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"Understanding User Reviews in
Local Search Marketing"

Paul Jahn - December 23, 2004

You've probably been to sites like Yahoo and seen the "Rate It" link next to local results. Different types of user reviews like this have actually been around for a long time. Now that local search is evolving, will this become an opportunity or hindrance?

Probably a bit of both.

It definitely can be easy to manipulate user "ratings". As a small or local business owner, you should keep this in mind. If you own a pizza joint and a customer has a bad experience, they could easily go online to give you a low rating or write a negative user review. Does that mean your pizza joint isn't any good? Of course it doesn't! The customer might just be an angry person, maybe didn't like the server, or had too many beers with the pizza.

On the other side, a positive rating could be used in the same way. Example, my own mother has been a piano teacher for close to 40 years and I saw her listing in the Yahoo yellow pages. So, being the good son that I am, I clicked and gave her a 5-star rating. Now she has 5 cool, red stars next to her listing. Well, is this right? After all, I've never taken piano lessons from her. I pretty much did it to be nice (although the fact she's been trusted for 40 years does have something to do with it!).

Whether ratings are manipulated or not, one thing remains the same: User review is a part of local search and the search providers do what they can to distract artificial manipulation.

So, how can you benefit from user reviews? I suppose the easy answer is to simply have the best business and/or site in your niche so that people would naturally write positive reviews. Of course, it's not always that easy. Here's a good example of how some businesses can benefit from it:

If you do a Google search for Minneapolis Pizza, as of this writing a couple CitySearch natural results are on the first page (not the paid ad on the right). The results are their advertisers' profile pages with a CitySearch review (you aren't charged for their click when your profile includes a review written by them).

In many cases, especially for businesses such as restaurants and hotels, the editorial team writes a carefully written, unbiased review. You don't see many negative reviews.

So who reads user reviews, anyway?
Well, I know I do… and I would say that most people do. The bigger question is how credible are user reviews to the people that read them?

Let's use the following (fictitious) example…
"John Doe Pizza is the worst place ever!! It took over a half hour to get our pizza and our server was rude and she had a nose ring!! It tasted like cardboard and there wasn't enough cheese! Don't ever eat there! Yuck!!

From, johndoepizzasucks4ever

You may have seen reviews like that before. Well, I'm guessing whoever would write something like that has bigger issues. It could be from someone who got fired from there or even had a bad dating relationship with an employee. I know I'd just chuckle at the review. Heck, I'd probably make that pizza joint the next place to go just because of it!

If I read an unbiased review from a source that I trust, I'll definitely pay more attention to it than if it's an impulse, subjective review.

For example, many local companies are professional business services, such as accountants or photographers. You won't find as many subjective user reviews. They will have had more of a personal and hands-on experience with these companies. If they're dissatisfied, they're more likely to approach the problem face to face rather than to voice their opinions on an online user review. In fact, you're probably more likely to see positive reviews from happy clients than anything else.

More people might see a review of your business and then visit your site. That itself is a good way to build trust. It could be by user reviews or testimonials itself, showing your crew online, showing your different memberships, providing valuable information in addition to selling your product or service, and making sure your whole physical address is visible.

User reviews can be inevitable when advertising your site locally. As long as you have a good understanding of the pros and cons, you're already a step above your competition.

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