Searching for Online Reviews

Posted on September 26, 2016

Largo Reputation Management | Tampa SEO

Although it’s known as the Word Wide Web, today’s web is all about your locality.  Chances are, as a small business, you are only interested in attracting new customers within a few miles of your location.  That will vary somewhat, depending upon the type of business. A Pizza Restaurant may only deliver to a five mile radius, whereas a building contractor may service several counties.

In today’s online world, many of your potential customers may find you through a search engine search.  And they are very likely to check local search and review sites to see what others are saying about you and your business.

Unlike the old days before the Internet, a dissatisfied customer had a limited platform to sully your name.  Today, they can trumpet your disservice to anyone with Internet access and a few minutes to check reviews.

The most popular review sites are Google+, Facebook, Yelp and CitySearch.  Certain industries have other review sites that are focused on a particular industry – UrbanSpoon for restaurants, TripAdvisor for travel, etc.

These review sites are often set up without the knowledge of the business.  In these cases, the site owner relies on information published in other places on the Web. These listings may or may not be correct.  You may be accumulating reviews and not know it.  And what you don’t know CAN hurt your business.

The first step in the discovery process is to go to each of the sites mentioned above and search for your business name in your location. You will then either find no listing, or a listing that asks “Is this your business?”  In these cases, you can just follow that link to claim the listing, ensure that all the content is correct, add any content you feel is valuable, and begin responding to the reviews that are posted there.