Yahoo

[joker]

I'm surprised more people are not stuffing the ballot box on Yahoo! Local's listings for various businesses. You can log in to Yahoo! and rate businesses in the Local directory.

Now, while some people would abuse this feature with sock puppets, I think it would be better to promote your Yahoo! Local business listing to your customers.

If you give them receipts, fliers, or brochures, ask them to log in and rate your business on Yahoo! Local. Sure, it would be great to have everyone give you 5 stars, but any 5 star listing can be sabotaged. If you have hundreds of ratings and dozens of reviews, you're more likely to achieve a long-term stability and people will perceive your business as being popular.

Frankly, I hope Yahoo! has invested some technology in detecting sock puppetry by IP address, but I'm afraid people will go for the easy pickings. This is a good concept that can work well or be perverted. We should be educating our clients to use the concept properly.
_________________

[dvduval]

I'm getting a bunch of backlinks from the Yahoo local listings on my Atlanta directory site. I don't know why they picked me, but they are providing some nice traffic. I haven't even looked at the rating thing yet. I wonder if I should rate myself. (better not)