Reviews on Sites You Did Not Know Listed You

Listed without asking

A new customer mentions that they chose you after reading your reviews on a site you have never heard of.

You look, and find a profile with your business name, an old phone number, and a handful of reviews going back four years, two of them complaints nobody answered.

It is a common discovery. Businesses are listed on review sites whether or not anyone there signed up, and the listings collect reviews regardless.

Customers read them all. Somebody choosing a contractor or a restaurant will often check two or three sites before deciding, and they cannot tell which ones you look after.

How the listings get there

Most were never created by anyone at the business.

Google builds listings from many sources and lets anyone suggest a new one or an edit. Facebook creates unofficial pages for places people check in to when the business has no page of its own.

Yelp lets customers add a business they want to review. Directories copy listings from one another in bulk, so an old address can spread a long way from where it started.

Where to look

• Google, including duplicate listings left at an old address.
• Facebook, where unofficial pages collect check-ins and comments.
• Yelp, widely read for restaurants and personal services.
• Trade review sites such as HomeStars and Houzz for home services.
• TripAdvisor, for anything a visitor might eat, stay at or do.
• Directories such as Yellow Pages and the Better Business Bureau.

The second is the one owners most often miss. An unofficial Facebook page carries your name and a pin on the map, and a customer searching Facebook may land on it instead of the page you actually run.

Searching for yourself properly

Search for the business name in quotation marks with your town, then again with the word reviews. Use a private browser window, so the results are not shaped by your own history.

Then search for your old phone number and any old address. This is how the forgotten listings turn up, because they still carry details you changed years ago.

Search inside Facebook, Yelp and your trade's main review site too, since not everything on them shows up in Google.

And ask new customers where they read about you. They will name sites no search would have suggested.

Which ones to claim

Claiming means proving to the site that you run the business, usually by phone, a code sent by post or email, or a document. It gives you control of the details and the right to reply.

Claim Google in every case. Claim any unofficial Facebook page and merge it into your real one. Claim the review site your trade's customers use, and Yelp or TripAdvisor if you serve the public in person.

A small directory nobody visits can simply be corrected, or left alone. Not every listing deserves an account and a password.

What claiming gives you

The ability to fix the phone number, the hours and the website link, which is reason enough on its own.

The ability to reply to reviews publicly, under the business's name, so that a complaint from three years ago no longer stands alone.

Notifications when new reviews arrive, sent to an address somebody reads. And a way to report reviews that break the site's own rules, though not ones that are merely unwelcome.

Claiming is free on the main sites. Several will offer advertising once you have claimed, which is optional.

A worked example

An acupuncture clinic with two practitioners had left a shared health centre for premises of its own three years earlier, and changed its phone number at the same time.

After a new patient mentioned a review site, the owner searched the old number.

It turned up a Yelp profile with nine reviews, two of them unanswered complaints about appointments starting late, a second Google listing at the old address, and an unofficial Facebook page.

Each had been created by somebody else, from details that were correct at the time. None had been touched since.

The owner claimed the Yelp profile, updated the number, and answered both complaints calmly, saying what had changed and nothing about anyone's treatment.

The duplicate Google listing was reported as moved, and the Facebook page was merged into the real one.

The whole job took an afternoon. The monthly check that followed takes about fifteen minutes.

Old details spread

A wrong phone number on one directory rarely stays on one directory.

Listings copy each other, so an outdated number or address can reappear after you correct it, carried back from somewhere you missed.

Correct the main sources first: Google, Facebook, the large directories and your trade's review site. Use exactly the same business name, address and phone number on each, matching your website.

That consistency helps customers, and it helps search engines trust that the listings all describe the same business.

Answering what you find

Old reviews deserve a reply even when it is late. A short, polite answer to a two-year-old complaint shows the next reader that somebody is now paying attention.

Thank people for good reviews, correct factual errors calmly, and offer to discuss problems directly. Never argue in public.

And resist the obvious shortcut. Reviews written by friends or staff break the rules of every major review site, and some, Yelp among them, ask businesses not to request reviews at all.

Checking monthly

Once the listings are found, keeping them right is a short routine.

Keep a list of every listing, with the login for each held in the business's name rather than an employee's personal account. Send notifications to a shared address.

On the first working day of each month, open each one, read anything new, and reply. A free Google Alert on the business name catches new mentions in between.

The counter-case

Some businesses have very little of this to manage.

A supplier selling to a few dozen trade accounts, or a business whose customers all arrive by referral, may find only Google and one directory worth looking after.

And not every listing needs claiming. Correct the details where you can and leave the rest.

For any business the public chooses by reading about it, though: find every listing, claim the ones customers read, and check them monthly.

This month

1. Search your business name with your town.
2. Search your old phone number and address.
3. List every listing you find.
4. Claim the ones your customers actually read.
5. Correct the details on each one.
6. Reply to unanswered reviews, old ones included.
7. Check them again on the first of each month.

Step two is the one that finds the listings nobody knew about, because forgotten profiles are exactly the ones still carrying details the business changed years ago.

What a trade's own site should show those same readers is covered in what a plumbing company website needs.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.