Howdy, Manufacturers!

Jon Hoch, Founder of Power Equipment Direct, here again with another edition of our video series on our brand new Manufacturers' Portal. Today we're going to be talking about, "What is the difference between a rating, a review, and a recommendation?"

So customers are eagerly seeking out this information, and where do they go to get it? They actually go to Google, and they type in things like "best inverter generator." Google then actually recommends some websites to go to for this information.

So you can put an ad in there. Amazon's got an ad, we've got an ad. But what customers are really looking for is what site is actually the best site for this information.

Now, you'll notice that Electric Generators Direct, one of our sites, actually ranks above consumer reports and consumer search for this query.



So a lot of the customers click on the #1 listing, and they go to our article written by our Product Expert, Mike Sawisch.

So when you type in "best inverter generator," what are you looking for? Are you looking for a recommendation? Well, Mike will give you one.



So, we have top compact inverter generators in good, better, and best format. But you might be looking for "best selling generator," right?

So we have the ability to do that. And if you shop our site, you'll notice that we list all of our products by the best selling, and obviously the higher on the page you are, the more eyeballs you'll get going forward.



But we actually take it one step further. We put together a ratings algorithm that blends all of this data and information together to come up with a recommendation for you.

So say for example, you're looking for an inverter generator for around $1,000. We have four products that meet that criteria. And I'll walk you through our algorithm so you can better understand this real quickly.

Imagine you just launched a brand new masterpiece - a new engineering marvel. Kohler came out with a new inverter generator, but it has no history. There's no reviews, there's no information, so therefor, we cannot put a ranking on it yet.

So this Champion's been around for a while. It's got one customer review, but it's not enough data to determine what the letter grade and the quality of this product really is.



So what we do is we take a couple different factors. We take our product experts' opinions, we take our buyers' opinions, we actually take your opinions if you write a review on our website. We put that information in there as well.

And then eventually we'll get enough reviews and it'll be able to come up with whether the grade is an A, A-, B+, C, or whatever. The ranking is real time, and it changes based upon how people are feeling about this particular product.



But in our next video, we're going to take you to the next level and show you what you can do to:

1. Establish a ranking, and
2. Make sure you're getting really good grades going forward.

NEXT: Reputation Management: How to Improve Your Reputation on Our Sites