Which Review Sites Actually Send Customers? 2026 Breakdown

Google dominates, but it's not the whole picture

83% of consumers use Google when researching a local business — by far the single most-used platform. After Google, usage drops off fast: local news sites sit at 48%, Yelp at 44%, Facebook at 40%, YouTube at 34%, and TikTok at 20% (BrightLocal, 2025 survey). The average consumer still checks 6 different review sites before deciding whether to trust a business, so "we're on Google" isn't the same as covering your bases.

Usage isn't the same as trust

This is the part most businesses miss: Google leads trust too, but not by as much as it leads usage. 66% of consumers say they trust Google reviews, 45% trust Google Maps specifically, and 36% trust a business's own website over any third-party platform (BrightLocal). Facebook and TikTok, despite real usage numbers, are the least-trusted social platforms for business research — 43% of consumers say they distrust information about businesses found there. High traffic doesn't automatically mean high credibility.

Where your specific platforms actually show up

Your review request strategy should follow usage, not habit. Review requests default to Google because it's the biggest single channel — but the platforms worth adding depend heavily on your industry.

• Healthcare: Healthgrades is used by about 31% of patients researching a provider, and Zocdoc by about 22%. Both platforms report high positivity — around 80% of Healthgrades reviews and 84% of Zocdoc reviews land at the top rating — though it's worth noting those figures are self-published by the platforms themselves, which have an obvious interest in looking trustworthy.
• Legal and home services: we looked specifically for public usage-share data on platforms like Avvo (legal) and Houzz (home services) and couldn't find a verifiable survey measuring how often consumers actually use them to choose a provider. If you're in either industry, that's a genuine gap in the public data — don't assume a platform matters just because it exists in your category; weight your effort toward the platforms where you can actually see traffic or leads coming through.

What this means for where you put your effort

The practical read: treat Google as the floor, not the strategy. Add the one or two platforms your specific industry's customers actually check — not every platform that technically allows reviews of businesses like yours. A restaurant chasing TripAdvisor reviews with the same intensity it chases Google reviews is probably misallocating effort; a med spa ignoring industry-specific platforms entirely is leaving trust signals on the table that generic reviews won't replace. Browse reputation guidance by industry to see which platforms are actually worth your time in your category — review platforms that matter are the ones your specific customers are already using to decide.