Why do on-line reviews seem so important now
After finishing last week's post I decided to chill out and make some decisions about what to read next. As I wrote in my Previous post I was quite enthralled by Richard Thaler's book and looked forward to reading a previous book of his called "Nudge the Final Edition". I was looking to purchase the book from amazon and download it to my e-reader when I got the bright idea of heading to the closest book store and getting a real physical version of the book.. I needed a trip out and since the weather had cooled off a little I decided to hit the road. Having a physical book is nice. You can put it on a shelf and when people visit they will see your book shelf and realize how incredibly smart you are. So Thaler's book will sit on the shelf next to my Peanuts Treasury and outdated Cisco IOS manual. I do need to go through my office and update things a bit. The Peanuts Treasury and Calvin and Hobbes "Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat" will definitely stay but the obsolete I.T. books should go. Also, the 1000 ways to grill meat will stay as well.
I actually decided to put "Nudge" aside for a while and read a couple books for fun. Along with Amazon I also use an app that allows me to access online books from my local library. Since it is a library I can borrow the books for free (free is always good). The app allows me to search for books based on subject matter. I like crime novels so I searched for these and came across a series of books written by Peter Robinson. The main character is Inspector banks and they a set in England. I enjoyed the first book and decided to update Good Reads. I had recently learned how to manually add books to Good Reads so I decided to add some of the library books I had read to my "online" shelf. My physical book shelf impresses people why not impress many more people by keeping my online shelf populated with several status garnering books LOL. While I was in good reads I decided to add "Nudge" to my want to read shelf.
While I was looking up the book I happened to glance at the reviews. I was a little surprised at the first couple of reviews. They were quite critical of the book. These reviews are not going to dissuade me from reading the book and I could not debate the reviewers since I have not yet read the book. It did however start me thinking about reviews and how they affect our decisions. I do have a history with reviews. I was a computer instructor for almost 20 years. I taught mostly 5 day technical classes (Microsoft, Cisco, Comp TIA, etc.). On the last day of class I was reviewed by my clients. I have to say that in general I was fairly and honestly rated for my classes. On a few occasions I was given reviews that were far better than my actual performance. I do however wish I had written a book outlining some of the absolute ridiculous comments we received. One always springs to mind. One client left a comment admonishing us for not supporting the constitution of the United States since our facility was in a building that did not allow handguns. His comment had noting to do with the product he received ( the training class). He stated that since we did not support the constitution he would no longer do business with us. We rented space in an office tower and the owner had posted a sign that hand guns were not permitted on the property. I understand peoples passion over certain issue but come on dude you're here for a computer class not a civics lesson. While I am ranting I once had someone complain that I was just reading from the book, a definite no no in that industry. This was particularly funny since on that day I had forgotten my book and was doing the class entirely from memory.
Now these reviews were not published online like the ones on Good Reads. It is no secret that on line reviews are quite prevalent in our online society. I have often wondered why that is. When I think about online reviews my first thought is the South Park episode were a large segment of the town become Yelp reviewers. Filled with self importance they demand extra attention when they go to restaurants. Cartman as you may have guessed becomes particularly cruel to some of the restaurant owners and workers. The Wikipedia link for the episode is below if you want all the details.
I also had an incident where I gave a bad review. It had to do with poor service on an automobile. I felt that my poor review was justified. I was contacted by the shop owner (or manager) and instead of rectifying the situation I was threatened and guilted to change my review. I did not change my review.
So why are these reviews so important to companies. I do not think consumers think too highly of them. I rarely hear friends base any kind of decision on them. We all give each other first hand assessments but I cannot remember ever being told to not go to a restaurant because of a friend reading a review. Also I cannot remember choosing a restaurant based on a good review. It did not take long to discover my answer. It all has to do with our good friend "Search Engine Optimization", or SEO for short. Search sites such as google and Bing use algorithms that favor new or fresh content. Social media sites such as Facebook use similar logic. As I mentioned earlier we may not pick an establishment based on reviews but we will select an establishment if google ranks it higher in the search results. Think of it. You end up in a new town on a business trip. You spill coffee on your suit and need a dry cleaner. You search google for a local dry cleaner. Chances are you are going to select one of the top 2 or 3 results. One of the main reasons for those particular establishments being at the top are their reviews.
Here is an excellent article giving some insight into how google uses their reviews when optimizing search results. If you are a business owner you should look it over. It provides some helpful hints in using reviews to have your business ranked higher when a consumer is searching for your product or service. I do find it encouraging that Google will reward you for addressing and rectifying a poor review.
Definitely not the yellow pages!
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