apsquared.net

Profile of a Local Search Reviewer

In our post yesterday we talked about the lack of personalization in local search and how that is one of the major weaknesses in many local search sites. Another flaw in many local search sites is that many of the reviews come from people with various motives, and little incentive to give reviews that are fair and honest. Think of it like this, what motivates someone to login to a site like Yelp and spend time writing reviews about a restaurant? Well one common reason is to complain about poor service. Another may be to help promote a friend’s business. There are also users who write reviews to boast their presence in the online community.  Many people have debated whether or not business reviews are helpful to the readers who read them. Other’s have discussed which sites and formats are more conducive to accurate and valuable reviews.

The fundamental problem with sites like Yelp and Insider Pages (those that are focuses on a social community) is that there is little incentive to be honest about average experiences(which by definition is what most experiences are).  To improve status and stature in the community users are almost encouraged to be extreme (either positive or negative) in their reviews.  At theSUGGESTR users are encouraged to be honest since their ratings are used in the calculations and predictions that give theSUGGESTR.com a more personal feel. We think encouraging users to honestly and accurately rate businesses by providing them incentive, in the form of more accurate suggestions,  is a major advantage for us.

In the next few days we’ll lay out some other reasons why we feel that we offer some features that make theSUGGESTR more useful for user’s looking to find great businesses that they’ll love.

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