Buzzillions Blogs

I’m pretty confused with regard to shopping for a dishwasher as 5-stars don’t/doesn’t necessarily mean it’s in the top 100.

Another great questions from a Buzzillions fan.  You’re browsing Buzzillions, you see a product with a 5 star rating, but it’s not in the top 10 or even the top 100.   What gives?  Believe it or not, friends, there is a method to our madness and it’s called… The Buzzillions Top Rated Algorithm.

You’ll notice that when you get to a category page, dishwashers for example, the default sorting of the products is “Top Ranked”.   Instead of merely sorting products by 5 star, then 4 star and so on, we’ve designed a more intelligent system.  This system pushes products to the top that:

• Have a high average star rating
• Have a large number of reviews
• Have recent reviews
• Are in-stock on a merchant site

Our aim is to be confident and accurate in our recommendations.  If a product has one 5 star review and another has 200 4.7 star reviews, we’re more sure that the second product is a great product.  The 5 star product with one review might be a great product, but we just don’t have enough customer opinions to determine that.  We make sure products stay fresh & relevant for users by giving products with recent reviews that are in-stock an edge.  Without those controls, you might see a 2007 laptop ranked #1 – not exactly helpful.

The nice thing about Buzzillions is that our results are 100% based on consumer feedback and product attributes.  We never allow merchants, manufacturers, or any third party for that matter, to pay for better placement or otherwise influence product rankings.

The Buzzillions Reviewers Choice Awards tell you which products were ranked 1-5 in hundreds of categories in 2008.

Thanks for the great question! Coming up next: learn more about finding low-ranked products & negative reviews.  Have your own question? Comment here or email feedback@powerreviews.com.

Recently we have been reaching out to bloggers, people who are passionate about saving money, getting quality products and finding the right product for them.  Some are moms who (time crunched and budget conscious) know that in order to make wise product decisions they must read reviews.  Others are simply people who write about savvy ways to save money, find bargains and get the best deal…something even more important in today’s economy.  We asked for feedback about our site from these wonderful bloggers and got some great insights about how to make our site even better.  When reading comments about our site on these blogs, what we noticed several times was that people wanted an improved search; a way to search within categories as opposed to one general search.  We took note of these suggestions since we’re always trying to improve your experience on the site and  we launched a feature on our site that will make searching much easier.  Take it for a test drive, and tell us what you think…