February 12, 2024
5 min read

36 Online Review Platforms Your Business Needs To Be Monitoring In 2024

Since we established our business in 2012, more than 10,000 brands have turned to Shout About Us to monitor and manage their online reviews. Usually, the first platforms that brands want to discuss with us are Yelp, Facebook, and Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) — and with good reason. These “big three” are the largest,  most commonly used, and most influential review platforms, making them essential for businesses to monitor.

However, new data shows that consumer attitudes about these platforms are shifting, with some gaining even more influence while others appear to be losing ground with consumers. This may impact the way businesses and their stakeholders decide to allocate their review management resources in 2024 and looking toward the future.

Of course, the big three aren’t the only three. On the contrary, there are numerous review platforms that businesses should be actively monitoring, especially those within certain industries. In this week’s article, we’ll share three dozen of the most important review platforms that businesses should be monitoring in 2024, plus, explore some of the latest trends around Yelp, Google, and Facebook business reviews.

How Much Do Consumers Trust Google, Facebook, and Yelp  Reviews of Businesses?

In last week’s article, we wrote about the newest edition of BrightLocal’s annual consumer review survey, which was conducted in January and released last month. We highlighted nine of the survey’s stand-out insights, like the statistic that 54% of people “would feel positive about using a business when the owner responds to reviews,” or that 34% of people are “highly likely” to use a business that responds to all of its positive and negative reviews.

This week, we wanted to take a closer look at the survey’s findings about specific review platforms, namely Yelp, Facebook, and Google. These findings stood out to us vividly, because they seem to point to a trend that’s been developing over the past few years: trust in Google is growing, while at the same time, consumers are gradually shifting away from Facebook and Yelp. Here are four stats that business owners should know about consumer attitudes toward review platforms.

  1. 87% of consumers used Google to explore business reviews in 2022. That’s up from 81% in 2021.
  2. At the same time, use of Yelp and Facebook decreased. 48% of respondents said they used Yelp in 2021, down from 53% in 2021, while only 46% said they used Facebook, down from 48% the year before.
  3. Interestingly, a higher percentage of consumers said they had seen fake reviews on Google than on Facebook in 2022: 50%, compared to 42%. However, Google’s percentage remained unchanged from 2021 to 2022, holding steady at 50% both years, while the perception of fake reviews on Facebook increased during the same period, climbing from 37% in 2021 to 42% of people making the same claims in 2022. Meanwhile, 25% said they had seen fake Yelp reviews in 2022, down slightly from 26% the year before.
  4. Consumers’ overall level of trust in online reviews declined slightly, with 46% saying they trusted reviews as much as friends or family in 2022 compared to 49% who agreed with that statement in 2021. However, even against this statistical backdrop, consumers still place significantly more trust in Google than in any other review platform — a trend that cuts across all industries. For example, 66% of respondents said they would be most likely to trust Google for healthcare reviews, compared to only 9% who said the same of Yelp and 6% who said the same of Facebook.

As BrightLocal summarized, “It’s a clear picture. Google is perceived as the most trustworthy review platform for businesses across all industries.”

There was, however, one notable exception.

“When it comes to hospitality businesses, such as those specializing in accommodation,” BrightLocal noted, “there is a review platform that rivals Google: Tripadvisor.”

That brings us to an important point: outside the big three (and Tripadvisor), what are some other review platforms that brands should keep an eye on in 2023?

How Much Do Consumers Trust Google, Facebook, and Yelp  Reviews of Businesses

36 Review Websites and Apps Your Business Should Watch in 2024

When it comes to review websites, low traffic doesn’t mean low value. On the contrary, niche or industry-specific websites are some of the best places to engage with and learn from your customers, since these types of platforms tend to attract shoppers who care about doing their research, being well-informed, and getting the best value.

Depending on your industry, here are 36 examples of websites and apps to monitor in 2024:  

  1. Airbnb (for hospitality and travel)
  2. Angi, formerly Angie’s List (for home services)
  3. Avvo (for legal services)
  4. Better Business Bureau (BBB)
  5. Capterra (for IT)
  6. Caring.com (for healthcare services)
  7. Car Gurus (for automotive services)
  8. Cars.com (for automotive services)  
  9. Citysearch
  10. Doctor.com (for healthcare services)
  11. CompareCamp
  12. ConsumerAffairs
  13. Consumer Reports
  14. Eat24 (for restaurants)
  15. Etsy
  16. FinancesOnline
  17. Foursquare
  18. G2 Crowd
  19. G2 Reviews
  20. GetApp
  21. Glassdoor (for employment)
  22. GoodFirms (for IT)
  23. HomeAdvisor (for real estate and home services)
  24. Influenster
  25. Lawyers.com (for legal services)
  26. Manta
  27. MerchantCircle
  28. OpenTable (for restaurants)
  29. Realtor.com (for real estate)
  30. Shopify
  31. SourceForge (for IT)
  32. TrustRadius (for IT)
  33. Trustpilot
  34. Yellow Pages
  35. Zillow (for real estate)
  36. Zomato (for restaurants)

Worried about staying on top of it all without sacrificing efficiency? There’s no need to waste valuable time checking each website and directory individually. Shout About Us’ centralized platform makes it fast, easy, and simple to manage your reviews across more than 125 websites, all from one secure and powerful hub.

Monitor, Manage, and Respond to Reviews Across 125+ Platforms and Business Directories  

There are two core components to effective review management: monitoring reviews, and replying to reviews. Monitoring your reviews enables you to gain actionable insights about ways that your company, or your industry as a whole, could better fill market gaps and meet consumer needs. Responding to reviews increases trust in your brand and, as statistics show, makes it more likely for potential customers to shop at your business (or eat at your restaurant). Other key pillars of successful review management include:

  1. Review generation, which increases the overall number, frequency, and recency of your reviews
  2. Review removal, which enables you to remove false or misleading information about your business
  3. Listings management, which ensures that your business information is accurate and up-to-date so that people can easily contact and connect with you

Shout About Us provides the full suite of review management services, including review monitoring, 24-hour review response services, review removal, automated review generation, and listings management. Choose the services you need a-la-carte to build out a custom solution, or opt for our full service package to overhaul your strategy from top to bottom.  Book a demo online.

Emily Homrok

Emily Homrok is a freelance copywriter with more than seven years of writing experience. She joined the Shout About Us team as a content strategist in 2020.

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