool, especially for landing pages, where you can show real customer reviews from Google, Yelp, and so on. Showing good reviews is a great way to establish trust among potential customers that are on your website already to submit your form or call your number.

Summary

Reviews are becoming increasingly important for businesses in the online world. It is a major local SEO rank factor, up there with local SEO link building for importance. Thankfully, there are many local review websites where you can create business listings to generate reviews from customers.

Some are specific to different countries, others for specific industries. It’s important to expand your online presence to as many as you can manage, so you can engage with more customers and turn negative complaints into positive PR.

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