Review websites: any credible ones out there?

CraicBerry

Having used menupages.ie to post a negative review of a restaurant (I also posted some positive reviews of others so its not all one-sided) I got to thinking about some of the more general review websites and their usefulness.

When I google some businesses I seem to get a lots of hit on Yelp, Qype, Truvo and a few others. Question is, how credible are these reviews? One of those sites only seemed to have a small number of glowing reviews. I know it's hard to judge the quality of such websites so what are other peoples experiences?

dozi

Some are probably credible - but remember many of review sites reward people who write reviews - therefore if you see that a person has written tons of reviews they are probably doing it for the money/reward. Check around for sites that don't reward registered members once they have written x number of reviews, as in my opinion these reviews would be more credible

rubadub

If you type the restaurant name in quotes in google with the :.ie function it will only show .ie sites with that name, then you could stick review in too. Then use plus signs. But put quotes in if the restaurant is more than one word.

e.g.

+shanahans +review site:.ie

http://www.google.com/search?complete=1&hl=en&source=hp&q=%2Bshanahans+%2Breview+site%3A.ie&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Or
+"green dragon well" +review site:.ie
http://www.google.com/search?complete=1&hl=en&safe=off&num=30&q=%2B%22green+dragon+well%22+%2Breview+site%3A.ie&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

This can sometimes get blog sites with "real" people reviewing, or forums similar to boards.ie or boards itself might have comments about places in the food section.

Boards is quite heavily moderated and any shilling (i.e. restaurant owners trying to say their place is great) are usually sniffed out quickly enough.

Trinny_Wicklow

I don't really use any of the official review sites. Some appear to be scewed due to negative posts being deleted. If you google the product / place and do a bit of looking around you will probably find people talking about it on different forums. At least on most forums people are honest and its not moderated. Well sometimes!

CraicBerry

Good to see I'm not the only skeptical one. I figured there was some shilling going on on menupages because the overall ratings are just too good and negative reviews are hard to find. In fact, I found they seem to push certain restaurants and what I search for doesn't show up.

Qype and Yelp seem to have a small number of people writing a lot of reviews but they cover a lot more than restaurants. For me, the jury is out on these.

I learned from someone who used to work there that Truvo.ie is owned by the Golden Pages. He reckoned judging by the thinly disguised user names that the employees were probably writing a lot of the reviews (nearly all glowing). Given that they are trying to sell advertising to the businesses they are reviewing you can hardly rate them high for credibility.

I'll just do what rubadub says: google like hell. If I have more bad experiences I'll just post them here.

godtabh

I use cnet.co.uk for most of my review

Outkast_IRE

ya cnet for electronic/software