Merchant Circle has allowed me to gain a little bit more notoriety and power inside of google especially. I believe the wisest decision for any of these websites, something of which none of them do (as far as I know) is to create numerous lead capture pages with different domains. MerchantCircle already has some google power but for them, I see it as if they made every listing that is already listed, presented in different ways across different domains, they would be more valuable to their customers they represent, and furthermore, more findable for consumers who use their services which the listed businesses represent.

I would actually spend money in such a case, but I don’t find it an overall value to spend money to list myself in numerous towns/cities. Perhaps some way for a company to list themselves around the United States with a great sum of money to confirm that they are worth such a listing.

These are all things to think about.

As for Zagat, when you walk into a bookstore in any major metropolitan area what guide do you see? I’m pretty sure zagat might be even more entrenched than it was 10 years ago as the definitive guide to metro restaurants. When you think about it, hasn’t zagat been doing the whole user review thing for years? Maybe you think the currently the _overall_ quality of user generated reviews is poor. In that case all user review based companies suffer.

We actually won a Top 3 Award NEXT to Yelp, as Newcomer of the Year and a Top 100 Private Company by AO Media out of a pool of more than 1000! It’s been an exciting 7 months.

Exactly. I know of a moving company which is doing quite well out of Yelp in San Francisco. I put them there with a glowing review five months ago. The problem –as they know– is that once their competitors see Yelp, they will start flaming them, and there go their calls. Even one less-than-ecstatic review (perhaps from someone who has unrealistic expectations) will massively and immediately reduce their response.

And what happens when unpaid Yelp reviews makes a company so popular that they can’t handle the business? How are you going to sell them an ad? You’ve just killed your prospective client! This has already happened with several hairdressers in San Francisco

I also agree that yelp is for hip, young people. Those people will move on once the bridge and tunnel crowd gets there (if they ever do).

And how deluded is the person who thinks that Zagat is written by professional diners who have eaten at many good restaurants? That may have been the case 10 years ago, but now Zagat reviews are written by people who have never eaten anything except pizza in Peoria. Those reviews are then edited/”polished” by profesional copywriters at Zagat HQ in New York. Zagat is finished as a reliable dining guide for major metropolitan areas. (That doesn’t mean they can’t make money. They’ve still got a few years left in corporate gift sales).

Watch for MC in the deadpool soon, the review sites are going to sue the heck out of them for ‘aggregating’ content.

The local space is crowded and bound for some heartbreak, here at MerchantCircle, we’re counting on being the most value positioned company for businesses and not consumers. There’s a lot of reputation management needed for businesses and we’re here to simplify the process.

Here’s to hoping everyone lands on their feet!

I run an entire network of site on a shoestring under our flagship site : http://teachtopia.com name that includesthe podcasts http://lawithkids.com and http://childrensbookradio.com

Besides plugging my work…what I am trying to say ..is that sites don’t always need huge staffs … What matters is good content.

To the companies that failed: No need to take this PERSONALLY!!!!! It takes a lot of guts to start something. Even if you failed at the end, you learnt a valuable lesson! I know so many people who went bankrupt before they make their millions. They told me that their failure was the key to their final success!!!!

I would rather fail then never try!! Many people play it safe and just sit around waiting to see other’s failures. This kind of life is not worth living and will be full of regrets!

I guess in the end other people’s opinions and information just aren’t that interesting.

Personally, I think Yelp is drawing dead. The amount of money it will take to make this website mainstream in 25 or so cities, you could not recoup that on a CPM basis. There are viable ways to make that website useful, but I’m not sharing them.

As I said before, if there are a critical mass (decide what this # is, but it certainly isn’t 3 or 4) of reviews on a product or service, there may be some value. However, you won’t get this locally. Just look at those sites (Yelp’s, IP, etc) for yourself. It all really about statistics really. If the sample size isn’t large enough, the results are almost never reliable.

As for niche plays like travel, I don’t care what someone thinks of a hotel — unless of course 75 people all reviewed the same hotel and ranked it. That is useful — but again, NOT local play like the Yelp’s.

The other “business model” problem with UR (user review) sites is the double-edged sword of reviewing local businesses. You will inherently get many bad reviews with the good (if you even get people to participate in the first place). Good luck selling ad space to local advertisers when your site contains reviews they disagree with. It won’t happen. Then all you’re left with is 15¢ CPMs for “get the latest ringtones”…. and not far from the Dead Pool after that.

#14 “User-generated “review” sites are complete garbage as businesses.” – what about CNET and TripAdvisor?