Marketing

Updated Oct 2026

Best review platforms for local businesses

There is no single best review platform. There is the one your next client will check, and for most local service businesses that is still a map result, not a review site.

Start where the search ends

Someone looking for a barber, a physiotherapist or a nail salon usually searches, looks at a map, opens two or three listings and picks one. That path runs through Google Business Profile, which means the reviews that matter most are the ones attached to your listing there. Everything else is secondary until that profile is complete and actively reviewed.

This is also the cheapest starting point: the profile is free, and it is the one place where reviews, hours, photos and directions live together. If you do only one thing this quarter, ask recent clients for a Google review at the end of a good appointment.

How the main options compare

None of these charge for a basic listing, though several sell visibility, response tools or profile upgrades. Check current pricing before you assume a feature is included, and check what happens to your reviews if you stop paying.

What each one is actually good for

Google

Discovery and trust in one place. The listing shows up before your website for most local queries, and the review count is visible in the result. A steady flow of recent reviews matters more than a large total from three years ago; a listing with months of silence reads as a business that may have closed.

Yelp

Worth claiming if your category and city use it, and worth ignoring if they do not. Do not buy ads there before you have checked whether your clients actually use it — ask ten of them where they found you, and let the answers decide.

Trustpilot

Built for transactional businesses. If you sell vouchers, products or courses online, it can carry weight at checkout. For a chair in a salon, it rarely appears in the customer journey.

Facebook

Useful when your clients already live in local groups and your page is active. A dormant page with four recommendations does less than no page at all, because it advertises the dormancy.

The reviews inside your booking tool

Booksy, Fresha and Square Appointments each collect ratings after an appointment, and those ratings help inside that ecosystem's own marketplace. They are convenient and they are not a substitute for Google. Check current pricing and confirm whether reviews can be exported or displayed on your own site — some can, some cannot.

A setup order that wastes nothing

1. Complete the Google profile — hours, services, photos, a booking link, and a reply to every existing review.
2. Add a review request to the end of the appointment — in person, with a short link or QR code, not a mass email weeks later.
3. Claim one secondary platform only if your clients use it.
4. Reply to everything, including the bad ones, within a couple of days.
5. Leave the rest alone until the first four are routine.

Review requests work best when they are specific and low-effort. "If you were happy today, this link goes straight to Google — it takes about thirty seconds" converts far better than a general plea for feedback. Automating the request is worth doing once the manual version works, not before.

Handling the review you did not want

Reply once, factually, without arguing, and offer to continue offline. Do not ask the client to remove it, and do not ask staff to post supportive reviews — platforms detect patterns, and the consequence is worse than the original complaint. If a review contains something factually false, use the platform's reporting process and keep a record of what you sent.

One more thing worth deciding early: who owns the login. Use a business account, not a personal one, and store the credentials where the business can reach them. Losing access to a review profile is a slow, annoying problem to reverse.