Your feedback please on my new web service, ZoomGet

[zhango]

Hey Smart People - my new web service has launched, and I'm eager for any feedback and critiques people may have. ZoomGet searches and sifts through millions of products on Amazon.com, looking for those with the most positive, helpful reviews. It's meant to save time shopping, and help you find great products for yourself or others, especially if you use the reviews at Amazon.com to inform your shopping decisions.

ZoomGet - from trusted reviews to top products


Thanks in advance for any comments!

[Brutha]

The value in amazons reviews doesn't lie in the positve reviews.
There are to much fake positive reviews out there to give them any attention.

The way to use amazon reviews is to read them for the Pro and Cons of the product and afterwards decide yourself whether the Pros or the Cons are more convincing.

[zhango]

Originally Posted by Brutha

The value in amazons reviews doesn't lie in the positve reviews.
There are to much fake positive reviews out there to give them any attention.

The way to use amazon reviews is to read them for the Pro and Cons of the product and afterwards decide yourself whether the Pros or the Cons are more convincing.

Brutha: I agree - that's why the layout on the ZoomGet product page is the way it is, with the most helpful positive reviews vs. the most helpful critical reviews. That's also why all reviews are not included, only the best. Did you try viewing a product page?

[Brutha]

You are still listing books on an arbitary criterium (who has the most active marketer).

[zhango]

Originally Posted by Brutha

You are still listing books on an arbitary criterium (who has the most active marketer).

I don't follow your reasoning. While it is possible to game Amazon.com as a marketer (which I've certainly seen), and hire people to register as customers, buy the book/product, then write fake reviews, I don't believe the majority of products at Amazon.com have a majority of fake reviews. Do you actually believe this is the case? Do you have evidence?

People can also readily write negative reviews on Amazon, and a marketer can't do squat about it. ZoomGet filters give negative reviews more attention, since a helpful negative review is often very helpful.

Finally, ZoomGet's filters does not treat all reviews equally. Some reviews are clearly better than others, and people vote on Amazon reviews all the time. While Amazon has less controls in place on review-voting than on writing a review (which you can only do if your have purchased the product in your account), there are still controls in place for that too. Just try voting twice on the same review at Amazon.

ZoomGet's approach, BTW, is explained on the About page of the site.

[mustard76]

Originally Posted by zhango

I don't follow your reasoning. While it is possible to game Amazon.com as a marketer (which I've certainly seen), and hire people to register as customers, buy the book/product, then write fake reviews, I don't believe the majority of products at Amazon.com have a majority of fake reviews.

Actually, in my experience, the accuracy of the amazon's reviews depends on the number of reviews for a product. If a product has less than 10 reviews and they are mostly positive, I assume they are fake. If a product has 100+ reviews then most likely enough of them are real that the star rating is accurate.

There is an easy way to test our theories about the usefulness of Amazon's reviews. Choose 5 books you've read that you loved and choose another 5 that you hated. Then, check the reviews on Amazon (or just the star ratings). I've noticed that for books I've read with 100+ reviews the star ratings are accurate.

ZoomGet lists the number of reviews for each item.

[pianoperformer]

Yeah, I disagree that the reviews aren't useful. I always look at the reviews before buying, and your service is very useful for that. I think I'll begin using this when I want to buy something from Amazon.

[zhango]

Originally Posted by mustard76

Actually, in my experience, the accuracy of the amazon's reviews depends on the number of reviews for a product. If a product has less than 10 reviews and they are mostly positive, I assume they are fake. If a product has 100+ reviews then most likely enough of them are real that the star rating is accurate.

There is an easy way to test our theories about the usefulness of Amazon's reviews. Choose 5 books you've read that you loved and choose another 5 that you hated. Then, check the reviews on Amazon (or just the star ratings). I've noticed that for books I've read with 100+ reviews the star ratings are accurate.

ZoomGet lists the number of reviews for each item.

Absolutely - that's one of the major tenets of ZoomGet. Products with too few reviews are dropped, because one needs a sufficient sample size of reviews to infer anything about the inherent quality of the product. Same principle applies for whether to consider a review as trustworthy or not.

I've found that the number of reviews needed to be able to "trust" the star rating depends on the kind of product. e.g. a narrowly focused book on engineering may only have a handful of reviews, but if each one was written by someone serious and professional, that could be enough. Also, Amazon uses a simple average for its ratings which can be imprecise and inaccurate, and sometimes even a lot of reviews there can't be trusted - one has to look at the content of the reviews too.

[zhango]

Originally Posted by pianoperformer

Yeah, I disagree that the reviews aren't useful. I always look at the reviews before buying, and your service is very useful for that. I think I'll begin using this when I want to buy something from Amazon.

Great, good to hear! If you find or think of anything that could be improved, please let me know, either here or via PM, thank you.