BooRah - Inside the Buzz

Building on our previous post, “Location Aware Restaurant Search,” sometimes you don’t JUST want to see the “closest” restaurants, you want to see the Best Restaurants that are Close.  And how near or far “close by” is can depend greatly on where you are, whether you’re walking or driving, and what kind of food you want.

So here’s another clever BooRah application that shows you the Ten Best Restaurants on a Map — that is, we show you your 10 top choices as determined by the area shown on the map.  Zoom in tight on the map, and we’ll show you up to 10 very close-by choices; zoom the map out a bit, and we’ll choose the top 10 based on a broader selection of choices.

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.

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.

Come meet us at SF Beta’s Midsummer mixer tomorrow at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. No specific dress suggested, just come chipper and ready for drinks, friends, colleagues, demos, and all the good stuff SF Beta has to offer. Light appetizers from Sauce Restaurant, San Francisco are provided. BooRah is at demo table 1 between 5 - 7 PM, come by and check us out. We’ll have a draw for a $75 gift certificate towards your favorite restaurant for folks who sign up as BooRah members at the table.

Time.com announced it’s 50 Best Websites for 2008 earlier this week. Even though we didn’t quite make it to the list, we’re thrilled to have received a mention in their evaluation. We know we have a few things to fix to hit the next level of usability for consumers and are working diligently within our constraints to provide a very valuable service. Many thanks to Anita Hamilton.

Last week Peggy Anne Salz also did a very extensive piece about our mobile application on msearchgroove.com. Her perspective on blending social recommendations and semantic search is quite creative and we’re definitely looking into enhancing features in that direction.

WapReview.com also wrote a review about our mobile service and we are humbled by Dennis’ evaluation.

As always, we look forward to valuable feedback from you in building a service that you’ll love.

Restaurant Hospitality Magazine writes about some tactics that restaurant owners could start to use to try to strike back against negative reviews/comments about their restaurant on the web:

“You’ve had to put up with the zero-accountability blogging phenomenon for years. But now a new option has emerged: you can hire an independent, third-party company to manage your online reputation. Their promise: No matter what a disgruntled customer, former employee or competitor posts about your restaurant, the online reputation management company will make it difficult for potential customers to find those negative references on the web.”

We here at BooRah have certainly heard our share of complaints about all the “drive-by” restaurant reviewers out there.   For example, in response to a question posed to panelists at the recent Restaurant Bootcamp here in San Francisco - “Q: What’s the biggest challenge to starting a restaurant?” the answer was a single word: “Yelp”.

So, as a service for restaurateurs, we’ve recently introduced a free service - Track Your Restaurant Reviews. Once you sign up, if your restaurant gets a review written about it, we’ll let you know.

While we don’t condone sketchy tactics like trying to “hide” reviews — in fact, we do our best to provide a cross-source, objective look at all restaurant reviews — what you do next is your business.