The new search feature will be interesting for people who just want to find out interesting things about their friends or get together a Tolkien-loving crowd for an LOTR video-watching marathon. But what it’s really going to do is open up the vast hoard of Facebook data and eat the lunch of a thousand large and small companies that make money by aggregating and rating what people do and where they go.

Here are just a few examples:

Yelp

Yelp is essentially a social business directory with ratings, strong in entertainment industries like restaurants and bars, but growing in local services like home and automotive and beauty. Now Facebook’s Graph Search will let a billion-plus people type in search queries like: ”Restaurants in San Francisco liked by Culinary Institute of America graduates.”

Likes are much lower-fidelity than reviews, but still: watch out, Yelp. (Yelp’s stock just tanked.)

TripAdvisor

I guess having a partnership with Facebook and being one of the first travel sites to integrate with Facebook’s “instant personalization” back in 2011 is not enough to stop Facebook from competing with you.

All that new local search capability that competes with Yelp is also relevant to TripAdvisor. Hotels in New York that my friends like? Most popular vacation destinations in North America?

And it’s not just about what you and your friends like — Facebook explicitly referenced ”Bars in Dublin liked by people who live in Dublin,” which is a promising way to find the places locals like, explore the world, and find the best places to visit.

Plus, it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump from that to full-on booking the hotel or setting up a reservation with the restaurant, all within Facebook.

Yellow Pages (and any other local search apps)

OK, so maybe the printed Yellow Pages are passé.

But millions still visit YellowPages.com, which had over 30 million unique visitors just last month. Once there, they’re looking for dentists and carpenters and mechanics and decorators and roofing companies: all the local services that haven’t, by and large, adopted Facebook pages and hard-core social media campaigns yet.

Now Facebook will let you find ”Dentists liked by my friends,” and any other service category you can think of. RIP single-function local search sites and apps?

Apple’s Siri

The least of what Siri does is help you phone Mommy without dialing.

The vision for Siri is that as a full-fledged personal assistant, she can help you book hotels, get a restaurant reservation, and find you the best information about what to do and where to go. Siri is a key part of how Apple is fighting Google’ dominance in search.

But now Graph Search from Facebook has the potential to get better answers and find more relevant places, because it has access to a wealth of data Siri can never see.

Can you imagine Facebook releasing a companion app sometime with natural spoken language support and booking deals in place with entertainment, travel, and service industries? I can.

And, of course, Google

Google is the king of search, but Facebook took a little potshot at the giant today by talking about the “difference between web search and Graph Search,” saying that Graph Search is designed to “show you the answer and not links to answers.”

The hope for Facebook here is that if users can search for all the things they want and need inside Facebook; they will never need to leave. And Google, with its Facebook-wannabe Google+, will be starved of searches and then starved of revenue.

. . .

More companies than these will feel the impact of today’s Graph Search announcement, I’m sure. Add your thoughts in the comments.

But one caveat: Until we can get our hands on Graph Search and play with it hard, it’ll be tough to tell how much of this is real and and how much is potential.

One thing is for sure. It’s going to be interesting.

Image credit: Meghan Kelly

If your answer is never, you’re probably 75 or older and think “yelp” is a sound a dog makes.  But for the rest of us, we know that reviews are critical in influencing purchase decisions.  So critical that someone even started a business writing favorable book reviews called GettingBookReviews.com (charging, of course, $99 a pop).

If you’ve ever thought about paying for inauthentic endorsements like this, you better pump the breaks because third party review sites are now making it as obvious as Snooki’s spray tan that you’ve invested in fake reviews.

Yelp recently created consumer alerts for business pages that remain for 90 days when they sniff out phony reviews. The alert reads the following: “We caught someone red-handed trying to buy reviews for this business. We weren’t fooled, but wanted you to know because buying reviews not only hurts consumers, but also honest businesses who play by the rules.”

Similarly, TripAdvisor says they have “zero tolerance for fake reviews.” If they believe that a hotel review is contrived, they will remove the review, ensure that the property is penalized in the site’s rankings, and possibly even post a message alerting millions of travelers on what they’ve found.

Considering the clout online reviews hold in consumer purchase behavior, it’s no surprise that some business owners feel compelled to invest in sham reviews:

• A one-star increase on Yelp leads to a 5% to 9% increase in revenue (source: Michael Luca, Harvard Business School).
• 70% of global consumers trust online reviews, an increase of 15 percent in four years (source: Nielsen).
• 80% of consumers change their mind after reading a single bad review (source: Cone Communications).
• One negative review can cost you 30 customers (source: Convergys).
• 7 in 10 who read reviews share them with friends, family & colleagues thus amplifying their impact (Deloitte & Touche)

But here’s the bottom line:

A few “positive” reviews won’t stop customers from continuing to complain about your crappy service or overcooked food. Instead of taking the easy (and sleazy) way out, listen to the concerns your customers are voicing and improve your business. Social media and third party review sites have put the power in the hands of the consumer. Forever. If companies don’t become customer-focused, customer-centric, customer-obsessed, they risk tarnishing their brand reputation and ultimately, losing their company.

 How to improve online ratings the honest way

The problem that many business owners face is that reviews on third party review sites might not legitimately reflect the satisfaction of their customers. Many know they have happy diners or guests; but as the saying goes, “Haters gonna hate.” Pissed off customers are sometimes more inclined to write a damaging review while the satisfied customers will recommend the restaurant or hotel at a cocktail party instead of putting their praise online.

Here’s the solution:

Find those customers who are enthusiastic about your brand, product, or service (AKA your authentic Brand Advocates), and make it drop dead easy for them to write raving reviews.

1. Ask your customers via email, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, website, or elsewhere: “On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our brand to your friends?” Those who answer 9 or 10 are your Advocates.
2. Give Advocates the tools to rate and review your product or property, or direct them directly to the relevant third party review site where they can give you a 5-star review.
3. By identifying your Advocates, you’re creating a virtual marketing force that you can leverage for much more than just reviews. They’ll gladly share offers or other announcements like a new location opening, a new chef, or a remodel of your hotel with their social networks. They’ll create personal stories about how they rekindled their love at your resort or made a new friend with one of the gregarious employees who waited on them.

Whatever you do, don’t pay for reviews or recommendations of any sort. There is no longer room for businesses that don’t understand the importance of authenticity and transparency in the era of social media.

Instead, tap into the enthusiasm of your highly satisfied customers and empower them to fight negative word of mouth for you.

By Cara Fuggetta, Marketing Manager, Zuberance (@carafuggetta)

photo credit: Dave77459 via photopin cc