Why G2 Reviews Deserve Your Attention in SaaS

“When you dance with the devil, you wait for the song to stop.” — Unknown

G2 is the world’s leading software review platform. 

The relationship that many SaaS companies have with G2 is one of love and hate. SaaS companies love the value that G2 provides in terms of third-party validation and leads, but SaaS companies hate having to compete with G2 for SERP positions, both paid and organic. The most successful SaaS companies have grown to be okay dancing with G2 as long as the results continue to trickle in and the ROI is a net positive for everyone involved. 

Let’s start with the basics. 

What is G2?

G2 (formerly known as G2 Crowd) collects verified customer reviews and provides vendors with valuable insights to boost their ratings and visibility in the B2B SaaS market. With its comprehensive review data, G2 helps customers make informed purchasing decisions while providing a platform for vendors to showcase their offerings within a competitive landscape. 

Since its launch, G2 has successfully taken a leadership position at the forefront of the Yelpification of B2B. The Yelpification of B2B is the shift in which more B2B buyers begin to make decisions around the software and providers they purchase based on the reviews of other people. After raising a Series D round, G2 has continued to grow and play a pivotal role in the SaaS buying process and the SaaS ecosystem at large. 

Why Does G2 Play Such a Key Role in SaaS? 

A lot of organizations often debate whether or not they should or shouldn’t invest in G2, but the reality is that G2 is being used by B2B buyers every single day. A lot of Savvy marketers, influential tech heads, and gurus will say, “no one actually uses G2,” but the numbers don’t lie. The numbers suggest that G2 is still very much a key factor in driving decisions for B2B buyers and that SaaS brands ignoring the channel might actually be missing out. 

The structure of G2’s website is one of the most important things to understand when it comes to determining whether this site is worth investing in. As you form a decision about whether or not investing is right for your SaaS company, it is helpful to become familiar with the types of content it produces and the landing pages that exist. 

G2 can be broken down into two key content assets that can influence your buyers: 

1. Category pages
2. Product pages

More than 1,200 categories of software solutions exist on G2’s website. 

The structure of these is broken down into master categories and subcategories below them. For example, there’s a “CRM & Marketing” category that has subcategories like Pricing Software, Product Analytics Software, and Creative Management Platforms. 

It’s on these category pages where SaaS companies show up and have the opportunity to compete to be listed as the #1 product within their individual category. 

Here’s what the top of the email category page looks like:

It’s a basic page that speaks to two important search terms in almost every SaaS buyer’s journey: “What is [NICHE] Software” and “Best [NICHE] Software.” The development of over 1,100 pages with this same format has served G2 well, helping these pages generate hundreds of thousands of visits every single year. Here are some interesting data points on this page: 

The search term “Email Software” has 52,800 searches a year and the search term “Best Email Software” has 9,000 searches a year. G2’s Email Software Page generates over 30,100 visits a year across more than 880 different variations of these phrases and keywords. 

Not bad, right? 

As you scroll through the page, you will be met with the various “Email” solutions sorted by their G2 Score. As a user, this is an amazing experience because you can start to immediately see who the best of the best is within your space and understand who views these products as the most applicable for their use case, the industries, and even the key differentiators.  

These category pages link to the product pages, and it’s here where individual reviews are able to be read and submitted. If a user clicks on a product page, they are then taken to a page where they can learn from actual product users what they thought of the product and use that information to determine whether or not the product will be good for their own needs. 

Here’s what the Google Workspace G2 account looks like: 

The Google Workspace account is optimized well for G2 and embraces a few key things: