Thrive takes a look at some of the best review monitoring tools

I recently took on a client for whom reviews and online mentions are a major priority. This post was written while in the process of actually trying out several tools that offer review monitoring and mention alerts. The first 2 tools are more full service, offering review tracking and response features, the 3rd is a hybrid of review monitoring and simple alerting and the remaining 2 are more compact, simply tracking mentions and sending alerts. There is a bit of an apples to oranges element as a result, but I hope this post is useful to anyone in the market for a new review or mention monitoring tool.

Full Service Review Monitoring Tools:

Review Push

Review Push sits alongside Review Trackers as one of the more fully featured review monitoring tools we’re looking into. It is slightly more complicated in terms of set-up time, etc than some of the simple alert tools we review later on, but it does offer a little more.

Here are some bullet points of my findings:

1. Immediate automated email confirming account created.
2. Full review and mention monitoring service, complete with a dashboard that allows monitoring of most major local listing / business review sites.
3. Option to view and respond to reviews left on any connected site from within the dashboard.
4. Moderate set up time
5. Free 30 day trial
6. Moderate Cost ($29/mo at the basic level for one location.)

Check out Review Push

Review Trackers

One thing that set Review Trackers apart for me was the personal attention. Shortly after creating an account I received a call, (from a real human being with excellent English!) reassuring me that I should receive access to the dashboard within 48 hours, and an offer for support or to participate in a guided walkthrough of the tool once our dashboard is live. Every tool I’m mentioning in this list sent out an automated email confirmation, and they obviously (including Review Trackers’) came first, but the live call was a very personal touch. Aside from the call, the product seems very similar to Review Push.

1. Immediate automated email confirming account created, FOLLOWED by a very personal touch – an in-person call and offer of help if necessary in setting up my trial
2. Full review and mention monitoring service, complete with a dashboard that allows monitoring of most major local listing / business review sites.
3. Option to view and respond to reviews left on any connected site from within the dashboard.
4. Moderate set up time
5. Free 30 day trial
6. High Cost ($49/mo at the basic level for one location.)

Check out Review Trackers

A hybrid of both Review monitoring and Alert tracking:

Moz’s Fresh Web Explorer and Local Tool

SEO giants Moz have 2 products within their arsenal that combine to fill many of the roles of the other tools listed here. Fresh Web Explorer provides a very simple and user friendly alert monitoring service, you can get started in minutes by just entering the company name. Simply enter a variety of search terms and review the results. The results are well presented in an attractive graph, but the mentions themselves seem to be off the mark quite often, probably due to a lot of similarly named brands in our niche. The 2nd tool, Moz’s local tool, (formerly GetListed) is great for setting up local listings and managing them, including some review tracking/response options. On top of that, you obviously get Moz’s very powerful suite of tools… at a suitably high price.

1. Easy to set up and use,
2. Very comparable from a mention tracking/alert aspect to the 2 following tools,
3. Many additional excellent tools included in the suite.
4. Free 30 day trial.
5. High cost (compared to the other options) required in order to access both, ($99/mo for the most basic option, and additional annual costs for using the local tool.)

Check out Moz’s Fresh Web Explorer and their Moz Local tool

Mention Tracking / Alert Tools:

Mention App

Using Mention I was able to quickly set up alerts following some pretty user friendly instructions. I received a notification very quickly and was rewarded with a congratulatory email from the app for receiving my first mention. The interface is good looking and easy to use, but the cost seems steep for a product that seems to be a direct competitor to the free tool from Google.

1. Quick set up
2. Attractive layout
3. Free 14 day trial
4. Cost seems a little high for the amount of features offered. ($29/mo at the most basic level, allowing only 3 alerts and 3 users)

Check out Mention

Google Alerts

Google alerts is not a newcomer, by any means. Having been around for a while, and offering the same ease of use and simple setup as the two other simple alert options (Moz’s fresh web tool and Mention), Google alerts is a great option for anyone with a small (or non-existent) budget. While not the prettiest option on our list, the tool is effective and free, and that’s tough to compete with.

1. Simple to set up
2. Effective for monitoring mentions (simple alerts)
3. Free

Check out Google Alerts

We’ve enjoyed exploring all of the above, and each of them have elements that make them incredibly useful tools. The tool that works best for you will probably depend pretty heavily on your budget, and what you’re looking for. If you rely on good reviews and require the ability to quickly monitor and respond to any new reviews, you’ll need to pay special attention to the first 2 on this list. If you just want a heads up when your business, a certain keyword, your CEO’s name etc. is mentioned anywhere on the internet, any of the other 3 should do the trick very comfortably.

Let us know if you’ve had any experience with the tools on our list, or with any other tools in the industry. This is by no means intended to be an exhaustive list, it’s simply the tools we had a chance to try out. Feel free to contribute in the comments below!