Places to search for negative business reviews

**Balthazshar** · 12-23-2011, 08:50 AM

In keeping with 7878's excellent treatise on reputation management here, here, and here, I compiled a list of the Top 18 Places to Search for Negative Business Reviews; I use it as a guide to take 5-10 minutes when working with a potential new client, to go through these dozen+ sites to see what people are saying about them. Feel free to add any you effectively use. Now on to the list:

Search to see if their name comes up as a local Google Places business. If they have a map listing, see if there are any associated reviews under
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www.google.com
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Do a search under Google for “business name cityname reviews” For example: “Company name St. Augustine reviews” in quotes, to see what comes up; also just do a search for “Company name St. Augustine” or any variation of that, to see if any reviews pop up from other providers. Well worth a look again, in
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www.google.com
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Search Yahoo Local and search for their business name and reading their reviews. Visit
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http://local.yahoo.com
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Yahoo Answers has a big question & answer section where you can search for a business name and see if anyone had any negative experience with them. Find them at
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http://answers.yahoo.com
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Search Bing Local for the business name and reviews at
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www.bing.com/local
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Visit Merchant Circle to search for the business name and reviews at
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www.merchantcircle.com
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Visit Yelp! to search for the business name and reviews, especially retail establishments. They can be found at
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www.yelp.com
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Visit Super Pages for the business name and reviews (sometimes limited, but worth a quick look) at
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www.superpages.com
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Visit the Yellow Pages site for the business name and reviews at
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www.yp.com
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Visit the directory section of Service Magic for reviews of contractors at
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www.servicemagic.com
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Angie’s List is another great place to search for reviews of contractors and businesses at
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www.angieslist.com
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Visit Trip Advisor to search for reviews of retail businesses, especially those in the hospitality industry (hotels, travel, bed & breakfast, restaurants) at
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www.tripadvisor.com
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The trusted Better Business Bureau will tell you if there is an issue with a company at
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www.bbb.org
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Rip Off Report is great for checking on complaints, scams, and frauds. Check em at
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www.ripoffreport.com
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Craigslist. Check out the city the business is in, and see if anyone is talking about them in the Community section of their city at
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www.craigslist.org/about/sites
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Last but certainly not least, is the network of sites at CityGrid Media. These include Citysearch, Insider Pages, and Urban Spoon. You can access all of these from the home page of
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www.citygridmedia.com
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Happy hunting!

**vegas23** · 12-23-2011, 09:03 AM

Very useful thanks

Read the same threads by 7878 yesterday and was wondering where to start

**lincolnave** · 12-23-2011, 03:44 PM

Great list, thanks!!

**highrider778** · 12-24-2011, 04:51 PM

A+ Awesome post! Thank You for your time and effort in going about this list. Bookmarked!

**sikandar** · 12-24-2011, 04:56 PM

There are many consumer complaint websites / boards .. you can easily find them in Google by searching these keywords.

**highrider778** · 01-04-2012, 07:59 PM

would also like to point out a couple more sites you can go on for reviews here.

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10best.com
orbitz.com
travelpost.com
InsiderPages.com
hotels.com

just a couple more places for reviews, especially if you're looking for more clients and need a couple more reviews to go off of for good or bad.....

You can always show people how they're doing good in one spot, but how they need to be bumped up on another site....even if people don't have reviews at all, if you could convince importance of them, then that's more cash too.

**TriAmp** · 01-08-2012, 02:08 AM

Yeah, you always come across the positive ones somehow..

**poweronics** · 01-08-2012, 02:39 AM

Negative reviews are a good way to judge businesses.Thanks.

**meatro** · 01-08-2012, 02:47 AM

complaintsboard.com as well.

If a complaint is filed on here or on ripoffreport.com, you have a gold mine. You will have to beat that thing off the first page for their company name with a pretty big stick. If they do not already have their reputation management in place (control of the SERPs/active review site input for their company+complaint keywords) then even their "company name" keyword is at risk for TOP SERP spots.

What I mean is, their actual website could end up either duking it out with or losing to a complaint for the top spot of their COMPANY NAME! That's terrible news for any business and a very common tactic of shady and underhanded competitors. Very important to get this squared away whether they have existing complaints or not, especially if they're just getting into SEO for their site. Never know which competitor is going to get all sensitive about losing their keyword and pull some underhanded shit.