ResellerRatings.com, a provider of syndicated reviews of online merchants, is joining with Microsoft Corp.’s Bing search engine to give shoppers access to more than 430,000 customer-generated reviews of retailers. Bing previously provided consumers with product reviews only.More than 570 online retailers, including Newegg, TigerDirect, DiamondShark, Buy.com, B&H Photo Video and Auto Parts Direct, work with ResellerRatings to monitor and respond to reviews, the company says. Another 23,000 retailers are listed on the site.
Shoppers can view the merchant reviews by going to the Bing shopping page, locating a product and then clicking on a link next to the average rating (such as, three out of five stars) for each store listed. The expanded listing shows detailed ratings for each merchant in areas such as pricing, shipping, customer service and returns.
“It includes a link back to our site if the consumer wants to read the full-text reviews that people have written,” says Scott Wainner, CEO of ResellerRatings.
Stores can be submitted for review on ResellerRatings by either consumers or the retailer at no cost. Retailers can post replies to customer reviews and request e-mail notification when new reviews are posted.
Merchants subscribing to the ResellerRatings fee-based premium services can solicit customer reviews by using a pop-up checkout survey, contact reviewers directly to resolve issues, view invoice numbers of reviewers, flag reviews from non-customers and post public replies to reviews.
Review submissions are screened by ResellerRatings with a fraud filter designed to block fake reviews, and suspicious entries are verified with reviewer-supplied order number data.
“We chose ResellerRatings as our first provider of online merchant reviews because they are a leader in review quality and merchant reputation management,” says Michael Paulson, Bing director of product management. “This is a great way to help consumers make more informed purchase decisions.”
In addition to Bing, ResellerRatings reviews are syndicated with Google Product Search, TheFind.com and ShopWiki.com, and others.
In April, ratings and reviews vendor Bazaarvoice partnered with search engine giant Google Inc., to enable its 800 retailer and manufacturer customers to display ratings and reviews from their web sites in Google search results. The reviews appear in Google Product Search, Google’s shopping search engine, and on Google.com, both in natural search results and paid ads placed through Google’s AdWords system.