Fact Sheet
- Company Name: The Ratings Guy, LLC.
- Located: 12,000 square foot barn in Belfast, Maine USA
- Category: Human Social Search
- Launch Time/Date: 1AM GMT-5, April 2nd, 2007
- Launch Location: Worldwide
- Product Launch Schedule: Currently live in 8 vertical markets with the Internet’s most popular lifestyle categories.
- Founder: John Morrow
- Previously: Senior VP of HealthGrades (NASDAQ::HGRD), Sr. VP HCIA (NASDAQ::HCIA) HCIA was purchased by VS&A for a reported $135 million; CEO of CHKS, Ltd.
- Investment: Self-funded
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Q&A with TheRatingsGuy.com’s founder John Morrow
- What got you started with ratings, rants and reviews in the first place?
- There is too much data and not enough information involved in web searches. By creating qualitative reviews of websites, users can weed out all of the garbage found on-line and get to the greater sites sooner.
- With so many search engines, why revert back to human search?
- We use librarians because they are the original search engines. How much information is enough? After all, you don’t need to read the entire library to learn about a single topic. Search engines use sophisticated algorithmic formulas to find relevant results. Based upon our experience, a search result that returns hundreds of millions of “relevant results” is not helping very much!
- How many websites do you expect to rate?
- We will rate and review thousands of websites, not hundreds of thousands.
- Don’t consumers have enough options?
- This is just our point, too many options, too many results, and not enough qualitative evaluation to provide real benefit to consumers. What we lack in quantity, we make up for in quality.
- How do you rate each site?
- We receive nominations from the public and requests from website operators. We then incorporate that into our own editorial agenda and independently evaluate and review sights against our proprietary criteria. We are looking at over 50 different characteristics that determine quality trust and experience with websites. If a website exceeds our benchmarks, they get recognized as a Great Site.
- How do you remain unbiased?
- That is the easy part. There are so many websites to evaluate, and you are only as good as your last review. We developed standards and we continue to use and improve those standards to create higher expectations.
- What is the business model? I don’t see any advertising on the site.
- Websites pay an administrative fee to request a review, and only if they achieve benchmark performance, they then are invited to join our benchmark network, where we collect membership fees.
- Why are you doing this?
- Jupiter Research reports that 41.2 percent of users report that general search results are often not directly relevant to queries, and 18 percent leave a search engine without having found the information they were seeking. We wanted to build a place to go to get quality recommendations about information content, much like you get at your local library.
- What is the mission of The Ratings Guy?
- Our mission is to get consumers to the great sites sooner.
- How is this different from vertical search?
- Vertical search is a move in the right direction, and likely good for B2B search. For consumers, they have common needs and seek information on-line for an array of personal lifestyle topics. We can be helpful in most of the common categories, and always present options that are thoroughly checked out. It saves time, and provides connections to websites that always deliver.
- How is this different from a directory site like DMOZ or Yahoo! Directory?
- Once again it is about quality, trust and experience. We only recognize those sites that exceed our benchmarks. We are always looking for the best, not for quantity.
- How is this different from other Web 2.0 initiatives?
- We will always personally evaluate nominated sites. We are not dependent on the submissions by consumers, but we welcome their personal recommendations.
- Why not just use Google, MSN, Ask or Yahoo?
- If you are an expert at search and are familiar with search syntax, then please go ahead, as you will have the largest database of results. However if you don’t know how to qualify your search results down from millions, then you will appreciate the help that The Ratings Guy provides. I just Googled “health” and got 900,000,000 results. That’s really the main reason.
- How do you plan to promote The Ratings Guy?
- We will continue to work with the mainstream media and provide helpful content for distribution to readership at no cost. Everyone wants to have the favorites recorded somewhere. You can always find the Great Sites at TheRatingsGuy.com.
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High Resolution Pictures
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TheRatingsGuy | Home Page |
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TheRatingsGuy Great Shopping Sites | Listing Page |
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TheRatingsGuy Great Travel Sites | Review Page Download Hi-Res Version (4x6, 300 dpi, CYMK TIFF image in .ZIP file, 1.5MB) |
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TheRatingsGuy Great Site Seal Download Hi-Res Version (2x2, 300 dpi, CYMK TIFF image in .ZIP file, 1.5MB) |
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Press Releases
2007-11-05 Great Travel 2.0 Websites
2007-10-29 The Ratings Guy - Health
2007-09-24 Top 20 Health Plans Websites
2007-09-24 The Ratings Guy™ Rates Health Plans Websites
2007-07-25 Top Gardening Websites
2007-07-02 Spicy Food Websites
2007-05-30 New Father's Day Websites Named by The Ratings Guy
2007-05-30 Foodie Alert - The Ratings Guy Names Top 30 Food Websites
2007-04-30 The Ratings Guy™ Names 30 New Great Websites for Mother's Day Gifts
2007-04-23 Trashy to Trendy: The Ratings Guy™ Names Great Shopping Sites
2007-04-17 New Great House & Home Shopping Web Sites Named by The Ratings Guy
2007-04-13 Call for Entries: Great Health Web Sites by The Ratings Guy™
2007-04-10 New Awards for Great Travel Web Sites by The Ratings Guy
2007-04-02 Great Web Sites Recognized by The Ratings Guy™
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Professional Biography – John Morrow
John Morrow is the co-founder of TheRatingsGuy.com, a consumer lifestyle information and ratings company.
Morrow was senior vice president of Health Grades, Inc., a consumer health ratings and marketing services company, rating hospitals and doctors across America. He was a member of the executive management team that guided the strategic growth of the business and its consumer and Internet brand. Morrow was recruited to the then de-listed company where shares were lightly traded for $.04 and departed the NASDAQ listed company three years later with shares trading at $7.00.
Morrow was senior vice president and publisher with HCIA (now Solucient, part of Thomson Healthcare) for nine years. Morrow identified businesses and products for acquisition; led the Syndicated Products business unit and the International business unit; directed the out-licensing of the company’s intellectual property; managed business relationships with the big 5 consulting firms; formulated highly visible brands such as 100 Top Hospitals and HealthcareLink.net and created or managed co-development and marketing alliances with major corporate business partners such as McKesson, Siemens, Cerner Corporation and WebMD.
Morrow founded “100 Top Hospitals: Benchmarks for Success” which was produced by HCIA and thrives today as the leading hospital rating and benchmarking initiative. As publisher for HCIA, Morrow has published in the areas of inpatient outcomes, performance measurement, longitudinal analysis, ambulatory outcomes, clinical quality measurement and cost management.
Morrow was CEO of CHKS Ltd, HCIA’s UK-based subsidiary. Morrow returned to the U.S. to assist with the packaging and sale of HCIA, ultimately to merchant banker VS&A for $135 million.
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Contact
John Morrow
Principal
Phone: 207-338-0440
Email: info@theratingsguy.com
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