Startup Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Why Citysearch STILL Reigns Local Search Supreme

By DONNA BOGATIN • May 12th, 2008 • Category: BIG PICTURE

As a member of the “Big Thinkers” panel at the Kelsey Group Interactive Local Media Conference last November in Los Angeles, I underscored how our nation’s local merchants control the future of the $30 billion local ad sales opportunity.Incredulously, however, the New York Times’ “star” technology beat reporter, Saul Hansell, appears to be unaware of the economic power that resides in the purse stings of tens of millions of owner/operated restaurants, bars, salons, shops and service providers across our fifty states.

The Fortune magazine hailed “PayPal mafia“ ruled Yelp “local reviews site” now counts the NYT in its PR corner. Hansell hails he now yawns at Citysearch, not Yelp, because CITYSEARCH HAS FIVE TIMES THE TRAFFIC OF YELP AND IS EAGERLY SELLING HIGH COST ADVERTISING TO LOCAL BUSINESSES, while Yelp puts citizen “reviewers“ on a UGC pedestal as the nations local paying consumers and hard working local businesses are second and third string contenders.

Hansell concludes his PR replay by replaying Yelps’s Jeremy Stoppelman‘s ethos that “reviewers“ rule, no matter content or quality:

We put the community first, the consumer second and businesses third.

NO WONDER that Yelp “isn’t profitable,” then! Who needs advertising! In the Yelp “playbook.”

Yelp obviously is playing the Ning-Twitter “viral loop” VC card, hoping to rally another few million “Yelpers” in time to flip the site for a few hundred million.

While Hansell put forth the familiar Yelp claim that it “didn’t try to pay for reviews, as some sites have,” NYT commenters nevertheless noted the “truth” that is Yelp:

I know several people who got paid to write reviews for yelp when they started trying to increase their presence in Portland.
— Posted by Michael P.

I have spoken to people who have been paid by Yelp to contribute reviews when they first launch in a new city. They continue to do so albeit on a smaller scale when that city has been established.
— Posted by vanguyafo

Contrary to Stoppleman‘s Yelp, the Citysearch UGC merchant review system is quality controlled from the very top, the President’s office.

I met with Jay Herratti at the Kelsey Conference to discuss how Citysearch aims to help both merchants and consumers “make sense of” and “sort out” the burgeoning, and increasingly cacaphonous, world of online user generated content in the local space.

I asked Herratti if, and under what circumstances, he WOULD agree to remove a consumer review. Citysearch consumer review decisions are based on its explicit Terms of Use, Herratti told me. Unacceptable review content includes:

Offensive, harmful and/or abusive language, including without limitation: expletives, profanities, obscenities, harassment, vulgarities, sexually explicit language and hate speech (e.g., racist/discriminatory speech.),
References to illegal activity, malpractice, purposeful overcharging, false advertising or health code violations (e.g., food poisoning, foreign objects in food, etc.),
Reviews submitted by the reviewed business’s employees (past or present) or competitors as determined by Citysearch,
Reviews that do not address the goods and services of the business or reviews with no qualitative value (e.g., “this place is great!”) as determined by Citysearch in its sole discretion,
Reviews commenting on other users,
Content that contains personal attacks or describes physical confrontations and/or sexual harassment,
Excessive damage caused by business or service to person or property,
Personal information or messages including email addresses, URLs, phone numbers and postal addresses,
Messages that are advertising or commercial in nature, or are inappropriate based on the applicable subject matter,
Language that violates the standards of good taste or the standards of this website, as determined by Citysearch in its sole discretion,

In addition to assuring standards of “good taste,” Citysearch assures its IAC shareholders that it is actually in the BUSINESS of local reviews.Venture capital backed, Web 2.0 “cool” apps, however, have the economic luxury of catering willy nilly to their non-paying users for years, regardless of cost or ulimate lomg-term economic consequences.

Luckily for our economy, though, mature, for-profit enterprises, both online and off, run their organizations in rational manners that respect and support all constituencies, in particular consumers and businesses, the lifeblood of our country.

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