Review sites

Presence Orbit reads your reviews, and replies to them, through each site’s own API with your permission. It never scrapes a site. Open Review sites under Settings in the sidebar. Admins connect and disconnect sites; Editors can bring places in and sync.

Try it with the sandbox

Select Try the sandbox to connect a pretend review site with Northwilds’ three shops in Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø and a year of reviews in English and Norwegian. It adds the shops as locations, links them and brings their reviews in, so you can try replies, requests and reports before connecting your own sites. A reply containing the word fail is refused, to show what a rejected reply looks like.

The sandbox counts towards your plan’s locations like any other. Move its locations to the bin and disconnect it when you are done.

Google Business Profile

1. Select Connect Google Business Profile.
2. Sign in with a Google account that owns or manages your Business Profile, and allow Presence Orbit to manage it.
3. Back in Presence Orbit, select Bring in places on the new connection and link each Google place to a location, or add it as a new one.

If Google or Facebook shows Coming soon, connecting it isn't available yet; import its reviews from a file on each location's page in the meantime. Google opens its Business Profile API to each app only after an application. Until Google approves it, the connection shows Waiting for API access. You can still import reviews from a file and ask customers for reviews in the meantime.

Through Google, Presence Orbit reads reviews and replies to them, reads and updates the listing, uploads photos, publishes posts and reads views and clicks. Replies you write on Google itself come back into Presence Orbit with the next sync, so the two always agree.

Facebook Pages

1. Select Connect Facebook Pages.
2. Sign in with Facebook and choose the Pages to share.
3. Select Bring in places and link each Page to a location.

Facebook recommendations are yes or no, not stars. Presence Orbit reads them and replies as a comment from the Page. Remove a reply on Facebook itself.

Trustpilot

Trustpilot’s API comes with its Advanced and Enterprise plans.

1. In Trustpilot Business, open Integrations, then API, and create an application.
2. In Presence Orbit, select Connect Trustpilot and enter your domain, such as northwilds.com, the business unit ID, the API key and secret, and optionally the business user who signs replies.
3. Select Bring in places and link it to a location.

Presence Orbit checks the details before saving them, and seals the key and secret: afterwards only their last characters show.

Tripadvisor, Apple and Bing

Tripadvisor reviews, Apple Maps place cards and Bing Places listings each work a little differently. See Tripadvisor, Apple and Bing.

Sites without an API

For other sites Presence Orbit can’t connect to, import reviews from a file on the location’s page. See Locations. Yelp forbids asking customers for reviews, so Presence Orbit never sends anyone there.

Sync

Reviews sync every 15 minutes, and Trustpilot’s every hour. Each connection shows when it last synced, when it syncs next, how many places are linked and how many reviews it has brought in. Select Sync now to sync straight away.

When a review is edited on the site, Presence Orbit keeps the earlier rating and text in its history, so you can see a 2 that became a 5 after your reply.

If a site stops answering, the connection shows Needs attention with the site’s own message, and Presence Orbit tries again: after 5 minutes for a passing problem, otherwise at the next sync. While Presence Orbit is paused because a trial or plan ended, syncing waits.

Disconnect

Select Disconnect on a connection. New reviews stop and its places are unlinked from your locations. Reviews already in Presence Orbit stay, with their replies and notes.