“Citysearch has been a pioneer in the local space, and I can’t wait to explore the potential for where we can take it going forward,” said Salzer. “With the amazing team at Citysearch, we’ll continue to innovate and make it easy for consumers to discover and connect with local businesses.”

Prior to joining Citysearch and Linden Lab, Salzer spent five years in various roles for Activision Blizzard, including vice president of global brand management for the “Guitar Hero” franchise, vice president of global brand management on family entertainment (managing global DreamWorks, Hasbro and Fox games businesses), and director of global brand management on “Call of Duty.” Salzer has also held leadership positions at Electronic Arts and the Clorox Company. Salzer has an MBA in marketing from the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, and a BA in communications and business from UCLA.

In fact, according to our Local Search Usage Study, 59% of all local-business searchers say that ratings and reviews are important while searching for a business. In addition, a recent study by Deloitte showed that 59 percent of internet users believe their purchase decisions are influenced by consumer reviews. With consumers placing such a heavy weight on reviews within their purchase process, businesses are left wondering whether review sites house truly legitimate information or not.

Criticism of Review Sites

Review sites are under a lot of scrutiny as more and more consumers factor them into their purchase decisions, and this scrutiny is not without merit. A multitude of less-than-ideal scenarios can present themselves on review sites, such as:

• Most reviews posted are not verified for accuracy or relevancy.
• Businesses can potentially write their own reviews under a different user name to bolster their own ratings.
• Competitors, disgruntled employees or anyone with a grudge can deliberately slander a business through negative reviews.
• Sites that rely on businesses’ advertising dollars for their revenue can be reluctant to post negative reviews in order to keep good business relationships.
• It has been rumored that some sites offer to hide negative reviews for advertising contracts or money. Alleged instances of this have led some businesses to file extortion lawsuits. In fact, these lawsuits are so prevalent for RipOffReport.com, the site started featuring some rather interesting links.

Are There ANY Legitimate Review Sites?

The short answer is yes; but there is no guarantee that any review site is 100 percent legitimate. However, some reviews sites will rank higher than others. I’ve identified three groups in which all review sites can fit into, and graded each on legitimacy.

Grade A: Professional Review Sites

These types of sites, in addition to allowing consumer participation, conduct their own research or analysis of products and services (in-house or by a third party). The companies behind these sites are usually accredited or seen as trustworthy, and often verify reviews or complaints before they can be read by the public.

This includes: BBB.org, Consumersearch.com and Consumerreports.org.

Grade B: Neutral Review Sites

These sites allow for both negative and positive reviews without soliciting one type over the other. Consumers are given freewill to review and rate businesses they have been to in order to help other consumers make purchase decisions. Most of the time reviews are not verified and are posted immediately.

This includes: Yelp.com, Citysearch.com, local.com, insiderpages.com, Google Place Pages, urbanspoon.com, tripadvisor.com, angieslist.com, amazon.com and many more.

Grade C: One-Sided Review Sites

Review sites that solicit just one type of review from consumers, usually negative reviews. These sites rely on angry or concerned consumers to fill their site content with complaints, scams or warnings about businesses in efforts to “help consumers avoid bad experiences.”

This includes: ripoffreport.com, complaintsboard.com, complaints.com, scam.com, consumeraffairs.com, pissedconsumer.com and many more.

It’s possible that conversations about your business will happen on sites of all grades. Even though you can’t control the legitimacy of the review sites, you can control the legitimacy of the reviews being posted.

Ways to Legitimize Reviews, Regardless of Site Legitimacy

Simple steps can be taken to ensure reviews of your business are seen as more legitimate through consumers’ eyes.

1. Build a presence

Show current and prospective consumers that you want to be on review sites, not that the negative reviews forced your business name out there. By embracing a review site presence, you can show consumers that you’re confident in your business, enthusiastic to hear what consumers are saying and that you legitimately care.

2. Encourage

Encourage all of your consumers to participate in reviewing their experiences. Remember that your business will be considered more-legitimate when you have a healthy mix of awesome, good, okay and even negative reviews.

3. Monitor

Keep a watchful eye on your online reputation; free tools like Google Alerts and TweetBeep are great for catching business name mentions online. Constant monitoring helps to quickly identify illegitimate reviews, which is crucial, since bad reviews necessitate immediate action.

4. Respond

Whether you agree with the review or not, engage the reviewer in a positive way that shows you’re sympathetic to their experience and that you’re truly apologetic for the off-putting incident. Consumers find legitimacy in quick, considerate engagement with both positive and negative reviews.

Check for Credibility

The first four steps take a very proactive approach to ensuring a business has legitimate reviews. But there may be times when you find a negative review on a “Grade C” site. When all of the above fails, try to evaluate the source. Look at the site’s search-engine ranking. If they’re not getting a lot of traffic, chances are not many people are using them as a viable source, so you should ignore this completely, or write a well thought-out response, and then move on. Do not make false, accusatory claims as this will only fuel the review site to cause more controversy.

The bottom line is that you can’t control which sites will review your business. You can control, however, the way in which your reviews come across to consumers. Above all, be proactive and timely with your responses. If that doesn’t work, take the high road and ignore the ones that don’t matter.

MySpace Local is working with a test group of users to enlist a first round of review, and it will beta launch for all users nationwide next month. It enables conversations around content, representing both an evolution in social discovery and a revolution of MySpace’s larger content strategy. MySpace and CitySearch will share the revenue generated on MySpace Local.

Hadley Reynolds, from IDC, said this is the next round of the local information services business, the hard core of most of the newspaper business and the prize for any number of emerging web brands. He added that the local city guide site’s recent strategy is built in part on the perception that the social networks are quickly crowding out newspapers for user eyeballs and cycles, and Citysearch sees an opportunity to recharge its own growth by connecting to a pre-packaged large audience for local content and advertising.

“It’s a smart strategy for MySpace and Citysearch,” agreed Neil Strother, an analyst with Forrester. “It clearly helps the MySpace user connect with local restaurents and bars and allows the two companies to leverage some of that data.”

MySpace Local will generate more immediate advertising dollars for MySpace, said Caroline Dangson, IDC Social Media Research analyst. The biggest opportunity for MySpace Local is on the mobile platform, she said, where users can search for local restaurants and invite friends to join them. MySpace says they are working on rolling this out but did not give a specific timeline.

– Express your opinion, comment below.

Ad inventory across the five companies – Interval International, HSN, Ticketmaster and Lending Tree – will be sold together after the official breakup. The network will be run by Rich Stalzer, IAC Advertising Solutions president.

IAC/AS will offer nine “Audience Cubes,” giving interactive advertisers the ability to target various audience segments. (The cubes include 18-34 year olds, affluents, active shoppers and parents).

“In today’s fragmented media environment, it’s increasingly difficult for brands to implement an effective strategy for reaching quality audiences at mass scale,” said Stalzer. “By and large, advertisers must choose between quality sites and audience reach. With the launch of Audience Cubes, they no longer have to.”

IAC/AS reaches one in three Internet users across its portfolio of brands.

Attorney for the victims, Brian S. Kabateck stated “Most click fraud cases involve companies that simply turn a blind eye to it. Citysearch does this too, since it has no real program to prevent click fraud. But Citysearch goes beyond indifference to actively incentivizing click fraud. Citysearch’s motive is simple: clicks equal cash, whether they’re fraudulent or not.”

Kabateck has won settlements from Yahoo! and Google over click fraud. He also recently filed a federal class action suit against Google for fraud within “AdWords” PPC advertising model.

The lawsuit accuses that Citysearch pays commissions to its sales reps based on the number of clicks a customers’ ad receives. This provides an incentive for click fraud. The suit also claims that the site does not take steps towards click fraud prevention. Once a customer becomes a victim, the company does not properly notify them or refund the money paid to Citysearch for said activity.

Citysearch refuses to acknowledge any blatant indications of click fraud.

Citysearch will provide its content, including user and editorial reviews, promotions, images and video for distribution on Marchex’s local network of over 150,000 local web sites. Marchex will distribute ads from Citysearch’s local advertisers across its local network, which attracts over 26 million unique users monthly.

Jay Herratti, CEO of Citysearch stated “Marchex’s local network will drive highly qualified consumers to our advertisers, and in turn Citysearch user and editorial content will help Marchex consumers make smarter decisions that save time and money.”

Peter Christothoulou, Marchex CSO said “This partnership delivers targeted local traffic to Citysearch advertisers and enables Marchex to further monetize our local Web sites with highly relevant local advertisements across all our categories.”

Citysearch — an online guide with editorial content, user reviews of local businesses and merchant videos – will provide its information across AOL properties, including its CityGuide (a longtime competitor of Citysearch), Local Search and MapQuest. AOL will integrate local ads and content from Citysearch into AOL’s leading local properties – giving advertisers access to more than 57 million unique users a month, according to comScore.

“AOL has the largest local online network and this partnership gives us the ability to enhance our local experience, expand our reach by incorporating Citysearch’s rich local content in our numerous local sites and improve monetization of our local properties through Citysearch’s local advertising network,” said John Kannapell, SVP, AOL Search in a release. “The combination of the enhanced content and reach into new markets will also increase the premium local advertising inventory available to advertisers through Platform-A.”

“This partnership is a classic ‘win-win’ for both companies; Citysearch’s content is great for AOL’s audience, AOL’s reach is great for Citysearch’s advertisers who will gain access to qualified local customers and the ability to deliver a consistent message across the web, and both companies will benefit from incremental revenue,” said Jay Herratti, CEO, Citysearch. “We are thrilled to have high-quality AOL properties and affiliates such as AOL CityGuide, Local Search and MapQuest as part of the Citysearch Local Advertising network.”

The net loss posted by the company came to about $369.9 million or $1.31 a share. This is compared to a net income of $15.3 million or five cents a share according to WSJ.com.

$475.7 million in write-downs at LendingTree and $57.2 million at the entertainment business were included in these results. The previous year saw write-downs that equaled $214 million in the entertainment divisions of the firm.

Barry Diller, chairman and CEO of the company said to wsj, “There is good news and bad news this quarter – the mix of which is another reason why our previously announced plans to reorganize IAC into five independent public companies makes more and more sense.”

The online conglomerate’s business includes properties such as the HSN home shopping network, Ask.com, Ticketmaster, Citysearch and LendingTree.

Revenue at LendingTree dipped 55% due to the recession. Operating losses totaled $508.1 million. The media and advertising division which includes Ask.com, Evite and Citysearch gained 42% in revenue, the report continued.

The entertainment arm had a $57.2 million impairment charge due to languishing fund-raising channels for Sally Foster products and coupons, but saw a 27% revenue increase for Ticketmaster. Various fluctuations within this arm are due to many components, including but not exclusive to the economic recession.

What they do:

Who should buy: Citysearch, which draws over 15 million unique users with 100 million page views per month, is both the a leader in in-depth restaurant information online reaching more than a million monthly restaurant goers, and the number three local directory with information available in every domestic zip code. Over 25,000 pay for performance merchants advertise on Citysearch to drive leads to their business, and the site is the destination for over 4 million monthly local searches on Google and Yahoo! Additionally, 87% of CitySearch users have had some college education, and 57% are college or post college graduates.

Format/How much:
Citysearch offers a variety of advertising options including display buttons, banners, and skyscrapers. More importantly, Citysearch offers a unique local Pay For Performance (PFP) service. PFP optimizes clients who pay the site, and the advertiser and Citysearch define a budget that the advertiser will pay for cost per click. The advertiser who pays the most receives the best optimization and is pushed to the top of search list when users type in defined key words. Once the budget is used up, the advertiser drops back down into the larger searchable list until the budget resumes the next month.

Citysearch also offers special sponsorships for its Best of Citysearch (BOC) polls, which occur five times a year in different categories on the site. The Best of Hotels will begin March 3rd when users and vendors vote on their favorite hotels. The site started the year off with Best of Spa & Beauty and Best of Restaurants, Best of Nightlife, and Best of the Year or Shopping will proceed the rest of the year. Sponsorships are also an attractive option as sponsors receive visibility throughout the site on every page.

Average cost for display buttons, banners, and skyscrapers run $12-$20 per thousand based on volume and the number of pages on which the ad runs. Average click rate for PFP is 75 cents, depending on the business.

Contact:
Robert Cullen
Northeast Regional Sales Director
Citysearch
InterActiveCorp
810 7th Avenue
18th Floor
New York, NY 10019
212.329.0560 office
646.251.8057 cell
212.329.0575 fax
rcullen@citysearch.com