Review site
Encyclopedia
A review site is a website
on which reviews can be posted about people, businesses, products, or services. These sites may use Web 2.0
techniques to gather reviews from site users or may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic of concern for the site. Early review sites included Epinions.com and Amazon.com
.
links to the websites that sell the reviewed items.
With the growing popularity of affiliate programs on the Internet
, a new sort of review site has emerged - the affiliate product review site. This type of site is usually professionally designed and written to maximize conversions, and is used by e-commerce marketers. It's often based on a blog
platform like Wordpress
, has a privacy and contact page to help with SEO
, and has commenting and interactivity turned off. It will also have an e-mail gathering device in the form of an opt-in
, or drop-down list
to help the aspiring e-commerce business person build an e-mail list to market to.
These sites generally review e-book
s.
Because of the specialized marketing thrust of this type of website, the reviews are not objective.
, comScore
, The Kelsey Group, and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association show that rating and review sites influence consumer shopping behavior. In 2007 even large companies such as Best Buy
and Walmart began to mention online reviews in television advertisements and on the back of receipts.
Review sites act as public forums, and are legally protected from liability for the content by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
(CDA).
According to Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF), anonymity of reviewers is important. "You couldn't have services like ratings sites or Craigslist
or message boards or Amazon.com
's user feedback or eBay
's reviews of sellers without it."
Beginning approximately 2005, however, consumers became more open with their identity and personal information on review sites. Some sites like those from Yelp, Inc. encourage consumers to use their real names, real photos and personal tags.
Another criticism against sites that rely on income from businesses is that they are reluctant to post negative reviews since that undermines their business model. This leads to a conflict of interest.
on the Ratingz Inc websites states that, although the ratings are not statistically valid, “They are a listing of opinions and should be judged as such. However, we often receive emails stating that the ratings are uncannily accurate, especially for businesses with over 100 ratings".
Bob Nicholson, a co-founder of Ratingz Inc, goes on to state that "If you get useful information from the ratings, great. That's what we hope happens. If you look at a rating and say, 'Boy, these were obviously all written by the staff in this guy's office', then take it for what it's worth." PersonRatings.com
founder Jeremy Stamper echoes this sentiment, advising site users to "take a person ratings profile with a grain of salt."
In effort to resolve the issue of biased reviews written by the party itself being reviewed, the Power Reviews Verified Buyer solution verifies whether the person writing the review has actually purchased the product.
, a site that carries no advertising but covers all manner of products and services, with reviews and ratings often based on exhaustive independent testing. Another type of review site does not provide free-form text reviews, but instead evaluates a particular class of products, services, or businesses using a set of pre-defined criteria. One such example is the Canadian shopping site Wishabi
, which reviews merchants on 42 criteria and displays the results in a series of icons. This second type of professional review site tends to provide a better platform for comparative analysis, but at the expense of reduced flexibility and richness.
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
on which reviews can be posted about people, businesses, products, or services. These sites may use Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
techniques to gather reviews from site users or may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic of concern for the site. Early review sites included Epinions.com and Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
.
Business models
Review sites are generally supported by advertising. Some business review sites may also allow businesses to pay for enhanced listings, which do not affect the reviews and ratings. Product review sites may be supported by providing affiliateNetwork affiliate
In the broadcasting industry , a network affiliate is a local broadcaster which carries some or all of the television program or radio program line-up of a television or radio network, but is owned by a company other than the owner of the network...
links to the websites that sell the reviewed items.
With the growing popularity of affiliate programs on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, a new sort of review site has emerged - the affiliate product review site. This type of site is usually professionally designed and written to maximize conversions, and is used by e-commerce marketers. It's often based on a blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
platform like Wordpress
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
, has a privacy and contact page to help with SEO
SEO
SEO or search engine optimization, the process of improving ranking in search engine results.SEO may also refer to:* Seo , a Korean family name* SE-O or Västra Götaland County, a county on the western coast of Sweden...
, and has commenting and interactivity turned off. It will also have an e-mail gathering device in the form of an opt-in
Opt in e-mail
Opt in email is a term used when someone is given the option to receive "bulk" email, that is, email that is sent to many people at the same time. Typically, this is some sort of mailing list, newsletter, or advertising...
, or drop-down list
Drop-down list
In computing with graphical user interfaces, a drop-down list is a user interface control GUI element , similar to a list box, which allows the user to choose one value from a list. When a drop-down list is inactive, it displays a single value. When activated, it displays a list of values, from...
to help the aspiring e-commerce business person build an e-mail list to market to.
These sites generally review e-book
E-book
An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
s.
Because of the specialized marketing thrust of this type of website, the reviews are not objective.
Impact
Studies by independent research groups like Forrester ResearchForrester Research
Forrester Research is an independent technology and market research company that provides its clients with advice about technology's impact on business and consumers. Forrester Research has five research centers in the US: Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York, New York; San Francisco, California;...
, comScore
ComScore
comScore is a Internet marketing research company providing marketing data and services to many of the Internet's largest businesses. comScore tracks all internet data on its surveyed computers in order to study online behavior....
, The Kelsey Group, and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association show that rating and review sites influence consumer shopping behavior. In 2007 even large companies such as Best Buy
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...
and Walmart began to mention online reviews in television advertisements and on the back of receipts.
Anonymity
Originally reviews were generally anonymous, and most review sites have policies that preclude the release of any identifying information without a court order.Review sites act as public forums, and are legally protected from liability for the content by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 is a landmark piece of Internet legislation in the United States, codified at...
(CDA).
According to Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
(EFF), anonymity of reviewers is important. "You couldn't have services like ratings sites or Craigslist
Craigslist
Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities featuring free online classified advertisements, with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums....
or message boards or Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
's user feedback or eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
's reviews of sellers without it."
Beginning approximately 2005, however, consumers became more open with their identity and personal information on review sites. Some sites like those from Yelp, Inc. encourage consumers to use their real names, real photos and personal tags.
Criticism
Most review sites make little or no attempt to restrict postings, or to verify the information in the reviews. Critics point out that positive reviews are sometimes written by the businesses or individuals being reviewed, while negative reviews may be written by competitors, disgruntled employees, or anyone with a grudge against the business being reviewed. Furthermore, studies of research methodology have shown that in forums where people are able to post opinions publicly, group polarization often occurs, and the result is very positive comments, very negative comments, and little in between, meaning that those who would have been in the middle are either silent or pulled to one extreme or the other.Another criticism against sites that rely on income from businesses is that they are reluctant to post negative reviews since that undermines their business model. This leads to a conflict of interest.
Response to criticism
Operators of most review sites acknowledge that reviews may not be objective, and that ratings may not be statistically valid. A FAQFAQ
Frequently asked questions are listed questions and answers, all supposed to be commonly asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. "FAQ" is usually pronounced as an initialism rather than an acronym, but an acronym form does exist. Since the acronym FAQ originated in textual...
on the Ratingz Inc websites states that, although the ratings are not statistically valid, “They are a listing of opinions and should be judged as such. However, we often receive emails stating that the ratings are uncannily accurate, especially for businesses with over 100 ratings".
Bob Nicholson, a co-founder of Ratingz Inc, goes on to state that "If you get useful information from the ratings, great. That's what we hope happens. If you look at a rating and say, 'Boy, these were obviously all written by the staff in this guy's office', then take it for what it's worth." PersonRatings.com
PersonRatings.com
PersonRatings.com was a website where users could rate and review individuals, regardless of profession. The site allowed users to read about and rate others on a range of qualities, including trustworthiness. The site purported to be a "Yelp about people" . Anyone was free to log on and...
founder Jeremy Stamper echoes this sentiment, advising site users to "take a person ratings profile with a grain of salt."
In effort to resolve the issue of biased reviews written by the party itself being reviewed, the Power Reviews Verified Buyer solution verifies whether the person writing the review has actually purchased the product.
Professional review sites
Aside from sites that enable users to post reviews of products and services, there are also those that work on a "professional" or "expert" basis. Some of these sites commission, and pay for, named individuals or bodies with expertise in a particular field to provide their review material, while others hire in-house editorial staff to perform these reviews. By endeavouring to maintain independence and objectivity and allowing their writers' credentials and site ethos to be scrutinised, such sites avoid many of the above-mentioned criticisms aimed at user-review sites. For example, the UK consumer advocacy organisation, the Consumers' Association, offers Which?Which?
Which? is a product-testing and consumer campaigning charity with a magazine, website and various other services run by Which? Ltd ....
, a site that carries no advertising but covers all manner of products and services, with reviews and ratings often based on exhaustive independent testing. Another type of review site does not provide free-form text reviews, but instead evaluates a particular class of products, services, or businesses using a set of pre-defined criteria. One such example is the Canadian shopping site Wishabi
Wishabi
Wishabi is a Canadian online shopping platform that is owned and maintained by the Wishabi corporation. Wishabi's mission is "to give Canadians the best tools to make informed shopping decisions"....
, which reviews merchants on 42 criteria and displays the results in a series of icons. This second type of professional review site tends to provide a better platform for comparative analysis, but at the expense of reduced flexibility and richness.
See also
- Employer review website
- MyEduMyEduMyEdu is a private company founded in 2008 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, United States. MyEdu works by collecting data from college students, as well as official academic data from universities, to identify patterns that lead to unexpected costs...
- Rating sites
- Reputation managementReputation managementReputation management , also known as directory management, is the process of tracking an entity's actions and other entities' opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop. All entities involved are generally people, but...
- Reputation systemReputation systemA reputation system computes and publishes reputation scores for a set of objects within a community or domain, based on a collection of opinions that other entities hold about the objects...
- Trust metricTrust metricIn psychology and sociology, a trust metric is a measurement of the degree to which one social actor trusts another social actor...
- Star (classification)Star (classification)Stars are often used as symbols for classification purposes. They are used by reviewers for ranking things such as movies, TV shows, restaurants, and hotels. For example, one to five stars is commonly employed to categorize hotels.-Restaurant ratings:...
External links
- Review Websites at the Open Directory ProjectOpen Directory ProjectThe Open Directory Project , also known as Dmoz , is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape but it is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings...