The Magazine

Foursquare tests venue ratings in website update

6

on August 23rd, 2012

Remember those toothpaste commercials with claims like “Nine out of ten dentists agree…?” You’ll soon be saying the same thing about foursquare venues, thanks to a new venue rating system the company began testing on their website tonight.

Venues are now rated on a ten point scale based on the number of people who’ve liked and disliked them. They also include the total number of “signals” the score is based on and a general sentiment (i.e., “people like/don’t like/have mixed feeling about this place”). Venues without enough data don’t show a score at all.

Ratings represent foursquare’s latest shot at the local search supremacy of Yelp, which rates venues on a five star scale. At first glance, foursquare’s ten point scale seems to alleviate some the 4–4.5 star centricity of Yelp venues (see the latest XKCD comic) by introducing enough variation to make the ratings meaningful. Highly rated places tend to fall across the 8 to 10 point range.

Along with this update, foursquare has combined search and Explore into a single page, so results are displayed directly on the map and filtered by foursquare’s Explore algorithm. The type-ahead drop-down box has also been broken into more logical sections, hoping to find exactly what users are looking for. The new groupings include a link to the Explore results for the word, venue/page/friend matches, and links to people and page search results. Strangely, ratings do not yet appear on the search results page.

The new ratings make it easy to get an at-a-glance feel for the general sentiment toward a venue as you search on the website. As foursquare tweaks the algorithm, there’s no doubt they’ll be bringing it to the mobile apps, which will put it even further ahead of the rest of the mobile local search apps.

  • Spike

    I manage 4 stores of my own and all the 5 star reviews we’ve had on Yelp have all been filtered. The Yelp filtering system is the worst, by far. I am sure most, if not all, of you agree. Back on the subject, I think this is a nice additive, as it is controlled by the users, and not Foursquare. This reminds me of Google reviews/ratings (that I personally go by).

    • Chris Thompson

      I can’t stand any part of Yelp.

      That said, there is an algorithm that drives this, so I don’t think it’s a pure likes vs. dislikes count. I imagine people who check in more often, have more experience in a category, etc. carry different weights — and that’s a good thing.

  • http://twitter.com/schrfb Natalia

    Hmm that’s interesting, until now you couldn’t love or un-love places you haven’t yourself checked into, I wonder if it’s a bug or is it meant to be like that?

  • Steve

    Will the overall rating be available through the API for developers to leverage?

    • Chris Thompson

      They’re still in a testing phase for the ratings, so it’s not there yet. I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that once it’s a little more stable, those ratings will creep in to the API (they’ll be exposed in the apps, so they have to be in the API). At that point developers will be able to do with them as they wish. A very small percentage of venues are actually rated, though, so I don’t know how much utility they’ll be.

  • http://www.tengoldenrules.com/ Erika Barbosa

    This is a really helpful feature. Why not check out reviews at the same place (app) you are checking-in? Makes sense to me. What does the testing phase entail (i.e. only rolled out to certain cities)?

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