Joyce M. Rosenberg from the Associate Press has recently published an article describing how business owners are using negative reviews (Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.) to improved processes. No doubt feedback is always important regardless of source.

In her article Ms. Rosenberg doesn’t cover the biggest flaw in rating sites and it’s the ranking process. A business with hundreds of thousands of customer interactions can in fact be ranked extremely low in it’s own field based on the vocal minority.

As a former business owner, I would encourage consumers to work directly with the business, or at least engage available contacts via a website, or other means, before publishing a review.