Not long ago we discussed the increasing importance of both local and national review sites, including the need to spend some time keeping up with what your customers are saying about you. Whether you choose to use these reviews and comments as a way to start a dialog or as a way to measure what your customers think of you outside of your sphere of influence is up to you. The worst thing is to become defensive about poor reviews. Even the best companies on earth screw up once in a while. It is how we learn from our mistakes that we grow and become better. Of course, one thing you can do to help diminish that bad review is to ask your customers to go online and write positive reviews of their experiences with you. We’ve since been asked to list sites to look at. Here is a good list of user review sites courtesy of Website Magazine.
Some obvious places to look for your small business reviews are social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp.com, and Google Maps,Bing, Yahoo Local, City Search and Local.com.
InsiderPages.com
Mainly focused on rating those in the medical and health care field. Insider Pages also features reviews on restaurants, beauty and home & garden.
MerchantCircle.com
MerchantCircle focuses on promoting businesses by using online user reviews via a pseudo paid advertising system. Businesses can create their own local coupon book.
JudysBook.com
Judy’s Book provides review guides to users, such as “Top 10 Auto Mechanics” and so on. Businesses can create their accounts and get help with promotion and SEO.
AngiesList.com
Angie’s List is a paid service for consumers to get certified, unbiased reviews of local businesses. It is a large and trusted network, claiming more than one million members.
TripAdvisor.com
As the name suggest, TripAdvisor helps users filter travel destinations via user reviews. A must-know for travel businesses.
BBB.org
The Better Business Bureau is a relative newcomer to the user review scene but its trusted reputation makes it a must-monitor for every business.
Epinions.com
Part of the Shopping.com family, Epinions solicits reviews on just about anything a person can buy online — from autos to office supplies.
