The Online Experience IndexTM
Here's how we calculate our monthly Best Restaurants in Sausalito lists:
We search the web for blogs, travel sites, rating sites, user comments and all other forms of feedback and reviews we can find on local restaurants. This information is then cataloged, summarized and standardized to produce a single rating number that represents the average of all the opinions we found: the Online Experience Index.
It's important to note that small differences in scores don't represent a significant difference in public opinion. A restaurant with a score of 86 and one with a score of 85 or 84 are in a virtual tie, even if the difference places them several spots apart on a ranking list.
Restaurants are ranked by total OEI. The top restaurant for the month ALWAYS is given a score of 100, and all restaurants then receive a score "graded on the curve" of the top rated restaurant. The score is weighted to emphasize recent online activity.
Our Restaurant Reviews are calculated by a completely different process (we dine there personally and report on what we think). Our personal opinions often rank a place higher or lower than its OEI score, since it represents two or three editors rather than hundreds or thousands of online comments.
We also research and publish the "Heat" for each restaurant, the amount of attention being paid to that business on the web. The highest Heat rating is automatically set at 1000 and all other restaurants are graded on that curve. A Heat Rating of 500 represents twice as much online attention as a rating of 250.
Like Google, MSN and Yahoo we do not release the formulas we use to calculate our rankings. We do, however, take steps to ensure that we are measuring broad cross-sections of activity patterns. We actively filter data to protect against undue influence from a single detractor (or fan) wandering across the Blogosphere, popular travel forums, and rating sites.
Restaurant Owners: How to Influence Our Rankings
We monitor a wide variety of pages on the web: blogs, restaurant rating sites, travel sites, online forums and more. Encourage your customers to write, comment or vote about your establishment anywhere on the Web that they normally travel.
If you do not yet have a website, we strongly recommend you create one. Costs per month can be as low as $10 once everything is set up, and it vastly improves your reach to consumers. We offer inexpensive website creation services for very basic sites, and many local companies offer high-end site design services. See our Consulting Services page for further information.
Site Owners: Licensing the Online Experience IndexTM System
Although we focus only on Sausalito at OurSausalito.com, we offer our restaurant and hotel ranking technology as a service to other websites in other areas. For more information, please contact us.
Copyright (c) 2008-2009, OurSausalito.com. All Rights Reserved.
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