A lot of times I get questions from potential and current clients asking me what review format should they use for their business. To be honest from my experience Google My Business (GMB) is the best tool for any business if you want a solid marketing tool. Here are the point by point comparisons of why Google My Business is a better marketing tool vs. Yelp biz:
- Ease of use: This is a draw between GMB and Yelp, both have their problems in their features but I feel this will change in the near future when competition increases.
- Customer Service: Hands down GMB is easier to get a hold of vs. Yelp. Google actually makes it easy to get a hold of them via. phone or email, Yelp is pretty impossible to get a hold of unless you pay for the service.
- Review Stick Rate: From my experience with using GMB reviews stay on the business profile and Yelp has a crazy algorithm which determines what reviews stay or show. If you pay for Yelps service most of your reviews will stick.
- Asking for Reviews: Google encourages business owners to ask for reviews for their business vs. Yelp. Caution, you cannot ask for 5 star reviews but you can ask a customer or client to write a review of your business.
From 2013 to 2014, the number of reviews grew by 80 percent. The next year it grew by 114 percent, and from 2015 to 2016 this growth sped up to an incredible 278 percent.
Pedanco
- SEO: Both GMB and Yelp are good for your SEO (search engine optimization).
- Bad or False Reviews: With GMB it is easier to take off poor reviews or false reviews but it is still a lot of work to remove them. With Yelp you can get most off if you pay for the Yelp Business service.
48% of consumers only pay attention to reviews written within the past two weeks.
Brightlocal
- Who is King? Google is the largest search engine controlling over 70% of the internet market and is still growing. Yelp has collected over 171 million reviews and still a strong source for business reviews, especially restaurant reviews.
Google owns 74% of the desktop search market share and over 90% of the mobile search market share.
Chatmeter
- Users: According to Webpunch Google has over 540 million active users vs. Yelp’s 132 million users, you decide who’s right.
- Business Impact: Using GMB has a great impact on any business and after using the free tools for a couple of months traffic to websites and business drastically increased.
- Cost Factor: Both services are free but if you want to use all the marketing tools GMB is the only choice (for now). If you want all the marketing tools for your Yep account you will have to subscribe their services.
- Competition Factor: Google has much lower competition than Yelp. There’s a very good chance that the big competitors have less than 10 reviews don’t know the value of GMB and or don’t know any better. According to Forbes, Yelp has been having problems with almost a 51% decline in the online review platform, see article for more information.
- Reputation: Google’s reputation is huge being the number one search engine and for having a average rating of 4.3 with 9003 reviews vs. Yelp having a average rating of 1.7 with 145 reviews (Google Maps Search). Google search & reviews are not available on Yelp but Yelp’s average rating is 2.o with 12,210 reviews.
To sum it, I am not saying to give up on Yelp. Both have their positives & negatives but both are good marketing tools for your business. Google is currently winning the online review war by far and with that said, I can see that it will increase more once every business learns about Google My Business. If you had to choose which marketing tool to use I would use Google My Business because of my previous points. Finally from my experience and knowledge of GMB and Yelp roughly 70% of the business profiles are not filled out and utilized to their full potential which means they are loosing business, free marketing and referrals.
Carpe Diem~