As you can clearly see from the thread below, real food bloggers have an editorial etiquette that they follow. No joe shmoe bloggers either, they are both the most widely read food bloggers in their respective markets according to Urbanspoon:

1 reply

Capital Spice Jul 1, 2011 *

We have a similar protocol at Capital Spice – unless we have primarily positive things to say about a restaurant, we don’t post the write-up.  That’s not to say we won’t point out service missteps or dishes that fall flat…if every review is a gushing love letter it diminishes the value of all write-ups and makes people question your ability to look with a critical eye.  But if we don’t leave the meal with an overall positive impression, we’re not going to write about it.Two reasons:1.  We’re doing this on our own dime, so we frequently post after a single visit to a restaurant.  We don’t have the luxury to visit a place three or four times before writing, so it’s distinctly possible our experience was NOT representative of the restaurant as a whole, whether exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. 2.  We’re doing this on our own time, so we’d rather spend it writing about things we enjoyed in the hopes that others will enjoy them as well.  Why waste time reliving a bad experience? Kudos to Calgary Foodies for choosing to focus on the places they’ve enjoyed, instead of tearing others down to build themselves up. www.capitalspiceblog.com

It’s nice to see some sanity returning to food writers/bloggers. I don’t know when butchering a restaurant online became fashionable, but especially in an economic downturn, it can be a really nasty practice. Because Yelp does little to nothing to put some ethical standard on their blogging community, I don’t believe they will ever have success attracting restaurants to advertise, whether it be their super-high CPC/CPM programs or their new Yelp Deals initiative.

While their traffic is currently at its peak, I think Yelp is on a path towards irrelevancy as local businesses will simply refuse to give them advertising dollars. Once investors recognize that Yelp is toxic to their core advertising base (restaurants), they will jump ship, and it’s quite possible that Yelp will regret not taking the reportedly generous Google offer back in the day.

Where’s the traffic?

When analyzing the affect that Yelp has on your business, I suggest starting with the basics – how much online traffic does it drive to your website? From what I’ve seen, it is minimal when comparing to other traffic sources such as Urbanspoon or OpenTable. Considering that it dwarfs the aforementioned sites in terms of online traffic to the tune of nearly 12 million unique visitors/month, it is reasonable to think that Yelp would re-direct a lot of that traffic outward towards the actual business, but it doesn’t. The main reason is leakage. This means that your restaurant’s Yelp profile has a ton of links directing traffic elsewhere – whether it be other restaurants, ads, etc. This is true for most websites, but especially for Yelp – they’ve taken a page out of the Wikipedia playbook and link just about everything. Why? Because Google likes links, and Yelp is 95% dependent on Google. The proof is in the pudding – my restaurant gets over 1000 uniques from Urbanspoon, and over 800 from OpenTable on a monthly basis. How much does Yelp drive? Less than 200! To put it into perspective, this same restaurant gets over 250/month from toprestaurants.com – don’t feel bad, I never heard of it either until it started showing up in my analytics! In total, Yelp drives a whopping 1.11% of my online traffic.

Ignorance in bliss

Although there are some avid Yelpers that take their craft seriously, most of the reviewers are basically unreliable, and readers understand that. The most you can do is post some nice pictures on your Yelp page, and add some good content where they enable that, but starting a dialogue with Yelp readers is something that even the best PR agency would have trouble with. And while Yelp will try to make you believe that it is worth the effort to engage Yelpers – I will say that they are generally a venomous crowd, and you’re more likely to piss someone off even further than to get them to change their review. And while Yelp blogs about Dan Simons from Founding Farmers replying to every single Yelp review his restaurant has ever gotten, keep this in mind – Founding Farmers is probably the most popular restaurant in Washington DC, and despite Mr Simons incredible customer service efforts, their Yelp rating is still only 3.5 stars.  Compare that to their 4 star ratings on both OpenTable and Zagat, and their 4.5 star rating on Urbanspoon, and it makes you wonder if Mr Simons is simply wasting his time. Based on their great reputation, I strongly suspect that Founding Farmers would have the same exact ranking had they never engaged a single Yelper.

Don’t advertise on Yelp – EVER!

The quickest way to getting bitch-slapped by a bunch of angry Yelpers is to listen to one of their ad salesmen. They’ll tell you that a majority of Yelp reviews are good, and that Yelp is central to a diner’s decision-making process – both are rubbish! Even if a well-intentioned user clicks on your ad, there is so much leakage on your page that the conversation rate is negligible. When I did experiment with advertising on Yelp, I noticed that my restaurant got a swarm of really bad reviews. It didn’t take me long to realize that I was basically putting a big target on my restaurant that said “slander me to death”. The bottom line is that people don’t like ads, and this is especially true on a word-of-mouth network. If you want to generate buzz about your restaurant, promote your page on Facebook, at least there you can control the content.

Perception of value is the key to success on Yelp

Komi and Minibar are the two highest rated restaurants in DC on Yelp, followed by Manouch’s Hot Dog Stand. WTF? I need not say anything about Komi and Minibar, they rank at the top of nearly any list of great DC restaurants, but a hot dog stand? I am a GW alum, and I know that Manouch has reached near legend status on campus, but why does he rank so high on Yelp for top DC restaurants? It’s simple, a hot dog costs pennies compared to upscale restaurant such as Kinkead’s or Ris. The perception of value is super high, and there is little that a hot dog stand can do to underwhelm! Even if the mustard was runny and the onions weren’t cut right – you paid a buck, you quenched your appetite, and you’re happy. On the other hand, if you’re paying $50 a head, expectations are sky high! And generally speaking, people expect everything to be perfect if they’re paying good money (and this is the way it should be). I speak to countless guests at my restaurant that tell me it was the best dining experience they’ve ever had. The problem is that someone doesn’t go run to Yelp when they had a great experience. On the other hand, for the occasional guest that had a lousy experience, the first thing they think is “I’m going to rip this restaurant to shreds on Yelp!”. I understand this sentiment – it sucks when you have a less than stellar experience at a restaurant, and your first instinct is to enact some sort of revenge. Unfortunately, this means that there is more negative than positive on Yelp. Basically, if you have an upscale restaurant, you’re going to get a lot of negative Yelp reviews – that’s just the nature of the beast.

The Yelp Argument

If you bother to write Yelp about slanderous and erroneous comments about your restaurant they will write you back with a whole bunch of canned answers that justify what they’re doing (see my conversation below). The most misleading is when they tell you that 85% of reviews are positive. Consider this, aside from restaurants, Yelp is a directory for museums, parks, galleries, etc. When’s the last time you heard someone slander the Lincoln Memorial?! In the case of restaurants, I’d say that the truer number of positive reviews are between 60 – 70%, which basically means that every third review is negative. And that pretty much sums up my argument. I’ve heard more Yelp horror stories than any other online platform. Engaging your guests is great, just don’t do it on Yelp. And don’t ever put a Yelp button on your site – all this does is increase the chance of Yelp being near the top of your top 10 when someone Googles your restaurant. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, you have absolutely no control on Yelp, so my suggestion is not to go gray over it, just leave it alone – engagement on Yelp is more likely to make things worse than better..

Dear Client Services,

I would like to inquire about the steps our company would need to take in order to remove XXX listing from Yelp.  We have a method of collecting feedback from our guests and none of the comments we receive are as negative or virulent as those that we receive on Yelp.  We attempted to improve our image by promoting our restaurant on Yelp and incentivizing your users with special offers that we thought would be appealing but this only led to more negative reviews and slanderous comments that are a FALSE representation of our business.

In the last few months Yelp has taken down a number of our 5 star reviews listed yet when I contacted you about taking down a clearly bogus review that gave us 1 star you declined to do so.  Our overall experience with Yelp has been very poor (including the management of our online advertising campaign) and from the independent research I have conducted it seems as though your review platform promotes the type of slanderous comments that have been made against our business.

Your immediate response is requested.  Thank you.

XXX,

Thank you for your email.  We’re sorry to hear your disappointment with Yelp.  The primary reason 31 million consumers visit Yelp each month is they are able to read varied opinions about every business.  It is these varied opinions and experiences that make the content on Yelp so rich.

In terms of removing XXX’s listing from Yelp, we’re unable to do that.  While I can understand your perspective on recent reviews, you also have the power to privately message these users and try to resolve any customer dissatisfaction.  Just the same if a person came up to you in the restaurant with a concern, you’d want to learn more and hope to satisfy them.  I’d suggest using your private messaging feature to do just that.  Not to mention, you have the power to publicly comment on reviews you feel contain misinformation.

As for the advertising, it has clearly been successful in attracting potential new customers to your business listing.  You’ve had hundreds of people click on your ads, which is a very positive thing.

While we understand if you don’t want to continue running ads, we but hope you’ll continue to engage with customers who have reviewed your business on Yelp.

Best,
XXX

XXX,

Your canned answers hardly get to the heart of the issue. What good does a click-through to my Yelp page do for me when you randomly list bad reviews about the restaurant near the top of our listing? Most of these reviewers have no other reviews on Yelp!

Please explain to me why your ‘filters’ don’t filter these negative reviews that have no user history, but they filter out 4 and 5 star reviews for reviewers that do? Why on earth would a bad reviewer with 1 total review be listed above a more recent reviewer that gave us 4
stars and has 40 reviews on Yelp?

It seems to me as if the Yelp platform encourages slander – and you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t message the college students that write these reviews, I actually have a restaurant to run.

XXX

XXX,

We hope you had a good weekend.  It might be easiest to start from a place of understanding why, a review site, would in fact, filter out reviews.  Please see the below link from a posting our CEO wrote about why Yelp has an automated filter in place.

Why Yelp has a Review Filter:  http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/10/why-yelp-has-a-review-filter.html

In terms of your view that the filter only suppressed the “good” reviews and leaves the “bad,” it is important to note the filter does not suppress reviews based on the rating, but rather how the user engages in the site.  What we’ve done is created a software system that is trying to make judgments on human behavior.  Because there isn’t a perfect way to do it, our system looks at data points about the user’s behavior and interactions with Yelp.  In looking at the reviews that have been filtered for XXX, you’ll notice every star rating is represented in the bunch.

To see more about the overall review content on Yelp, the blog posting below shows that just 7% of the site’s content consist of 1-star reviews.

85% of Yelp Reviews are Positive:  http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/09/yelp-vs-youtube-a-ratings-showdown.html

Have a great day!
XXX

XXX,

Since we launched our advertising campaign on Yelp in March, 11 out of the 18 reviews posted about XXX have a negative connotation (1 or 2 stars).  This was not consistent with our reviews prior to the campaign or the feedback forms that we get from “verified guests”.  Out of those 11 negative reviews, 3 of the reviews only have a total of 1 or 2 reviews on your site – leading me to believe that they are bogus.

These bogus reviews go on to slander our business by saying such things as ” Cheesy and terrible!!! “, “This place is good for nothing! “, “THE WORST DINING EXPERIENCE EVER!!!”, “Do not go here!”, etc.

The fact that your CEO was quoted in the New York Times as saying “We put the community first, the consumer second and businesses third,” is not a confidence builder in any way, shape, or form.

I am aghast that you believe that such slanderous reviews from reviewers that have no history on your site “add to your community”.

Considering the above, it is hard for me to overlook the fact that our advertising campaign on Yelp has bought irreparable damage to our reputation and has cost us significant business.

XXX

Here’s an example of Komi – widely considered to be the best restaurant in the Washington DC area, yet they have received only 2 1/2 stars on the Google Map listing!

If this is indeed true, not only would it be a terrible misrepresentation of the restaurant, but a major black eye for Google, especially as they’re battling Yelp and Apple over the local advertising market.  If Google is to get a firm hold on the this market than I think a good start would be posting accurate info about businesses.  While this isn’t on the same page as the alleged Yelp extortion schemes, who is to say that business owners that are frustrated over a poor Google rating don’t sue the search giant for a false representation of their business.  I mean, they put the star rating right next to your business’s name, making it a vital component of a consumer’s decision-making process of whether or not to eat at your restaurant.

I’m not saying any of this will happen, but if these allegations are true, than this would be a major hiccup for Google.  Google has been known to make major changes overnight in order to fix apparent chinks in their armor, one can only hope that this is the case for their aggregation of customer reviews as well..

Jeremy Stoppleman, the CEO of Yelp, has walked away from an all-but-signed deal to be acquired by Google for more than half a billion dollars.

Image via CrunchBase

The deal was, as we wrote late last week, in the later stages of negotiation. The two companies had agreed on a price – around $550 million plus earnouts – and were working through the final details of the acquisition.

Then something happened that made Yelp reconsider the deal. Over the weekend they notified Google that they were not going to sell, say multiple sources.

The reason that a Google-owned Yelp would be good is due to two of Google’s major advertising innovations – Cost per Click (CPC) and Text ads.  Yelp’s current advertising program offers a very effective text ad format, but with a sky-high CPM (cost per thousand impressions) pricing model that make the campaign’s ROI in line with a Print-advertising budget.

Citysearch has followed the Google business model more conservatively, and in turn offers online marketers a more measurable online advertising mechanism.  What Citysearch lacked in creativity vis-a-vis Yelp it regained when it acquired Urbanspoon in April 2009.

A Google-owned Yelp would have combined a measurable CPC model with a very effective text ad format that would enable restaurant marketers the ability to achieve extremely good results at reasonable rates.  It looks like that day will have to wait.

Their [Urbanspoon's] goal: compete head on with Yelp and other user review sites, specifically around restaurants.

But they are approaching the market in a different way than Yelp and others. Instead of talking users into coming to their site and writing reviews, they’re taking a decentralized approach and aggregating available reviews from trusted sources around the web – local newspapers, citysearch, etc.

Advantage Urbanspoon

By aggregating ‘trusted sources’ along with user reviews, Urbanspoon is taking on Yelp’s biggest weakness – its perceived partiality to the end user over the business (restaurant).  By offering a more diverse and reliable restaurant review platform – restaurants will probably be more willing to invest significant resources  into Urbanspoon’s business platform over Yelp’s.

In some ways, Yelping has gotten somewhat out of hand from the restaurateur’s perspective – you have hundreds of reviews written by users that inevitably could harbor a gripe against you.  The perceived lack of control that the business has on Yelp diminishes the appeal to become active in the Yelp community. Restaurateurs aren’t PR agencies – they simply don’t have the time or desire to monitor every word that is being said about them.

Well, it seems like the restaurant community is taking notice as can be seen in the graph of users below:

Why Urbanspoon will reign supreme

Trusted content is the most valuable content for a visitor to a dining portal.  As an end user I don’t really care what Sally from Takoma Park, Maryland has to say about a specific restaurant in Washington DC, but I do care what the Washingtonian, and the Capital Spice food blog says about that same restaurant.  Because of its setup, Urbanspoon’s user reviews can only further legitimize a restaurant’s appeal, and any nasty comments made by users are mitigated if the restaurant’s more trusted reviews are positive.  In reality, they can probably do more good than harm considering that a any poor review from a noted media source can be trumped by a slew of positive user reviews.

Add to this the fact that Urbanspoon has the most popular iphone app, and that they are owned by IAC, which boasts one of the largest local advertising networks through Citysearch , and I think the long-term advantage certainly is in their favor.

This is an unquestionably great service for businesses and restaurants alike – I’m sure they charge a premium for their services to restaurants but you can’t go wrong with having thousands of businesses having access to your restaurant’s carry out menu on a regular basis. That being said, what the heck is SeamlessWeb supposed to convey to the user? I know this is the Web 2.0 generation and all, but should I get some inkling of your service through your brand name?

As per marketing guru Seth Godin‘s the brand formula post :

What’s a brand? I think it is the product of two things:

[Prediction of what to expect] times [emotional power of that expectation].

If I encounter a brand and I don’t know what it means or does, it has zero power. If I have an expectation of what an organization will do for me, but I don’t care about that, no power.

Ok, so let’s say I was an office manager and wanted to check out the best online ordering services on the market. For the purpose of this analysis I had no clue about such services and needed to do some research. So I Google “online food ordering” and… SeamlessWeb isn’t even in the top 10 results (click on the Google image below to see). I will note that they do appear in the “sponsored results” section but they are #2, and their are a plethora of other companies listed below them.

According to their website SeamlessWeb’s corporate clients include the nation’s largest investment banks, over 85 of the AmLaw 100 law firms, and thousands of businesses in dozens of industries. The company has been awarded distinctions by Inc. 500, Entrepreneur Magazine and Deloitte as being one of the fastest growing privately held internet service companies in North America, and was also named one of Time Magazine’s 50 coolest websites.

This is all great – but what if I’m not an investment banking firm, but a small legal firm/accounting office, etc.,  and don’t have SeamlessWeb’s sales team knocking on my door, my chances of finding out about this great service is probably less than 50%.  And even if I do, SeamlessWeb will be paying handsomely for me to do so either via Google or some other advertising campaign.

I’m not saying that you should brand your business based on where you’re going to show up in Google searches, but if you have the option, it can’t hurt..

As those who have read my blog can clearly see from my first post, I don’t shy away from controversy – so I pose the question.. is FohBoh simply a glorified Facebook group with way too much funding or does it actually have a purpose?  As per CEO and Co-founder Michael Atkinson:

MySpace and Facebook are clear leaders in generic social
networking today and have educated the market, but they are entirely horizontal, so they don’t cater well to niches of specific interest. This is where FohBoh excels.

First off, I won’t address the MySpace blurb as lumping them with Facebook is akin to comparing Chrysler with BMW, and while Mr. Atkinson makes a valid point, he fails to mention that Facebook and LinkedIn created a nifty tool called “Groups”, which essentially cater to the verticals.  But this doesn’t merit writing FohBoh off entirely, as I personally have never spent much time on LinkedIn or Facebook groups, but I have recently spent a good amount of time perusing around FohBoh.

In my opinion the bottom line with FohBoh is their user base – if I know that every general manager, chef, service provider, etc. in the restaurant industry is on FohBoh, similar to everyone I’ve ever known is on Facebook, than that makes it a worthwhile tool for any and every one in the hospitality industry.  Let’s take a look at the numbers:

Ok, so they reached their peak of 30k uniques in February and have dipped every since leveling off at about 17k unique users/month.  Consider as you must with all social networks that 25% of those users are spammers that post hot chicks as their profile pics, and you’re looking at between 10-12k unique users/month.  Their current Alexa ranking is 174,498 which basically means that they get a couple of hundred users/day at most.  That being said, that’s pretty good progress in one year, but it’s not at the tipping point quite yet.

In my estimation FohBoh needs to reach 100k unique users/month to have any appeal to the mainstream industry professional.  As they clearly haven’t gone viral yet, and their organic growth isn’t huge, the only way they can do that is to somehow attract celebrity chefs that become active.  Does anyone remember that Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN Twitter Showdown? That marked the tipping point for Twitter as can be seen in the Compete stats below:

Although it won’t necessarily serve the ultimate purpose of FohBoh, this social network needs some kind of Emeril vs. Anthony Bourdain showdown to attract more industry users – otherwise it will continue to flounder as just another social network that probably should have just been a Facebook group.

"MySpace and Facebook are clear leaders in generic social
networking today and have educated the market, but they are entirely
horizontal, so they don't cater well to niches of specific interest.
This is where FohBoh excels." 

First off, I won't address the MySpace blurb, and while Mr. Atkinson makes a valid point, he fails to mention that Facebook created a nifty tool called "Groups", which essentially caters to the verticals.

Related articles

• Twitter is Top Social Media Platform at Fortune 100 Companies (mashable.com)
• The Facebook Era is for Business (socialmedia.biz)
• Facebook and Twitter are for oldies (nevillehobson.com)

First things first, if your restaurant doesn’t have a Facebook page than you’re already behind.  It’s not hard to start one, so get on top of it ASAP.  Now to those of you who already have a Facebook page – listen carefully.  The reason that social media sites like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter have became overnight sensations is due to one thing and one thing only – self empowerment.  People want to broadcast their personal experiences to the world – whether it be a video of your child’s first steps on Youtube, or photos posted in Facebook from a girls night out.  Moreover, many people are simply addicted to commenting on friend’s status updates, photos and random material posted on their profile.  In short, social media enables you to go viral – a message can literally spread like wildfire and be seen by thousands of people in a matter of seconds, and the best part is that this is all free!

Now let’s get down to it.  This is how you transform your bricks and mortar dining venue into a social media powerhouse.

Step 1:  Hire a professional photographer.

Step 2:  Have this photographer walk around your bar during busy hours or private parties snapping beautiful pictures of your guests – with their approval of course.

Step 3:  Give the recipients of the photos a card with your Facebook page listed.  Tell them that they can view the pictures on your Facebook page in X amount of days.

Step 4:  Post the pics taken from your venue to your Facebook page.

That’s it.  From here on out the process is pretty much automated.  Everyone want to see photos when they go out.  For one, they’ve spent time and money making sure they look good.  But more importantly, they want their friends on Facebook to see them – so they tag themselves.  Once they do pictures of people having fun at your dining venue are spread across hundreds of profiles!  This is the viral effect.  What better endorsement of your restaurant than people posting pictures on their profiles highlighting how much fun they’re having there.

This strategy help Perfspot become one of the fastest growing social networks in the world.  They started posting pictures from clubs throughout their site and gained more than 30 million users in less than a year.  While I can’t guarantee you get 30 million fans on Facebook, I can guarantee that this will be a much more interesting way to engage your customers, and people will definitely notice!

Here is the executive summary of her study:

Restaurant customers appreciate the convenience of being able to make restaurant reservations online, but they also like the personal touch of telephone reservations. A study of 696 restaurant customers found that nearly one-third had made an online reservation. Those who made reservations online tended to be younger than those who did not, and online users also ate out more frequently. Those who made online reservations considered those reservations to be significantly more convenient than telephone reservations, and the online users also thought that websites gave more information about a restaurant than what they learned by calling on the telephone. At the same time, those online users felt that they had a better personal connection with the restaurant when they made telephone reservations. This tradeoff between efficiency and service perceptions points to a strategy of offering reservations via both methods. Emphasizing the convenience of online reservations may encourage customers to use the website, and that will give restaurant operators more information about their customers. Whether a restaurant uses a third-party reservation service or builds its own website, one key to ensuring a successful reservations process is to make the electronic process as straightforward as possible.

Professor Kimes offers this chart as a reference to the different options at a restaurateur’s disposal:

Amongst the Professor’s most interesting points is that “restaurant customers appreciate the convenience of being able to make restaurant reservations online, but they also like the personal touch of telephone reservations”, which leads to her conclusion that “this tradeoff between efficiency and service perceptions points to a strategy of offering reservations via both methods.”

Coincidentally, this is vision that led us to the creation of Reservation DC.  By partnering with the first and only full-service Restaurant Call Center, and the most cutting edge Table Management and Online Reservation software, we are able to offer restaurants a solution that increases service, decreases labor costs, and grows business. Instead of being bogged down with demanding phone calls in the middle of your lunch or dinner rush, you can now focus solely on your in-house guests, and let Reservation DC take care of all the rest.

Call Center Cost/Benefit Analysis

The fact of the matter is that restaurants can actually reduce their labor costs by up to 50% by using a professional call center to deal with all their dining inquiries.  How is this possible?  Let me explain.  Instead of paying a host/hostess between $12-$15/hr a restaurant can now employ a full-service call center that will handle all dining inquires at between $4-$6 less per hour.  This approach enables your in-house staff to focus on giving your guests the best experience possible, all the while running a more efficient operation that will increase covers and revenue.  While Professor Kimes is spot on with most of her analysis, the above statistics show that her claim that dedicated call centers are “probably the highest-cost solution” is way off the mark.  As she points out in her study, a dedicated call center improves a restaurant’s level of service and operational efficiency by offering:

• increased reliability
• reduced wait time
• more staffing flexibility
• and improved record-keeping

So far, so good.  Now let’s move on to the online reservation aspect.  As the professor notes, online reservations provide customers with the following benefits: (1) increased convenience, (2) increased control, and (3) a more consistent and reliable reservation experience.  She goes on to write that while online reservations certainly have benefits, many restaurant operators have been concerned about the loss of a personal connection with the guest, the costs associated with the reservations, and the potential loss of business. Let me weigh in on this analysis.  In terms of a loss of a personal connection, my view is that if the online reservation is completed via your own website, and not a 3rd party portal, than the effect of that loss of a personal connection is mitigated dramatically.  As for the costs, let me say categorically that if your restaurant is paying over $500/month for a table management and online reservation solution than you are paying way too much! As for the potential loss of business, this is in the restaurateur’s hands.  Look at this as you would an investment in the stock market – DIVERSIFY!  My recommendation is to explore social media, along with search engine optimization.  Building a Twitter page, maintaining your Yelp profile, and a Facebook presence cost you nothing, and shouldn’t take up more than 5 hours a week.  Furthermore, there is no substitute for a high ranking in Google, so invest in search engine optimization.  If you’re an Italian restaurant in Dupont Circle and you don’t show up in the top 10 search results when someone types “Italian restaurant Dupont

Circle” in Google than that is a major problem!  Google is viewed by consumers as the #1 trusted brand in the world – your restaurant’s listing in their search results will not only drive you traffic and guests, but it will improve your image dramatically in the eyes of the beholder.