Given the increased prominence of reviews sites in new Google Place Search SERPs, I thought it might be interesting to see which ones were showing up most often. The following is sort of 2010 version of my 2009 IYP SEO Rankings Report. This data is hardly thorough – I only looked at the top 10 Yellow Pages categories for the top 10 U.S. cities. I hope this post inspires some readers to do a more in-depth look at this for different verticals and cities. I’ll be presenting this data today at the Blueglass Florida local search panel in my talk about how to get around the 7 Pack.
The Top 10 Reviews Sites in Google Place Search
- Yelp
- CitySearch
- InsiderPages
- YahooLocal
- DealerRater
- JudysBook
- TripAdvisor
- Edmunds
- Zagats.com
- OpenTable
- UrbanSpoon
- DemandForce
- Kudzu
- Yellowbot
- CityVoter
- DexKnows
- SuperPages
- MenuPages
- LilaGuide
- Vitals.com
Honorable Mention
Here’s the complete set of data that shows the keywords we tracked
16 Response Comments
It would be interesting to find out which of these sites are paid listings and which sites allow their users to post thier businesses and other businesses.
Great work on the recent change Andrew. I am going to be very interested to see how hreview formatted sites break into the mix overtime.
Definitely looking forward to seeing more sites that don’t require someone to log in to post reviews.
Thanks Mike, should have some hreview observations later today.
Daily Divvy, I believe all of these sites have some kind of “free” listings. Didn’t check to see which ones that ranked were paid or not though. Hard to believe that would influence which review site links showed up though.
@andrew
Additionally, s far as local SEO goes now, these review sites are important more than ever due to the fact that for local searches Google is showing only the local 7 pack and the top 3 organic listings below the local listings.
It looks like these same review sites are weighing in heavily to get things ranked in the 7 pack as well.
I am not so sure that reviews sites are weighed any more heavily than they were before the update.
That said they are hugely important because more traffic is being diverted to them and so your biz’ presence on these sites is a critical factor.
This is great information with the Google Places integrations, it would be great if there were a Quantcast and/or Alexa rank to go along with the rankings also.
@Andrew Looking forward to your hreview observations.
Does RateItAll.com show up in Place Search? I was expecting it to do well (no connection with me).
I would be interested to know how the reviews affect ranking by industry or search vertical. For instance, are plumbers more likely to pull information from SuperPages? How about construction businesses or insurance agencies?
I’ve found that being a member and having a link on your local Chamber of Commerce is a real big factor in getting your local list ranked higher. I
would also submit to as many local yellowpage directories as possible and get your customers to give you reviews.
Very cool resource, once in a while clients will ask about the type of review sites out there or ones pulling in and having a list of 20 to send over will save some time. Thanks Andrew!
Yep – thanks for that – any idea where top 10 are in UK?
Haven’t checked Dierk
@Dierk not sure how scientific it is but this is the best UK based one I can find:
http://www.seo-doctor.co.uk/local-seo-20-citation-places.html
Thanks for the great list, was digging around looking for this, I hope I can return the favor…
You hit the nail on the head with Yelp as #1 I’m an avid, but I think Urbanspoon should of made the top 10!
I would be interested to know how the reviews affect ranking by industry or search vertical