Microsoft’s Bing has tapped ResellerRatings to provide online merchant reviews for the shopping search results. ResellerRatings is a ratings site that includes more than 430,000 consumer reviews of online sellers and merchants.
ResellerRatings both includes reviews of online retailers, such as Newegg, TigerDirect, DiamondShark, Buy.com, and B&H, and also allows these retailers respond to customers that submit reviews. Merchants can solicit customer reviews by using a pop-up check-out survey, can contact reviewers directly to resolve issues, view related product invoices, flag reviews from non-customers and post public replies to help influence customer service and satisfaction. ResellerRatings claims that its reviews have influenced more than 10 million purchasing decisions within the last year.
Of course, this isn’t an exclusive partnership. ResellerRatings reviews are syndicated on Google Product Search, TheFind.com and ShopWiki.com, and other shopping search portals. ResellerRatings was developed and launched by Scott Wainner in 1998. He later sold it to EarthWeb, then re-purchased it from Internet.com.