On the third anniversary of Trustpilot's IPO - at £2.65p - Vitruvian Partners sold 15.5 million shares at £2.00p. Some might say that's not a great return (a loss of nearly 25% over three years), especially against the FTSE which is up 16% over the same period. But we are not here to say whether or not Trustpilot shares are a good investment, but rather whether or not businesses should invest their hard-earned money by employing Trustpilot to enhance their reputations in their various marketplaces.
The question that we return to again and again is a simple one: 'Why pay Trustpilot when Google reviews are free?' and more importantly...
- more visible - by a massive margin (as regular readers will have noted: we have strong suspicions that some businesses are using Trustpilot specifically to channel reviews away from the public eye as Trustpilot reviews of a business rarely appear on 'page 1' of seach)
- more credible - again, by a huge margin (users now understand that anyone can write a Google review and it will stand. Google reviews are now also mostly posted under a 'real' identity)
And the answer we continue to arrive at is...
'If your business is seeking a reviews mechanism to back up its product marketing - we stress 'product', as opposed to 'service' - then a Trustpilot rating may be an effective tool. But if your business provides a professional service - financial, legal, medical, educational, B2B and the like - it has to be Google all the way.'
Just look at these search results...
For readers saying, quite understandably, 'Our business acquires most of its new clients/patients as a result of word-of-mouth recommendations, referrals or as a result of our advertising and PR efforts' may we say 'Great, but remember what the overwhelming majority of people do when they are recommended a business by a friend or colleague, or see great marketing: they Google the business in question. And what do they see then? They see this...
Compare the search above with a similar one in a different sector...
And there are two major reasons why HelpHound clients look so great in search (apart from the fact that they self-define as highly consumer-focused)...
1. Moderation: every reviewer who responds to our clients' invitation to post a review - whether by direct contact or indirectly by using the 'Write a review' button on their website - has their review read by a HelpHound moderator in order to ensure, as far as is possible within the CMA regulations, that the review contains no factual inaccuracies or comments likely to mislead a future reader.
2. 'Stars in search': (see specifially points 6 & 8) the stars, rating and 'votes' you see right underneath the business's natural listing, in both searches (local and specific) - as opposed to in the Google knowledge panel on the right in the second image - are derived from the business's own reviews, hosted on its own website, not from its Google reviews. The fact that most consumers assume they are some sort of Google 'vote of confidence' is not necessarily a bad thing!
We recommend you conduct your own search on the business above to see them - the stars - 'in action' and how they make the business stand out in searches. We know how highly valued they are by businesses because on the very rare occasions when our feed does not deliver them in search we get very prompt calls asking for it to be reinstated ASAP!
In Summary
We see no contest between Trustpilot or any of its fellow review sites - Yelp, Feefo, Reviews.io and the rest - and Google when it comes to driving business through reviews. A moderated Google solution wins on any criteria a business may have. If, on the other hand, your business sells products and you'd rather its reviews were not delivered in Google searches, then maybe, just maybe, the five green stars are for you.
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