Party Rave Becomes Reality

Party Rave Becomes Reality
Mark Rimmer

By Martin Kelly

A CONVERSATION at a party just a few months ago has led to the creation and launch of a local business search engine revolving around user reviews – Rave About It.

The site, which is at this stage focuses on Sydney but will potentially go national within three months, is a collaboration between founders Tim Griffin and Mark Rimmer.

“We were regular users of reviewing sites in Australia such as Eatability (where users review restaurants and bars) and thought it would be great to have a site where a whole range of services could be reviewed,” Rimmer said.

“We’d also seen the growth of similar sites (such as Yelp) in the States.”

Rave About It (www.raveaboutit.com.au) is currently populated with around 20,000 businesses, utilises Google Maps and has been up for a couple of months.

“I’d say we are a halfway between the Eatability model and Yellow Pages,” Rimmer.

Now the challenge is to grow present modest traffic rates and with it the Rave About It community – a real challenge give that the venture is self-funded.

“We noticed that Yelp really started getting a lot more reviews when they received some investment.”

Rave About It will be free for businesses to list for the next six months, after which it intends charging businesses for listing priority.

By then a review weighting system will also be in place – giving respected reviewers greater credibility

Copyright Search Engine Room
January 31, 2007

 

Latest News