How?

We use a +1 model, that is, each time a user votes for a business the total votes go up by one for that business. So the more votes a business has, the more people have said that they liked it. Each user is allowed to vote for a business only once (which is why you need to register to vote). This is done for integrity reasons. Our users told us that if they couldn’t trust the system, then it didn’t matter how many votes a business had.

Why?

The usual objection to this is that people want to vote negatively as well. On the surface this seems completely reasonable, but there are 2 main reasons why we didn’t. The first and biggest reason we went with a +1 model is that people are far more likely to give, and look for, positive ratings than negative. We’ve done our own research into this (which unfortunately I can’t go into) but others have shown that positive ratings tend to eclipse negative ratings. The second and lesser reason is that being a business directory, we need to be a little sensitive to those businesses.

It also makes sense if you just think about it – when you’re asking friends where you should go for dinner, your friends will tell you about places they like. They might occasionally tell you about places to avoid, but the recommendations far out number them.

So that’s why we’ve gone with a +1 model, after all Yellow Lab is an area to try things out.

What’s Affected?

At the moment the number of votes a business has won’t affect your search unless you explicitly say so – which is done by sorting your results by votes (instead of the default ‘best match’). We have had considerable discussion on whether the number of votes should influence the best match result – there are reasons for and against. Two of the stronger ‘against’ reasons are location searches (I want the closest, not necessarily the best) and reputation (did those 5 people that like that restaurant like the same food as you, etc.).

If you want to see what effect there is, you can compare these 2 searches for a cafe in south melboure: sorted by best match and sorted by votes.

So hopefully that’s given yo a little background on our voting system. if you’ve got any more questions or comments about it, feel free to ask them in the comments section.

Cheers,
Dan.