BooRah - Inside the Buzz

The New York Times provides an overview of the recent fury last week about Wine Spectator awarding an “Award of Excellence” to a non-existent restaurant. So it appears the “Award of Excellence” is a cozy little sharade where Wine Spectator makes a lot of money ($1M, according to the NYT), and restaurants get a little “boost” to their business from the award — so what’s wrong with that? The only ones harmed in the process are consumers, who perhaps expect the award to mean something more than it actually does, and are disappointed when a dining experience doesn’t live up to their expectations.

So, who should a consumer trust? It raises a broader question about online credibility, reviews, and credentials — not only was Wine Spectator scammed, but the perpetrator (and his friends?) posted fake “reviews” about the restaurant on the restaurant discussion board Chowhound. So, if it’s so easy to game the system about a restaurant’s credentials, what’s a consumer to do?

Each restaurant site has its own methods for ensuring “trustworthiness”, some obviously better than others. At BooRah, we feel there is inherent value in seeing all the perspectives about a restaurant in a single place (even including the restaurants’ own view). This multi-sourced approach means that the inevitable “gaming” that’s being done will be more visible to the consumer. For example, if the same user is posting similar reviews about a restaurant across multiple sites within a few days of each other, that fact will be readily apparent for what it is when the reviews are seen right next to each other. Further, the sheer number of reviews that are collected will tend to “drown out” the outlying activities by a gamer, forcing the amount of effort that’s required to “game the system” to go up — now a gamer has to post reviews across dozens of sites, not just a single site. Of course, any system can be gamed - we see visibility and transparency by aggregation and summarization of content on the Internet playing a very important role in helping to minimize the impact of this gaming.

Last week was the annual gathering of search engines and folks from search industry at SES in San Jose. It is amazing to see how mature the search industry has become by seeing 1000’s of people show up even in a down economy. Many of the key industry thought leaders including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others were present to share their ideas and thoughts.

Here are  my top 3 takeaways from the conference:

1. Search enhancements continue to focus around relevance and engagement. Relevance is highly dependent on user intent and search engines are spending a lot of time analyzing ways of getting to user intent. I was on a semantic search panel and we had a very thoughtful discussion around the future of open search and how semantic search could increase relevance for consumers. Here’s some very good coverage about the session by San Francisco Chronicle, InternetNews.com and ClickZ about the session.
2. Long tail is becoming highly relevant and more companies are beginning to capitalize from search and advertising perspective. There were a couple of sessions that discussed how advertising on the long tail networks such as looksmart or quigo could be significantly advantageous compared to the larger networks ( although the volumes still aren’t available). Consumers are also beginning to explore the power of search engines by trying long tail queries specifically for products and local services. Infact we here at BooRah are also seeing a decent increase in long tail volume for restaurants.
3. Though mobile wasn’t a big topic nor was local search, many of the keynotes and other panels discussed how small businesses were still behind the 8-ball and how newer phone platforms such as IPhone were really driving adoption ( not just in the major metro areas but also middle America). Kelsey group hosted a couple sessions around these themes and were very informational.

I could only attend the first day and a few other sessions of interest, but all in all, the conference was very well organized with some good keynotes and networking opportunities. Thanks to staff of SES for a great conference!

With the high price of gas and other goods, it’s always nice to be able to save money — so we here at BooRah want to do our part.  We’ve launched even more ways to save, now with Entertainment.com coupons for local restaurants.  BooRah now features discounts, coupons, and other offers for over 28,000 restaurants across the US, the largest collection of restaurant discounts in a single place.  Want to look for restaurant discounts in San Francisco?  Simply type “discounts” and “San Francisco” in the search bars on BooRah.com, and we’ll give you a list of all the restaurants in town with discounts — and we’ll even sort the list by the most popular restaurants, so you don’t get stuck with a bad experience.

BooRah’s portfolio of discounts now includes many ways to save — like 2-for-1 entrees,  20%-off savings coupons, discount Gift Certificates (ie, buy a $25 gift certificate for $10), free appetizers, and loyalty rewards of free gift certificates and free drinks after a certain number of visits.

Now, there’s no reason to stay at home — you can eat out, and save money at the same time with BooRah.

BusinessWeek has a small business story titled “Where Customers go to Praise(or Bash) You“. And we’re excited to be profiled along with some other leading players in the space. Online reviews are becoming a very valuable resource for consumers to make their buying decisions. Small businesses are beginning to recognize the impact of online reviews and understanding strategies to manage the online word of mouth.

BooRah focuses on building a community between restaurants and consumers. The customer loyalty product for businesses enables them to collect comments from customers (favorable or critical) and selectively publish them. These are comments that diners are making for restaurant owners, not reviews being written publicly on the BooRah site. Additionally, they also drive repeat diners by rewarding them for their loyalty. Check out more about restaurant loyalty programs

I’ll be a panelist at SES San Jose 2008 along with Yahoo, Ask.com, Powerset and Hakia on a session about Semantic Search. Semantic technologies are becoming increasingly relevant in our lives and it’s timely that the folks at SES have decided to create a track for this topic.

Here’s the summary of the session title “Semantic Search: How will it change our lives?”

As search dominates our Internet use, this session will explore the new generation of semantic technologies that look to radically change the future. Different companies have taken different approaches to increasing relevance and improving quality of search results. From true natural language search being pursued by companies like Powerset/Hakia, to vertical-focused semantic companies such as BooRah and Uptake, this session will discuss how consumers will benefit directly from these new sets of Internet destinations or enhance experience on existing search engines. 

Please join me and other speakers for this session on August 18, 2008 at 11:15 AM.  See you there.

If you’re a restaurant owner or employee who’s considering writing fake reviews of your restaurant on review sites, watch this short video by Gordon Ramsey first (excerpted from the TV show Kitchen Nightmares):

(by way of Pegasus News).

And, in all seriousness, be sure to take a look at the debates that are going on in the blogosphere around what constitutes a “fake” versus “real” review (be sure to read the comments in addition to the main article posts):

http://gesterling.wordpress.com

http://www.solaswebdesign.net

http://www.sfgate.com

http://cbs5.com

We at BooRah seek to show you all of the reviews, from as many different sources as we can, so that you as a restaurant consumer can make up your own mind as to what’s “real” and what’s “fake”. And if you’re a restaurant owner, we have programs to help you gain real, direct feedback from customers that you know have actually dined at your establishment.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week on the Bennigan’s chain shuttering it’s 200 company-owned locations of Bennigan’s and Steak and Ale.  What wasn’t broadly reported outside of the WSJ article, however, is that 138 of their franchise-owned locations will stay open — at least for the time being.

So it appears the 138 still-remaining Bennigan’s have the challenge of letting people know that yes, they are still open!  (Like this one, these ones, this one)

We here at BooRah are happy to help out the owners/managers of any of the remaining Bennigan’s to get the word out.  Feel free to post a comment here or drop us a line at info@boorah.com with the location and your contact info and we’ll make sure that your listing on BooRah is updated to reflect that you are in fact still open.  And any Bennigan’s owner/manager who contacts us in this way will get a free month of advertising with a sponsored listing on BooRah with the notation “We’re still open!” on it.