G2.com is the “world’s largest and most trusted tech marketplace where people can discover, review, and manage software.” It is arguably the most popular business software review site, with over 1.8 million user reviews on over 100,000 products. This post will provide an overview of G2 for business software sellers and buyers.
Table of Contents
G2 or G2.com (formerly G2 Crowd) is on a mission to consumerize business software reviews. They started by asking the question, “Why is it easier to get unbiased information about a $100 hotel room than a $100,000 piece of software?”
In 2014, G2 raised a seed round of funding to become “Yelp for Software” – the 80-second explainer video created at that time still does an excellent job of explaining why review sites like G2 matter for B2B software buyers and sellers. G2 positions itself as the solution to purchasing decisions overly reliant on analyst recommendations.
Today, it is a leading site for software reviews. G2 has raised $257.8 million, according to Crunchbase. When G2 raised its Series D in July 2021, it was valued at $1.1B, making it a tech unicorn.
G2 is an essential player in the B2B SaaS landscape. Let’s go through what it is, who it’s for, how it works, and where to go for more information.
What is G2.com?
What kind of company is G2?
What is G2.com used for?
G2.com is used primarily for business software buyer research. More specifically, buyers go to G2.com to read user reviews, see user-generated product ratings, and compare software alternatives. Business software vendors (or sellers) use G2.com to get user reviews validated and hosted by a trusted third-party site.
Who founded G2?
G2 was founded by: Godard Abel, Tim Handorf, Mike Wheeler, Matt Gorniak, and Mark Myers, according to a 2014 TechRepublic article. The founders of G2 worked together at BigMachines, a software company acquired by Oracle, and teamed up to form G2, according to a 2020 Latka article.
Where is G2 based?
G2 is based in Chicago, Illinois.
How many employees does G2 have?
G2 has over 1,100 employees, according to LinkedIn, as of August 2022.
What’s does G2 mean?
If you’re wondering what G2 means, it’s inspired by US army staff categories, in which G-2 refers to intelligence staff (whereas G-1 is for personnel, G-3 for operations, etc.). This name aligns with how G2 aims to arm buyers with intel.
Who is G2 for?
G2 is a helpful resource for all buyers of business software. Consequently, G2 is also an effective resource for all business software sellers.
G2 counts “over 2,700 customers, including 60% of the Forbes Cloud 100 list and top companies like Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoom, Adobe and more. In addition, all of the Fortune 500 use G2.”
More than 60 million web visitors visit G2.com per year and see 100,000 software and services companies listed in over 2,000 categories. To review all current categories, see the G2 categories pages.
Business software and services providers can claim their free G2 profile. Note that Business-to-consumer (B2C) products and products currently in the Alpha or Beta stage of development are not eligible to be listed on G2.
What's an example of a seller on G2? HubSpot
HubSpot is an excellent example of a seller who uses G2 well. Across the web, HubSpot boosts its online reputation with reviews and many awards from its reviews. G2 plays a central role in this for HubSpot.
HubSpot’s many achievements on G2 include leading dozens of categories across HubSpot’s four product lines (Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, CMS Hub, and Service Hub) and being named #2 Best Global Seller for 2021 in the G2 Best of Software Awards. HubSpot is the lead G2 customer success story featured prominently on G2’s homepage (see image).
HubSpot uses G2 badges as social proof across the HubSpot site, as seen in this example on the HubSpot Marketing Hub page.
How does G2 work?
Sellers list their software products on G2.com and select the appropriate product category or categories. Users provide reviews of the software, impacting the product’s rank on a category page, on a G2 Grid® Report, and on other reports.
How do you claim your product page on G2?
If your product is already listed on G2, but no one from your company has yet to claim ownership of the page, it’s really easy to do so. Watch this video on how to claim your product on g2 to get started.
How do you add your product to G2?
If there isn’t a G2 page on your product, go to the G2 profiles page, and simply fill out the form with your business email to request one.
How do you pick which categories your product is in on G2?
According to post on G2, “…products are categorized based on their features, G2 does not allow vendors to pick and choose the categories they are listed in.” If you believe you’re in a category that doesn’t currently exist on G2, note this advice on the process for requesting a new category addition.
How do you rank highly in a G2 category?
By default, G2 sorts products in a category by its “G2 score.”
The G2 score is based on a combination of the number of reviews, a (user) satisfaction score and a market presence score. The higher a product’s G2 score is relative to other products in the same category, the higher the product is ranked.
G2 scores also impact the placement of a vendor on a G2 Grid® Report.
What is the G2 Crowd Grid?
G2 Grid® Reports position the products in a category based on their market presence and satisfaction. G2 separates the grid into four quadrants: Niche, Contenders, High Performers, and Leaders. There are over 630 such reports.
What are G2.com Reports?
In addition to Grid® Reports, there are several other G2 reports:
- Index reports – aggregate several data points on one factor. Index reports cover implementation, usability, relationship, or results.
- Compare Reports – compare up to four vendors against each other on user satisfaction ratings.
- Momentum Grids – see the growth trajectory for each product in a category.
How do G2 Reviews work?
Users can write reviews organically or by invite from G2 or the seller. G2 offers Reviews-as-a-Service (RaaS): a G2-managed review campaign with gift cards as incentives for reviewers. Gift card budgets currently range from $500 to $1,000, depending on whIch plan you select.
G2 tags each review to give the reader more information about the reviewer and how the review was sourced. For example, a review may have the following fours tags: “Validated Reviewer”, “Verified Current User”, “Review source: Seller invite”, and “Incentivized Review”.
Like other review sites, G2 tries to strike the right balance in review length: short enough to generate high volumes of reviews but long enough to provide more information than a testimonial.
Since 2017, G2 has partnered with LinkedIn, enabling visitors to filter reviews based on their first-tier LinkedIn contacts to see what their most trusted peers say about the software.
G2 provides tips for reviewers and sellers in its Community Guidelines.
It’s important to note that G2 have a review validation process to ensure that each review on G2 is by a real user. To learn more, watch this G2 Review Validation Process video.
How do you drive more G2 reviews?
There are many strategies and tactics that you can use to drive more reviews on software sites like G2. For G2-specific review generation, see the video below, G2 Office Hours: How to Collect more G2 Reviews. In it, G2 covers the different review collection methods by splitting them into two groups: automated and goal-oriented methods. You’ll learn about in-app levers, InMail prompts, incentivized emails, G2 Gives campaigns, and Events and conferences (with a G2 review collection booth).
Also, for more tips and examples on how to drive more reviews on G2, check out our post on How To Generate, Leverage, and Measure Reviews: A Practitioner’s Guide to B2B SaaS Reviews.
How does G2 make money?
G2 is free for business software buyers. G2 has a freemium model for business software sellers: vendors can list for free, but there are charges for premium features.
G2 monetizes its website with several offerings for software sellers. Its primary offering, G2 Marketing Solutions, is focused on buyer intent data. Other offerings include:
- G2 Content Subscription – License G2 reports and get G2-made social assets
- G2 Investor Solutions – Access G2 data to help investors make more informed decisions
- G2 Deals – Shop exclusive discounts on a selection of software products
- G2 Track – Manage and optimize a software stack
How do you optimize your G2 profile?
For administrators of G2 product pages, there are several things that you can do to optimize your G2 profile. To do so, watch this G2 video on Optimizing Your G2 Profile:
How do you leverage and operationalize G2 buyer intent?
G2 recently hosted and recorded an office hours session on operationalizing buyer intent. A big part is how to use G2’s integration hub to connect G2 buyer intent data with where you could leverage that data. Of the 19+ integrations that G2 offers to operationalize their buyer intent data, LinkedIn Matched Audiences will likely be at or near the top of the list for many marketers. There are also integrations to marketing automation platforms such as Adobe Marketo Engage and HubSpot Marketing Hub, ABM platforms such as Demandbase, Rollworks, and Terminus, and demand gen platforms such as Metadata.io.
To learn more about how to operationalize G2 buyer intent, read the section, How to leverage your B2B software reviews, on the post, How To Generate, Leverage, and Measure Reviews: A Practitioner’s Guide to B2B SaaS Reviews.
FAQs: What questions are people asking about G2 on Google?
We’ve already covered several commonly asked questions, such as what kind of company is G2? and what is g2.com for?
Here are answers to miscellaneous questions that people are asking on Google that we have yet to cover:
Is G2 owned by Gartner?
No, G2 is not owned by Gartner. G2 and Gartner are competitors.
How (do) review websites make money?
Review websites make money in a few different ways. One way is through a pay-per-click ad bidding model. Another is through affiliate links. G2 makes money by selling to vendors buyer intent data and licensed content such as G2 Grid® Reports. G2 is also starting to make money with G2 Investor Solutions, G2 Deals, and G2 Track.
How much does G2 crowd cost?
G2 has four main plans for sellers: free, essential, pro, and power. The plans vary by feature coverage in profile content, review generation, review syndication, demand capture, buyer intent, and integrations. According to a 2020 Latka blog post, “The cost of the service varies on company size. Abel says for small vendors, the average cost is about $10k per year, while mid-market vendors pay anywhere from $30k to $100k a year depending on how many products they have on the site.” Expect a price rise since 2020. G2 Track has three plans with prices listed on g2.com: Free, Pro (starting at $300/month), and Enterprise (starting at $1,250/month).
How do you get paid for G2 reviews?
Occasionally G2 and its vendors offer incentives to verified current users who write an approved review (validated by G2). The incentive is typically a gift card. The gift card amount tends to vary between $10 and $50. Either G2 or the vendor sends incentivized review requests to the vendor’s users.
Is G2 a good company?
This question – is G2 a good company? – is the type of question that review sites like G2 set out to answer for software buyers by letting users answer the question. Reviews of G2 itself on other review sites like Trustpilot say it’s a good company. Some people on Quora with an axe to grind would say no. Either way, it runs one of the largest and most popular business software review sites that many buyers have turned to make buying decisions. Buyers and sellers will need to form their own opinion and act accordingly. As a G2 admin user and a business software buying user, I think is a good company (and one of the best software review sites). And of course, an overview of G2 wouldn’t be complete without a G2 review of G2. Ultimately, you will need to do your own research and come to your own conclusion.
Where to go for more info on G2.com?
Here are some handy links to help you save time finding the information that you want on G2:
- About: about G2 page
- G2’s LinkedIn company page
- G2’s Twitter company page
- G2’s Facebook company page
- Blog: G2 blog
- Help at: help.g2.com
- Phone: (847)-748-7559
- Wayback Look: see how it looked when it started: G2’s website in Nov 2012
- FAQs: G2 FAQs and G2 Community Guidelines
