When to trust, and not to trust an online review

Salon has a great article today that talks about the reliability of online review websites. Or more specifically, the un-reliability of these sites.

One of the sites that the article looks at is Yelp. Yelp has scared the pants off your local yellow pages company by bringing to the web not only a dynamic way to find local businesses but by adding a social networking component of ratings to listings. The phone company used yellow page directories to give you the ability to make a call, companies like Yelp let you make your connections within the directory.

But the problem the advertiser finds, and the one focused on in today's Salon article, is that the reviews are given the same level of legitimacy as the content of the listing. Meaning that while your store may sell the best chocolate ever made, if someone doesn't like it, they can talk badly about your chocolate to your customers at the point when those customers are making their decision to buy from you.

As with all things online, it's important to keep an eye on the reviews of your business. They will always tell you something about how people are viewing you. And knowing how people view you is just one of the things AdSymetrix does.

AdSymetrix can let you know when someone has contacted you through any listing, any advertisement, anywhere. And knowing how they're finding you helps you find out what they're thinking about you.

Give AdSymetrix a try, sign up - and email and click tracking - are free .