Trustpilot, Facebook or Google reviews: where should yours live?

Where should you collect your reviews?

Collect reviews where your customers look for you. For a local business in Belgium, that is your Google Business Profile. Add at most one second place that suits your sector, and point every request you send consistently at those two.

Two platforms filled properly beat five filled halfway. Every extra place splits the same number of customers across more profiles, and a profile holding three reviews reads weaker than a profile that never existed.

What do Google reviews actually do for you?

Google reviews sit beside your name at the moment somebody searches: in the local results, on Maps and in your profile. They reach people who do not know you yet, they show your score and your count, and they feed how prominently Google displays you.

• They appear in the block of three businesses at the top of the local results.
• They show on Maps, where people choose while they are already on the move.
• They display your average score and your review count next to your name.
• A profile picking up reviews every month reads livelier than a profile standing still.

The effect grows when the rest of the profile holds up: the right category, correct opening hours, photos and a reply under every review. The article on your Google Business Profile walks through those points one by one.

When does Trustpilot make sense?

Trustpilot suits businesses that sell or deliver online, and brands trading across Belgium without a fixed counter. You can claim a profile there for free, and automatic invitations sit inside a paid plan. For a business living off its own neighbourhood, Google carries more weight.

The platform gathers reviews about your company as a whole and shows a score you can place on your own site through a widget. That fits an online shop, an insurance broker or an energy supplier, where people compare before they order.

• Suits: online shops, subscriptions, financial services and remote service providers.
• Pricing shape: a free tier to manage your profile, plus a paid plan for automatic invitations and integrations.
• Worth knowing: Trustpilot reviews do not appear on your Google Business Profile.
• Combine it with Google once you also have an address customers walk into.

What are Facebook recommendations worth?

Facebook recommendations reach the people who already follow your page, and they surface in their friends’ feeds. They strengthen your social proof in the neighbourhood. They play no part in Google results, so they sit on top of your Google reviews.

On Facebook someone recommends you with a yes or a no, plus a short piece of text. There is no star rating per recommendation, so the display differs from Google. For businesses with a lively page, such as hospitality, salons and gyms, it adds useful reach.

• Strength: your recommendation lands with people who already know you and who share.
• Weakness: anyone searching for you on Google will never see those recommendations.
• Worth doing when your page already runs and you post there regularly.
• Ask followers for it, and send everyone else to Google.

Treat it as a second layer for a business that already invests in its page. A quiet page with a handful of recommendations rarely repays the effort of chasing them.

Do sector platforms count?

Sector platforms count wherever your customers compare before choosing: booking sites and TripAdvisor for hospitality, property portals for estate agents, quotation sites for building work. Pick the platform your offer already sits on, and collect there alongside your Google reviews. One is enough.

• Hospitality: the booking site you already use, and TripAdvisor for visitors from further afield.
• Property: the portal your listings sit on, because the buyer starts the search there.
• Care and wellbeing: the platforms people book their appointment through.
• Building and renovation: the quotation sites you buy leads from.

The rule of thumb: only collect on a platform your customers genuinely use to choose, and where your profile already exists. An empty profile you never monitor costs you more attention than it returns.

What do reviews on your own website do?

Quotes on your own site persuade visitors who are already on the page, right before they call or book. They do not appear in search results themselves, so they work best when the same customer also publishes the review on Google or on a sector platform.

They came the next day, found the leak and left the bathroom clean. The price stayed exactly as quoted. Katrien from Boom, about her plumber.

In practice: ask once, send the customer to Google, then reuse the text of that review as a quote on your site with the first name, town and month. The same effort then counts twice. The article on reviews on your website goes into how to present them.