The Place of Review Filters in Local Search | We Build eCommerce ...

Posted by David Mihm

In its recent report on "Yelp's Rocky Relationship with Small Businesses," PBS Media Shift was the latest mainstream media outlet to cover one of the most controversial topics in all of local search: search engines' filtering of customer reviews.

The topic first came to prominence four years ago in Kathleen Richards' landmark piece on Yelp's aggressive sales pitches -- or extortion, depending on your perspective and whom you believe. While I was never fully convinced of corporate misbehavior on Yelp's part, the company hasn't done itself any favors by continuing to allow its field operatives to use?deceptive sales tactics. Despite?its best efforts to educate?both business owners and everyday users of the site,?the poor reputation of Yelp's salespeople continues to contribute to confusion around review filtering among the small business community. I hope to be able to clear up some of that confusion with this post and offer a few tactical tips to help avoid the frustration these filters can cause.

Why review filters exist

As local search usage among the general public has exploded over the last several years, more and more directories have (rightly) seen reviews as a way to:

• Gauge the offline popularity of a business in their algorithms
• Provide better insight to searchers into the experience at that business
• Increase the "stickiness" of their sites by increasing the sense of community
• Get out of Google's Panda/Farmer purgatory by adding unique user content

In many ways, Yelp was ahead of its time on all four of these bullet points, and as a result, it had to tackle the inevitable review spam that accompanied its popularity. ?

Its answer was arguably the first widespread local review filter: an algorithm for detecting and removing spam or suspicious-looking content. ?In Yelp's own words:?

For those of you who couldn't quite keep up with Yelp's version of Micro Machines man, the primary reasons are:

• To make sure reviews are left by actual people (not robots)
• To make sure reviews are left by customers?and not just hired third parties
• To make sure businesses don't leave reviews of themselves

Yelp's CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman, recently gave his own slower version of this rationale in a company-produced video:

How review filters work

While I don't have any detailed knowledge of Yelp's review filter specifically, many comparable filters seem to kick into action if any of the following is present in the content of the review:

• Use of extreme adjectives or profanity in the review
• Over-use of keywords in the review
• Inclusion of links in the review

Another criterion that also tends to trigger filtering is a sudden burst of reviews preceded by or followed by a long lull between them.

Some of the more sophisticated review filters, including Yelp's, take a look at user characteristics, too, including:

• Total number of reviews a user has left on the site
• Distribution of ratings across all of a user's reviews
• Distribution of business types among all of a user's reviews
• Frequency of reviews that a user has left on the site
• IP address(es) of the user when leaving reviews

The bottom line is that reviews written by active users have an astronomically-higher likelihood of "sticking" on a local search engine than those written by first-time or infrequent reviewers. And even beyond their stickiness, many local search experts (including myself) speculate that reviews left by active users also influence rankings to a much greater extent than those left by first-time or infrequent reviewers.

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Problems with review filters

?

?I Can See the Future of Your Google Reviews?by Margaret Shulock is licensed under a?Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at?blumenthals.com

The algorithms behind review filters are far from perfect, as many readers probably know, and Yelp is far from the only local search engine with a review filter. In fact, Google+ has probably accrued more ire from business owners?as a result of its filter in 2012 and 2013 than any other site. ?

Unfortunately, these filters frequently:

• Lead to?less-informed consumer decisions?about the experience at a business
• Remove legitimate reviews, especially from less-sophisticated, less-active customers
• Discourage new users from leaving reviews

All of which leads to frustration from the standpoint of a small business owner.

Avoiding review filters

Yelp is probably the most aggressive of its peers at enforcing its business review guidelines, which also happen to be the most onerous guidelines of any local search engine. ?Yelp's filtering is so aggressive that one in five reviews written on Yelp never shows up on the site!

To sum up those guidelines:

• Don't ask anyone to review your business on Yelp.
• Don't ask anyone to review your business on Yelp.
• Don't ask anyone to review your business on Yelp.

O ye business owner who disobeys those guidelines, beware! ?You run the risk of a public shaming. ?

Although Yelp's guidelines are considerably more onerous than its peers', Google+ is?not far behind in stringency. However, many local search engines are far less prickly about soliciting reviews from customers, or even incentivizing them, and some (including Google) have even engaged in this behavior themselves.

For those who have been caught in the Google+ review filter, Mike Blumenthal has covered your travails?par excellence?and has?authored a most reasonable response. Miriam Ellis and Joy Hawkins have also given excellent advice on this front. ?

Review guidelines at major local search engines

Here are direct links to those guidelines at a few of the biggest players:

The review filters of the future

While the search engines may throttle their level of filtering?from time to time, the review filter is a local search institution that is?here to stay. ?

The primary methods of these filters, though, I think will change pretty dramatically. Rather than judging a review by its content or looking at website behavior (e.g. how many reviews a user has left for other businesses), the explosion in smartphone adoption is enabling a couple of far less easily-manipulated criteria to judge the veracity of a review.

• Any local search platform operated by a handset maker (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, ...Amazon?) could register the device ID at the time of review and tie it to a bonafide human being.
• Any local search platform that has implemented mobile payment processing (Google, Apple, ...Amazon?, any Square/PayPalHere partner) could disable the ability for a user to leave a review of a retail-category business unless he/she had completed a transaction at the storefront.

And even for those platforms without the handset or payment-processing advantage, requiring location-awareness for users of mobile applications prior to leaving a review seems like a no-brainer (which Yelp has already implemented and Google may be well on its way to doing).

For those sites that are more desktop-dependent, widespread adoption of primary?social logins?(Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) could lead to a baked-in layer of spam-fighting. ?

As Eric Schmidt?recently said:

?Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.?

In some industries (e.g., DUI law, plastic surgery, psychology), anonymity may be a pre-requisite for any user reviews and these local search platforms may need a Plan B. But for most industries, requiring some sort of verified social profile would solve a lot of problems.

Facebook, of course, has a huge leg up on everyone else based on its knowledge of a user's social connections. Google+, meanwhile, could look at a user's activity across Google's entire range of products (web search, Gmail, YouTube, etc.) to stop spammers in their tracks. ?

While consumer privacy concerns around these mechanisms for review filtering may arise, many business owners would likely rejoice at a truer, less bug-ridden filtering algorithm and a more accurate and complete representation of their customers' experience.

Well, that's enough out of me for this week! How about you? What are some of your strategies for avoiding these dreaded review filters? What other methods of filtering do you see coming to Local Search?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Source: http://www.austinecommercewebsites.com/2013/02/26/the-place-of-review-filters-in-local-search/

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Mexico arrests head of teacher's union on fraud charges

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico arrested the head of the main teachers' union on fraud and embezzlement charges on Tuesday, striking out at a high-profile opponent of the new government's reform efforts and seeking to assert President Enrique Pena Nieto's authority.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo said Elba Esther Gordillo was arrested on suspicion of embezzling millions of dollars of union funds for private use, just a day after Pena Nieto signed a major overhaul of Mexican education into law.

Prosecutors accuse her of using intermediaries to move money to bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, then back to the United States, where it was used to buy property for Gordillo in San Diego, works of art and plastic surgery.

"Clearly, we're facing a case in which the money of education workers has been misused illegally for the benefit of various people, including Elba Esther Gordillo," Murillo said. "Under this government nobody is above the law."

Gordillo, known as the "The Teacher" in Mexico, is known for her expensive clothes and lavish lifestyle. Critics have for years accused her of corruption.

She was detained at Toluca airport near the capital on Tuesday evening with three other people.

The 68-year-old has held a firm grip over the teachers' union, whose 1.3 million members make it one of the most powerful in Latin America.

She has long been viewed as an impediment to education reform in Mexico, and one of Pena Nieto's first acts in office was to push for a major revamp of the education system.

Gordillo's union fought against Pena Nieto's new education law, which aims to limit union control over hiring and teaching standards in a bid to improve school standards.

Pena Nieto also plans major changes to the Mexican tax system and state oil giant Pemex, a company with its own powerful union that has been accused of corruption.

Gordillo's arrest mirrors the removal of her predecessor Carlos Jonguitud 24 years ago by then-President Carlos Salinas, who took office pledging ambitious reforms, similar to the changes Pena Nieto has vowed since taking office on December 1.

Like Salinas, Pena Nieto belongs to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century and returned to power last year after 12 years on the sidelines.

The blow to Gordillo harks back to the days when the PRI governed under a strong presidency that brooked no dissent.

Gordillo, was born into poverty in the south of the country and started working as a teacher at 15.

Widowed at 18, she moved to Mexico City, befriended the union leader of the day and began her ascent through the organization's ranks. After Salinas became president in 1988, teachers' protests broke out over wages, and he turned to Gordillo to bring order, naming her union boss.

Gordillo was a heavyweight of Mexican politics and at one point led the PRI in the lower house of Congress. She quickly thwarted government efforts to decentralize education, give parents a bigger role and weaken the union.

But she fell out with PRI leaders ahead of the 2006 presidential election and founded the small New Alliance Party.

(Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Dave Graham, Kieran Murray and Jackie Frank)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mexico-arrests-head-teachers-union-suspicion-fraud-022004391.html

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Tenet swings to profit as hospital visits rise

(Reuters) - Tenet Healthcare Corp on Tuesday reported a fourth-quarter profit versus a year-ago loss as outpatient hospital visits increased and said it sees health reform next year will have a positive impact on earnings.

An estimated 26 million people, many of them now uninsured, are expected to obtain coverage through health insurance exchanges being set up under the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Tenet, the No. 3 for-profit U.S. hospital chain, said it has traditionally served a larger number of uninsured patients than other publicly traded chains. This burden is expected to diminish as those patients are insured through the exchanges, beginning in 2014.

"We see a lot of upside in our markets," Tenet Chief Executive Trevor Fetter said on a conference call.

Fetter said Tenet recently signed its first contracts with three Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans for health insurance to be sold through the exchanges, covering about 30 percent of its hospitals. The plans have a similar structure as its commercial contracts, with a pricing discount of less than 10 percent from current rates.

"Where we have accepted any discount at all, it is for additional market share," Fetter said.

Tenet posted fourth-quarter earnings of $49 million, or 45 cents a share, compared with a loss of $76 million, or 70 cents a share, a year earlier, when the company took a large charge for the early retirement of debt.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased 16.7 percent to $336 million. Net operating revenue rose 7.3 percent to $2.33 billion.

Tenet reiterated its outlook for 2013 EBITDA of $1.325 billion to $1.425 billion.

In the fourth quarter, Dallas-based Tenet said adjusted patient admissions rose 2.9 percent, with outpatient visits up 7.3 percent and outpatient surgeries climbing 13.9 percent. Total admissions were flat, while emergency room visits increased 8.6 percent.

Uninsured and charity admissions rose 1.1 percent. Bad debt expenses as a percentage of revenue was 7.9 percent, up from 7.7 percent from a year ago, as more uninsured patients sought treatment, Tenet said.

Tenet shares were down 1.4 percent at $37.12 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Susan Kelly in Chicago; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Maureen Bavdek and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tenet-swings-profit-outpatient-visits-rise-134540702--sector.html

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Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 Is Finally Available for Download

Windows 7 users are finally getting Internet Explorer 10. They'll be auto-upgraded in a few weeks, but you can go ahead and download the updated browser starting today. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/MHWkuA1PxM8/internet-explorer-10-for-windows-7-is-finally-available-for-download

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Comments - Columbia Faith & Values

You?ve made your picks for the Sweet Sistine, right? If you haven?t, check out the RNS papal brackets.

(Papal basketball fun fact: Pope John Paul II was an honorary member of the Harlem Globetrotters. True.)

This is a brutal tourney. Just look what happened to Scottish Cardinal Keith O?Brien. Had to resign after sex-abuse allegations.? . . . . And then there were 115. (Cardinals of voting age in the conclave.)

Picking the pope ain?t for the faint-hearted, David Gibson explains.

It?s also not for the tardy. Cardinals who have not already booked their flights to Rome better hurry up, as Benedict XVI, who resigns on Thursday, has decided to allow the College of Cardinals to waive the usually required 15-20 day waiting period between the end of the pontificate and the beginning of the conclave.

Benedict will be ?His Holiness Benedict XVI, Roman pontiff emeritus? in retirement. He gets to keep the cassock, but will lose the red shoes.

Benedict?s critics say he leaves a holy mess at the Vatican.

For the new pope?s eyes only: the Vatileaks investigation report.

Send peanut butter, says New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, if the conclave meets past Palm Sunday.

Read the rest of the roundup?for the latest in other religion news, such as apologies -- including the one Fox News made to Wiccans.

Source: http://columbiafavs.com/faith/leaders-and-institutions/tuesdays-religion-news-roundup-sweet-sistine-pontiff-emeritus-sorry-wiccans

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Iran scoffs at Oscar-winning 'Argo'

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) ? Iranian officials on Monday dismissed the Oscar-winning film "Argo" as pro-CIA, anti-Iran propaganda, but some young, moderate Iranians welcomed it as a fresh view of recent history.

The movie, based on the escape of six American hostages from the besieged U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, has not been screened in any Iranian theaters.

But many Iranians have seen it nevertheless. In downtown Tehran, bootleg DVDs of "Argo" sell for about 30,000 rials, or less than $1.

The movie has set off a spirited debate that exposed a generational divide.

Iranians who took part in the 1979 Islamic Revolution picked apart the portrayals of Tehran at the time. But those too young to recall the events had a different view.

"I want to know what the other side is saying," said Shieda, a 21-year-old University of Tehran student, who gave only her first name for fear of a possible backlash for speaking with foreign media.

Tehran City Council member Masoomeh Ebtekar ? who was one of the students who occupied the U.S. Embassy and acted as the spokeswoman for the captors? says the film exaggerates the violence among crowds that stormed the compound in November 1979.

Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days, but a handful of Embassy staff were sheltered by the Canadian ambassador. Their escape, using a fake movie as a cover story, is recounted in "Argo."

Ebtekar insists the hostage-takers were mostly students. But other accounts suggest militants and members of the country's powerful Revolutionary Guard were involved.

Iranian Culture Minister Mohammad Hosseini criticized the film.

"The movie is an anti-Iran film. It is not a valuable film from the artistic point of view. It won the prize by resorting to extended advertisement and investment," he said, according to the official IRNA news agency.

He said Hollywood has "distorted history" as part of what Iranian officials call a "soft war."

Iran's state TV called the movie "an advertisement for the CIA."

The semiofficial Mehr news agency called the Oscar "politically motivated" because first lady Michelle Obama at the White House joined Jack Nicholson via video link to Los Angeles to help present the best picture prize.

In contrast, retired teacher Reza Abbasi who saw the Revolution first hand, said the film was realistic.

"I know Hollywood usually changes reality to make it attractive for movie lovers, but more or less it was close to the realities then."

Others said "Argo" shows the need for Iranian filmmakers to deal more with issues from the Revolution.

The moderate Hamshahri newspaper said the movie "targeted the culture and civilization of Iran," but it is worthwhile for Iranians to see a different perspective of the events that led to the collapse of relations between the U.S. and Iran.

"Iranian audiences are seeing a new version of the events for the first time," said a commentary in the newspaper. "This has been a weak point for our TV and cinema industry, which has not produced anything about the (U.S. Embassy takeover) after more than three decades."

Behnam Farahani , 28, a student in Tehran Art University said, he thought competing films "Django" and "Lincoln" were better than "Argo" in terms of structure and theme.

"They deserved more attention. Argo was just a political movie, it was a narration of a political event."

Mohammad Amin Sharifi, a movie fan in Tehran, was less harsh.

"In my opinion, it's a nice movie from technical aspects, and it was on the scale of Hollywood movies. But I don't think it was worth a nomination for Oscar and other awards," he said.

Iran's state-run film industry boycotted this year's Oscars in the wake of an Internet video clip made in the U.S. denigrating the Prophet Muhammad that set off protests across the Muslim world.

The affair was not related to "Argo."

Last year, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi won the Oscar for best foreign film for "A Separation," Iran's first Oscar.

A month before it won, Iranian authorities ordered the closure of the House of Cinema, an independent film group that operated for 20 years and counted Iran's top filmmakers, including Farhadi, among its members.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-scoffs-oscar-winning-argo-094025276.html

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Extremely high estrogen levels may underlie complications of single-birth IVF pregnancies

Feb. 25, 2013 ? Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have identified what may be a major factor behind the increased risk of two adverse outcomes in pregnancies conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Two papers published in the journal Fertility and Sterility support the hypothesis that extremely high estrogen levels at the time of embryo transfer increase the risk that infants will be born small for their gestational age and the risk of preeclampsia, a dangerous condition that can threaten the lives of both mother and child. They also outline a protocol that reduced those risks in a small group of patients.

Both papers addressed IVF pregnancies resulting in a single live birth, not multiple-birth pregnancies which continue to be the most significant risk factor of any assisted reproduction technology. But even single-birth IVF pregnancies are more likely than unassisted single-birth pregnancies to result in premature delivery, low birth weight and other serious complications. In the January 2013 issue of the journal, the investigators at the MGH's Vincent Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology report that freezing embryos of women who had excessively elevated estrogen at the time of egg retrieval, followed by embryo transfer in a later reproductive cycle when hormonal levels were closer to those of a natural cycle, significantly reduced the percentage of small newborns and eliminated the incidence of preeclampsia in a small group of patients.

"We've known for a long time that singleton pregnancies conceived by IVF were at higher risk of these adverse outcomes, but the reasons were unknown," says Anthony Imudia, MD, of the MGH Fertility Center, lead author of both articles. "Now we know which facet of IVF might be responsible, which will allow us to identify at-risk patients and implement ways of averting those risks."

At most fertility centers, IVF involves a sequence of coordinated events that stimulate the ovaries in a way that leads to the growth and maturation of several eggs at the same time. Prior to ovulation the eggs are retrieved for fertilization outside the mother's body. If fertilization is successful, embryos that appear to be developing normally are transferred into the woman's uterus within 5 days of egg retrieval in a process called fresh embryo transfer.

Egg cells grow and mature in ovarian sacs called follicles, which release estrogen, so the development of multiple maturing follicles can lead to significantly elevated estrogen levels. Animal studies have suggested that excessively elevated estrogen early in pregnancy can interfere with the development of the placenta, and other research has associated placental abnormalities with increased risk for both preeclampsia and delivery of small newborns.

In the June 2012 issue of Fertility and Sterility, the MGH team reported that -- among almost 300 IVF pregnancies that resulted in the birth of a single infant from 2005 through 2010 -- the women whose estrogen levels right before egg retrieval were highest had significantly greater incidence of preeclampsia and of delivering infants small for their gestational age. Women whose peak estrogen levels were at or above the 90th percentile had a nine-fold greater risk of a small infant and a five-fold greater risk of preeclampsia than women with lower peak estrogen levels.

To follow up that observation, the MGH team examined how a protocol instituted for mothers at risk of a complication of fertility treatment called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) might affect the apparent risks associated with extremely high estrogen levels. At the MGH Fertility Center, if the estrogen levels for IVF patients exceed 4,500 pg/mL on the day they are scheduled to receive a hormonal trigger of final egg cell maturation -- indicating increased risk for OHSS -- standard practice is to counsel patients on alternatives. These included postponing the procedure until a future IVF cycle or proceeding with egg retrieval and fertilization but freezing the embryos for implantation in a later cycle to allow time for the ovary to recover.

The team's January Fertility and Sterility report compared the outcomes of 20 patients who choose to have their embryos frozen and implanted later because of their risk of OHSS with those of 32 patients with pre-retrieval estrogen levels over 3,450 pg/mL who proceeded with fresh embryo transfer. Only 10 percent of the infants of mothers who choose embryo freezing and transfer in a subsequent cycle were small for their gestational age, compared with 35 percent of the infants of mothers who had fresh embryo transfer. While the incidence of preeclampsia after fresh embryo transfer was almost 22 percent, none of the patients who chose embryo freezing with later implantation developed preeclampsia.

"Our center takes a very individualized and conservative approach to ovarian stimulation, so fewer than 10 percent of our patients had extremely high estrogen levels of greater than 3,450 pg/mL," says Imudia, who is an instructor in Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School. "If other centers validate our findings by following the same approach and achieving similar outcomes, we would recommend that each patient's hormonal dosage be adjusted to try and keep her estrogen levels below 3,000 pg/mL. If the estrogen level exceeds this threshold, the patient could be counseled regarding freezing all embryos for transfer in subsequent cycles, when her hormone levels are closer to that of a natural cycle."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Massachusetts General Hospital, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Anthony N. Imudia, Awoniyi O. Awonuga, Anjali J. Kaimal, Diane L. Wright, Aaron K. Styer, Thomas L. Toth. Elective cryopreservation of all embryos with subsequent cryothaw embryo transfer in patients at risk for ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome reduces the risk of adverse obstetric outcomes: a preliminary study. Fertility and Sterility, 2013; 99 (1): 168 DOI: 10.1016/j.fertnstert.2012.08.060

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/ExYwEf6xmzQ/130225131624.htm

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