Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Consumers often use mobile search at the beginning of their purchase funnel, and Google serves up reviews right at the top of the results for local searches of this type.

For example, this Google search for “brewery” prominently returns a map, plus ratings/reviews for breweries in my area. A specific search for “Upland Brewery” (my local favorite, owned by my friend Doug Dayhoff, who recently startedan entrepreneurship blog) shows that of the ten first-page results returned by Google, six of them include ratings/reviews: Google, Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Zomato, and Beer Advocate.

These are third-party reviews, residing on sites we don’t own or control. People believe in the veracity and accuracy of that content. In fact, 80% of Americans trust at least some ratings and reviews as much as they trust recommendations from friends and family members....

We (and the rest of the internet for the past decade) have already spent some time convincing you of the importance of acquiring online reviews for your business. So let's just assume you're sold on the benefits of having a bunch of people tout how awesome you are on the web.

That being said, it's not safe to assume we all know exactly where in the wide world of the web we can point those well wishers when they want to sing our praises. I mean, we might all be able to rattle off one or two sites ("Yelp! And I think you can get them to show up in Google Maps, too?"), but we don't exactly have a laundry list of options at our disposal.

Check out our list of the best product review websites for B2B and B2C companies. Keep in mind that every industry has niche sites, too. For instance, those in the restaurant industry may want to be on UrbanSpoon. This blog post won't get into sites that are specific to one industry, but it will provide review sites that apply to businesses in almost any industry....

For well over a decade, consumers have increasingly turned to online review sites to vet purchase decisions before they buy. Take a look at the top trafficked sites on the web, and it’s no shock to see consumer review sites by the likes of Amazon and Yelp both squarely in the top ten.

In fact, reading reviews prior to purchasing has become so ingrained in American consumption habits, 55 percent of all shoppers say online reviews influence where and how they spend their hard-earned cash.

Why then, when every person on the street checks a review site before buying a coffee, is it such a surprise to the software industry that consumer reviews actually matter in their space? In an industry generally considered “innovative,” product reviews are a shockingly late-adoption....