Yahoo! Local & Maps Blog

Recently, Harris Interactive conducted a survey for us that studied the “psyche” of the online reviewer.  We wanted to determine what motivates people to contribute to online review sites like Yahoo! Local and we found that the majority of online adults feel compelled to offer their opinion in order to help others in their community through knowledge-sharing, followed by a desire to promote the business and help the merchant succeed.

Based on these motivators, it’s no surprise that three in four online adults (77 percent) agree that sites with online reviews of local businesses are valuable community tools, and one in three adults (33 percent) feel more connected to their community by contributing to online review Web sites.

Needless to say, we’re glad that we’re providing a service that helps connect others and offers invaluable advice when making offline purchasing decisions.  Four out of five online adults (80 percent) are likely to be influenced by a review, and seventy-one percent of respondents at least somewhat, if not strongly, find online reviews helpful in making purchasing decisions.  In addition, one in four adults (29 percent) say their purchasing decisions are either always or often influenced by online review content!  That’s a sizeable percentage of the population.  You can feel good knowing that the reviews you write on Yahoo! Local are helping others in your community make decisions about which product or service they plan to purchase.

We’re also happy to report that more users are influenced by positive reviews than negative reviews (27 percent versus 12 percent, respectively).  These numbers are inline with ones that resulted from a similar study last year and they show that while online reviews are helpful for users, they are also helpful for local merchants.

It’s great to work on such a positive community tool for both local businesses and consumers alike, and these survey results only strengthen our belief in the services we provide through Yahoo! Local.  We hope you’ll continue to find the site a helpful resource and we always welcome your opinions to make the service even better!

Frazier Miller - GM Yahoo! Local

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 10:50 am and is filed under General, Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.