Having a high-end ambience and serving good food is not enough to survive and then thrive in today’s neck-throat competitive restaurant industry.
As an owner, you also need to illustrate to your prospective customers regarding what makes you the best restaurant in the locality. For that, you need to collect as much positive restaurant feedback as possible. It’s a no surprise to say how everybody has become so dependent on the internet today and thus having better online reviews on multiple review sites will surely help your business by giving out trust and exposure.
The high ratings of people who previously dined at your place will clear the doubts of others considering having dinner at a restaurant. So, below, we will be enlisting the 13 best restaurant review sites:-
1) Google My Business
First, and the most important restaurant ratings site is Google My Business. It is estimated that an average gets to appear around 1,000 searches per month by staying on GMB.
Hence it’s a no brainer that as a business owner, you need to register your restaurant on Google My Business.
It is completely free, all you have to do is to fill the form online and apply. Once you submit the application, you will receive a postal mail with a unique code on your restaurant address.
Google My Business does this to check whether the address of the restaurant you have provided is valid or not.
Once you have received the code, log onto your Google My Business, and there will be an option to add the code to complete the verification. These days, verification is also done online, you must check the official site of Google My Business for more information.
Now, remember that whenever some searches for XYZ restaurants at a ABC place, Google will display three listings with average ratings. Even if your restaurant is at the same location, your odds of appearing within these three listings are vastly influenced by the number of reviews your restaurant has. Thus more the reviews, the better will the chances to appear at the top.
2) Facebook
Do you know Facebook is the third-largest engagement site over the Internet? Likewise for many other reasons your restaurant needs to be creatively active on Facebook to establish a stronger identity within your locality as it can encourage more customers to dine at your place.
First, you have to create a dedicated business page for your restaurant. Add all the details relevant to your restaurant. Make efforts to engage with your customers and prospective ones by sharing content, which can be anything right from a video where your chef shares his favourite dish to a discount banner.
Focus on encouraging those who had the best dining experience at your place to leave a review on Facebook. Honest customer reviews will raise your restaurant online exposure in the local area, which is key to your success on Facebook. Besides reviews, you can run Facebook Ads to promote your restaurant or a special discount campaign to improve your restaurant’s bottom line.
3) Yelp
Yelp restaurant review site is another top-rated platform to have a restaurant identity. Do you know it reached over 31 million unique mobile visitors this year’s quarter?
Anyways, to leverage Yelp, you first need to list your restaurant on Yelp. Whenever people search for restaurants in their area, the Yelp restaurants results do show up, therefore by being on Yelp, you improve your restaurant’s visibility.
You have to manage your listing, don’t just create it and forget it. Reply to every positive or negative review in a proper manner, especially must handle criticism carefully. By doing so you show your potential restaurant customers how much you care about each customer.
4) TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor is another popular food review site with a huge user base. You have to list your restaurant first on TripAdvisor to receive customer feedback. The top keywords that drive all the organic traffic to TripAdvisor are restaurants near me and food near me. So, by being on TripAdvisor, you’re getting traffic from Google.
Besides taking reviews and ratings, TripAdvisor also enables its users to book a table. Add interesting details for your restaurant, including photos to attract online visitors to your restaurant.
5) Zomato
Do you know the official website of Zomato brings 1.5 million unique visitors? To get reviews on Zomato, you have to become its restaurant partner. Zomato is a food delivery service that collects orders to the listed restaurants on its website or App and delivers to the customer’s doorstep. For this Zomato charges a nominal commission.
Not just with the objective to get reviews and ratings, register on Zomato to add the home delivery dimension to your restaurant, which is the new normal amidst this pandemic. The restaurant page displays the complete information ranging from your contact, photos, to the latest menu.
6) OpenTable
With 8 million monthly unique visitors, OpenTable is not a site to ignore, if you are in pursuit of reviews to increase your restaurant revenue numbers. OpenTable is different from other restaurant review sites, here the user is given rewards for each review. These rewards can be applied to get a discount from a table reservation at any restaurant.
So, let your restaurant be listed on OpenTable with details to impress your prospective customers to dine at your place. Be active on OpenTable, and promptly respond to every customer feedback, be it positive or negative.
7) Zagat
Zagat, a restaurant review platform, brings 500,000 unique users monthly. It is a restaurant guidebook, like a restaurant review blog that assigns numbered ratings to every restaurant establishment based on four key aspects, one is food, second decor, and the other two is service and cost.
Their published guides are based on customer feedback and ratings. It gives the critical foodie to share their dining experience.
8) The Infatuation
Zagat Survey, LLC’s subsidiary, The Infatuation provides similar restaurant guidebooks, aimed at the younger segment of the society.
Their guides and curated reviews are written by a panel of qualified writers. They even have a “Text Rex” chat option that puts forth the best restaurant recommendations based on the location.
9) Foursquare
Similar to Yelp, Foursquare is a local directory that lets you search anything and everything in your area. It shows ratings for various restaurants in the region.
So, list your restaurant on Foursquare to bring relevant leads and boost the popularity of your restaurants in your proximity.
10) Gayot
Gayot is the most credible restaurant review guide, trusted by foodies across the globe. It has been in the sector for the last five decades, therefore has an established entity in the International restaurant community.
The review guides here are created by online visitors, but a panel of food critics and travel experts. Gayot is named after a renowned French food critic with the same name.
11) Grubhub and Eat24
Grubhub is an online food-ordering marketplace in Chicago that connects diners with the best local takeout restaurants. Yelp earlier owned Eat24, a leading food delivery portal with a robust network of 30,000 restaurants, covering 1,500 cities.
Now, Eat24 is part of Grubhub as they bought it from Yelp. Also Grubhub is one of the most cheapest food delivery service available globally.
All the restaurant listings on Eat24 are on Grubhub. Hence you can leverage this and list out your restaurant on Grubhub and Eat24 to increase the reach and online visibility of the restaurant.
12) MenuPages
MenuPages is another brand of Grubhub. It is the best source for menus of different restaurants in the area. As of now, it has more than 50,000 restaurant menus and access to 1,000 cities.
It also displays reviews and ratings for each restaurant obtained from its vast community of foodies.
13) Seamless
With a wide database of 115,000 businesses, covering 2,200 cities throughout the US and London, Seamless is a well-known food ordering service for both delivery and takeout. It has a dedicated food order sire and a suite of mobile Apps. If the user of Seamless has an opinion about dining at your restaurant, they would leave a review and rating. The Seamless displays only selected ones, not every review.
Why Monitoring Restaurant Reviews Sites is Important for Restaurant Owners?
In today’s hyper-connected digital epoch, the foodies, blogger, and dinners have become their own food critics thanks to the restaurant review sites. With their honest words, they not only recommend the best restaurants to be family, friends, neighbours but also can touch wide range of people who trust the Internet to locate the best restaurant.
To stay competitive with other restaurants in the area, you have to do more than offer quality food and service. It’s a must to battle it ou and get more reviews and ratings. Moreover, due to the recent pandemic, online restaurant reputation has become important, especially with most restaurants using multiple online food delivery systems to delivery food to their customer’s doorstep.
Here are some interetaing online customer stats which you should know by now:-
- Did you know approx 90% of people surf the Internet before deciding on where to eat?
- 77% prefer peer genuine customer reviews over critical reviews.
- 33% of people would never eat at a restaurant that has less than a 4-star rating.
The above stats accounts for a strong statement that online reviews and ratings are an essential part of a restaurant marketing strategy. Today most of the customers will check online reviews to lower their odds of disappointment from a bad dining experience. Thus having those positive ones which shares how your restaurant offers excellent customer service, awesome ambience, and top-grade food will help your business capture more and more customers.
Also online reviews will boost your local SEO and organic visibility of your restaurant for a specific location. Thus, in simple words, the more good reviews you manage to receive, the higher you will rank in Google SERPs results. Think of reviews as free advertising for your restaurant.
The reviews help in building trust among your prospective customers because someone had a great experience at your restaurant.
Nothing says that another restaurant is the locality than a genuine customer review. Your customers can claim on the internet that you are the best in terms of food, service, and prices than any other restaurant. This is crucial for driving more dinners to those who are in dilemma whether to choose your restaurant or any other in the area. Always remember that every review matters.
There are several ways to obtain restaurant reviews. The first one is the post-meal feedback form. It should be given to the customer at the time of bill payment. The forms must be presentable and give them a reason to review their experience, such as a discount coupon for their next visit. These reviews can only be posted on your restaurant’s official website. From each review you have a lot to learn about your restaurant’s weaknesses, and what you need to do to make your guest’s dining experience incredible.
For online reviews, you must send a gentle email or message to rate your restaurant. You have to encourage your customers to leave a review. Always remember that getting 100’s of restaurant reviews is not an overnight venture, it takes time and a lot of effort to establish a robust restaurant identity.
Conclusion
Finally, you probably have got an idea of how important the reviews and ratings are for your restaurant. We also listed the top thirteen review sites where you should be present for improved restaurant visibility. To drive reviews from people dining at a restaurant, you can run a special campaign that involves a 20% discount for writing a review. The more reviews, the more the chances of families and foodies coming to dine at your restaurant.
In addition, the reviews will improve your restaurant’s offical website rankings, which will be great, if you are into food delivery service. You need to have the art of responding to a negative critic in a manner other people find positive. For instance, if someone writes your restaurant service was not up to the mark. First, apologize for the inconvenience, and give a valid reason that it has been an on-off case, and won’t happen again. Invite them to dine again at your place with a special restaurant. Make sure your restaurant response is public.
So, why rethink, if your restaurant is not on any of the above review sites, get it listed today!
