MetroSEEQ

The second article is from on the San Jose Mercury News.  A local store received an unfair and unwarranted bad review in YELP but Yelp refused to remove that particular harsh posting.  Eventually, the store owner called the customer to apologize on behalf of the employee who did the mistreating.  The customer was then nice enough to rewrite the review.  However, the posting has already been on the web for some time and irreparable damage done.

To make matters worse, the same shop found their positive reviews removed by YELP.  Long story short, the reason was that YELP had detected multiple positive entries from the same IP address.  Well, in this case, the computer was physically at the restaurant.  People who finish their meal can just post a quick review.  This scenario is hard to untangle for YELP and may never well.

This story shows the complex nature of the internet and its attempt to describe human behavior.  In this case, it is very natural to humans to decipher right or wrong, but the fraud algorithm at YELP cannot, thus leading to the damage.

I am always reminded a comment a friend told me about review sites.

If a customer gets an okay experience at a restaurant (say B+), this customer is less likely to write a review than when it’s a C or even a B-.  Why?  because we are humans, by nature we are lazy, unappreciative, take things for granted, and even vengeful. Unless we have a spectacular experience or something that greatly exceed my expectation, it’s unlikely that common folks will hop online and write a good review without incentives.

This bring the question, are the ratings really accurate?  Who’s rating them?  What kinds of incentives have they gotten?  Why has Boorah become popular with its Natural Language filter to find “real reviews”?  What is the penetration of review fraud?

Morale of the story: If a company build a proprietary system, people will figure out how to cheat. 

Local search is any search made with the intention of finding something in a specific geographic location says Carrie Hill, from Search Engine Watch.  MetroSEEQ is the first and only local search engine that heeds to Carrie’s comment.  Even though it’s a bit slow but it works.  MetroSEEQ is now looking for funding to build a team to achieve its vision.  Anyone interested in being part of this exciting and promising startup, please contact me.

Thanks

Review sites like Citysearch and Yelp have been getting into some legal trouble these days.  In the first story, TechCrunch talks about Citysearch’s rampant click fraud that motivated a class action law suit. Also in the comment section, there’s a very interesting comment posted by “MAD” detailing how Citysearch operates - I can hardly believe why people still advertise with shady companies like that.

The truth is, it is very hard to prevent click fraud.  WebGuild.org estimates click fraud claims 28% of Searcch ads.  When you mesh this number with a company that is purely driven by money (ahem, like MySpace has become) and a proprietary ranking system.  You’re gonna get the perfect storm of fradulent activities and exploitation.

Yelp’s traffic/activity has exceeded Citysearch recently but they have problems of their own.  One example commented by Jane from the same techcrunch article said that Yelp would contact businesses asking for $250 to move the reviews they like to the top.  If you turn down the offer, the bad reviews straight to the top.  Very surprising… let me know your thoughts here.

Moral of this story is- Advertising without efficient tracking/metrics is throwing your money away.

SmallTown.com plans to grows its national presence by partnering up with webcards.com, an advertising platform that enables small and medium size businesses to manage their online presence across the internet without having to reproduce multiple campaigns in different formats on different platforms.

Attracted by the strategy, Nick Ordon, formally CEO of the venture-backed firm Grayboxx and Infotone joins as CEO and President.  Robert Goldberg, board member and investor of local companies including insiderpages (sold to Citysearch recently) joins Smalltown’s board to capitalize on the opportunity.

Here’s my question, have these local companies actually stepped into a mom and pop place whose owners or managers are skeptical of online advertising?  Over 80% of local businesses are small operations across the country and I can assure you, most do not know about online advertising management that webcards wants to accomplish.  Also, keep in mind local shops in the Silicon Valley should not be used as a benchmark for the rest of the country.  I grew up in the Bay Area and now living in Portland, OR, the gap between technology familiarity is just too obvious.  I will give you several reasons why it’s not realistic to expect small business in the rest of the country to hop on the Webcards bandwagon:

1. - They still don’t know how to run a google adwords campaign
2. - They cannot see where their digital advertising go.  (when they can’t see it, it doesn’t really count)
3. - Keyword bidding can get expensive per click.  (forget about asking them to keep track of ROI online, they don’t have time or the know how to set it up)
4. - They know about click fraud and review fraud but rather go with tangible methods they are familiar with such as yellowpages (its sad), direct mailers, and couopon books even though the audience in print is waning.

Yes, consolidating and managing in a single platform is good, but only in select metros where technology penetration is deep.  To win the rest of the county, the barrier has to be even lower… to FREE.  Having worked in the restaurant industry, FREE is their favorite word.  They will do anything that’s free.  Craiglist is free to post, and now metroseeq is free to post - just click on “Add Deal” upon finding your store.

Bottom line - we ought to create technology that adapts to people, not the other way around if you’re thinking big.

I read in couple of places about Menupages’ rumored acquisition.  Analysis of the buyer are detailed in the CNET article.  Here’s the short list in the order :

1. IAC/InterActiveCorp

2. AOL

3. Yahoo Local

4. Google

With IAC being the most likely candidate according to Compete.com

What’s puzzling to me is why IAC would sell Entertainment.com (the big coupon book) in the first place and now wanting to acquire Menupages?  True Menupages is very popular in NYC, but does it have a strong influence outside of it?  Maybe it’s just geo play?

Rumored at $200 million, yelp - a restaurant centric review site now makes $10 million/year.

It’s 4 rounds of fundings are

Round 1: Max Levchin: $1 million, Summer 2004:

Round 2: Bessemer Venture Partners: $5 million, Q4 2005

Round 3: Benchmark Capital: $10 million, Q4 2006)

Round 4 (this round): $15 million, Q3, 2008