List your business on review sites: pick three, claim them
Where to get reviews for your business: four kinds of review site, five questions that pick your three, and the order to claim and verify before you ask.
Written by OpenRated Team Your customers are already talking about you somewhere, and a buyer checking you out will find that page before they find your website. So the question of where to get reviews for your business is really two questions: which review sites your buyers read, and how to list your business on review sites so the page they land on is yours, claimed, correct and answered. This guide gives you a way to choose three sites rather than fifty, the order to claim and verify them in before you ask anyone for a review, and the rules every site and the US regulator now hold you to.
Where to get reviews for your business: the four kinds of site
The lists of "50 best review sites" hide something simple: there are four kinds, and a business rarely needs more than one of each. Which one depends on who buys from you and where they look, which the next section settles.
| Kind of site | Examples you already know | Who reads it | What it does for your business |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search-engine or map profile | Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps | Anyone who searches your name or your type of business near them | Shows your rating, hours and address in the results themselves; the first page most buyers see |
| General consumer review site | Trustpilot, Yelp, the Better Business Bureau | Buyers checking whether you are real and reliable before they pay | A page that often ranks for your name, with reviews you can answer |
| Industry or category site | A travel site for hotels, a home-services site for trades, a software review site for software companies | Buyers comparing you against direct competitors on the same page | Side-by-side comparison on the checklist that kind of business is compared on |
| Social page with recommendations | Facebook, and the networks your customers use | Existing customers and the people they know | Word of mouth with a reply button |
Two words people often add when they search for review sites need a line each. "Company review sites" often means employer review sites, where staff rate you as a workplace: they matter for hiring and belong on a different list. "Free" is the question to settle on each site's own claim page: Google's help page says you can add or claim your profile at no charge, and the long lists of review sites say the same of many sites they cover. If a site wants money before you can reply to your own customers, drop it; if it offers to sell you reviews, avoid it entirely, for reasons the rules section covers.
Five questions that choose the right review sites for your business
A site belongs on your list when you can answer yes to all five, in this order. Most sites on the long lists fail the first question for most businesses.
Do your buyers look there? Search the way a buyer would: your type of business plus your town for a local trade, or your category for a software company or an agency. The review sites on page one of that search are where buyers compare you with the competition. A site that never appears there is a listing nobody will read.
Does it already show up for your name? Now search your business name. Any review site on that first page is where buyers are already reading about you, claimed or not. Those come first, because an unclaimed page with the wrong hours is doing you harm today.
Can you claim it free and reply from it? A listing you cannot answer from is a billboard someone else writes on. Google's help page says you can add or claim your profile at no charge; check the equivalent page on every other site before you spend time there, and drop any site that charges before you can reply.
Can you ask for reviews there under its rules? Each site publishes a policy on how reviews may be collected, and they differ: Google's, for one, bars incentives and reviews from current or former staff, as the rules section shows. Read the policy before you build a request into your invoices or follow-up emails, because a review removed for breaking it takes the customer's goodwill with it.
Will you keep it current? Every listing is a page you now maintain: hours, address, phone, the service list, and a reply to each review within a few days. Three sites kept current beat ten that drift. If you cannot name the person who will check a site each week, do not list on it yet.
There is a buyer-side reason the first three questions matter. Buyers also search "where can I check if a business is legitimate", and what that buyer wants to find is a claimed profile with a real address, reviews spread over time, and an owner replying by name. An unclaimed listing with no replies reads as a business nobody is minding.
How to list your business on review sites, in the right order
The order matters more than the speed. Claiming, fixing and verifying come before a single request goes out, because a review request sends your customer to whatever page exists today.
- Search your name on each chosen site. Directories and map sites build pages from public data, so a listing for you may exist with an old address or a wrong category. Find every one before you create anything, or two pages will split your reviews.
- Claim the page, or create it only when none exists. Google's help page gives the shape: search for the business on the map, choose to claim it, then manage it. Create a new page only when that search finds none, so you are not left running two.
- Fix the details, and make them identical everywhere. Name, address, phone, hours, website, category. Search engines and buyers both compare these across sites, and a mismatch is the quickest way to look like two businesses, or a fake one.
- Verify, and set up who replies. Verification is a step of its own: Google asks you to select a verification option and follow its steps before the profile is yours to manage. Check what each other site's claim page asks for before you start. Decide now who answers reviews, and give them the login.
- Then ask, and send people to the exact page. Link the review form directly, ask every customer the same way, and ask on one site at a time, so one page builds a run of recent reviews rather than three pages each showing two.
As a rough estimate, not a measured figure, allow an hour or two per site for steps one to four, plus whatever wait its verification adds. That is the real cost of listing, and it is why three sites is the right number to start with.
The same five questions, three different businesses
Three made-up businesses show how the five questions play out. Each would end with three sites, and not the same three.
Take a twelve-person marketing agency that sells to other businesses, whose prospects search its name before the first call. Its search-engine profile would come first, because that is the page the name search returns. Second, the agency directory its industry uses, where prospects shortlist by specialism and city. Third, the social network where its clients already follow it. It would skip the consumer review sites: nobody shortlists an agency on a site built for restaurants.
Now a small software company selling to businesses. Suppose a name search returns a software review site above its own homepage. That site would be first: buyers are already comparing it there against its competitors (OpenRated's software categories are one such place). Its search-engine profile would be second, for the name search alone. Third, a second software review site where its two closest competitors are listed and it is not. Map and consumer sites it would leave alone: nobody finds accounting software by searching "near me".
Finally a shop with one location, selling to people nearby. Its map profile would be first, because "near me" searches show the map before anything else. Second, the consumer review site on page one when people search its type of shop plus the town. Third, the industry site for its trade, if one appears in that same search; if none does, it would stop at two and spend the saved hour asking for reviews.
The rules that apply on every site
This section states the rules as published and is not legal advice. Two documents cover most of what a business needs to know, and both are short enough to read in full.
The US Federal Trade Commission announced its final rule on fake reviews and testimonials on 14 August 2024, taking effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. The rule bans six practices, and three of them are things a business can do by accident: buying reviews, which the FTC defines as "providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment"; insider reviews, where an owner, an employee or a relative reviews the business without disclosing the connection; and review suppression, which covers "unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations" used to stop a negative review.
Google's policy for user-contributed content on its maps and profiles is stricter in two places. Businesses may not "offer incentives, such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services, in exchange for posting any review", whatever the review says, and may not "discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers". That second line is the one most businesses break without meaning to: a flow that sends happy customers to the review page and unhappy ones to a private form is selective solicitation on Google, whatever the tool that built it calls it. Google also bars content based on a conflict of interest, which it says may include "current or former employment".
Other sites publish their own policies, and question four already asked you to read them. What the two documents share is the practical rule: ask everyone, pay nobody, disclose anyone connected to you, and never pressure a reviewer. A separate post in this series covers what the law allows when paying for reviews is on the table, and another what a business can do about a bad one.
What listing on review sites will not do
Listing gets you a page. It does not get you reviews, and it does not make a product people dislike look good. If the first ten reviews on a newly claimed page say the same unflattering thing, the listing has done its job: it has told you what to fix, in public. Asking harder at that point only produces more of the same review.
Nor does a listing rank by itself. A listing with no reviews on a site where every competitor has two hundred can look worse than no listing at all, which is another reason to start with three sites and ask on one at a time.
And listings decay. A changed phone number, a new branch or a moved office has to reach every site you claimed. That maintenance is what the "will you keep it current" question was testing.
The next step for your business this week
Run the first two questions today: one search for your type of business plus your place or category, one for your name. Write down every review site on those two first pages, pick the three that pass the other three questions, and claim them this week. Asking comes the week after, one site at a time, once each page is verified and someone owns the replies.
When you are watching more than three sites, a tool that sends review requests, monitors several sites and lets you reply from one inbox earns its cost in the weekly check alone; the reputation and review management products on OpenRated are compared on exactly those rows.
