As ubiquitous as mobile, local search has become, it’s a rare treat to see it on the front pages. Then again, it isn’t every day that a local pizza shop owner gets nationwide visibility from an old fashioned presidential campaign stop. Whatever the politics, Big Apple Pizza owner Scott Van Duzer’s hoisting bear hug of president Barack Obama last week has proved the power of local reviews and the double edged sword of viral visibility. In this week’s On The Radar, we’ll give our two cents, and get caught up on Zagat on the anniversary of their acquisition by Google and the launch of a new mobile local platform that takes different approach to reviews.
Yelp Response to Presidential Body-Slam
Alright so it was just a hug. Scott Van Duzer, owner of Big Apple Pizza in Ft. Pierce Florida was photographed lifting president Obama into the air in a (secret service permitted) bear-hug.
The problem is, with presidential elections around the corner, political temperament is at an all-time high. The result is that, following this national media attention, people both left and right winged began leaving comments on their local listing. Many of these comments hail from locations quite a bit outside Big Apple Pizza’s delivery zone.
Some who are against Obama have bombarded their listing with 1-star reviews. In retaliation, supporters have come back with 5-star reviews. Although some of them are filtered, there are quite a few that get through, and the back and forth that’s resulting is abusing the system and giving an unfair representation to Big Apple Pizza.
Two things to take from this: maybe Yelp needs to tighten up their filter to prevent things like this from happening and business owners have to remember the consequences of publicity when their businesses are on forums open to the public.
Google-Zagat: The Young Couple’s First Year
It’s been a year since Google has acquired Zagat and we’ve talked at length about the entire Zagat debacle. It seems to keep coming up, if not in relation to Google+ Local, then as a model for other sites. Kyle Claypool of Optimal Worldwide has taken the time to recap Zagat’s growth and how far it’s come in the past year.
Kyle goes on to highlight when Zagat ratings began appearing on organic search listings and when Zagat information began to appear in the expanded results panel that pops up on the right of Google search results.
But the data regarding Zagat’s site growth is the most revealing. Acquisition of Zagat has provided little to no change in traffic a year later (albeit there have been some dramatic dips in between). Yelp, one of their top competitors, on the other hand has seen steady growth in the past year.
It seems that the acquisition of Zagat has done little to help the rating system itself. Its restaurant focused approach has been a cause for concern in the Google+ Local realm and is being tackled equally well (if not better) by up and coming restaurant targeted rating systems like OpenTable.
Livestar Mobile Review Launch
Just when you thought there were enough review sites for everyone, another one comes along. Livestar is a local review service that allows users to see reviews on locations they’re interested in checking out. Sounds like the same old thing, right?
Well it turns out that Livestar has a different philosophy. They know that people like to see reviews from either people they know (like friends and family) or authority reviewers.
When a user searches for a location, the recommendations are sorted by group. Let’s say the user goes to a location and they don’t agree with the review of a particular source, they can choose to ignore that source for reviews on future local searches. This way, users can built a repertoire of reviewers with whom they share similar tastes and can trust to point them to locations the user will be more likely to enjoy.
This review system is new and refreshing, but only currently available for the iPhone.