Companies have been building ways to establish authority and credibility online since the beginning of the web. Yahoo started life
as ‘Jerry’s guide to the world wide web’, a site where Yahoo founders
David Filo and Jerry Yang lent their authority to what they viewed as
the best sites. Google’s link based algorithm did the same thing, but
scaled better because it was automated. Turning from search to
commerce, one of ebay’s great innovations was the supplier ratings
system which put enough trust into the system for people to buy from
other people they didn’t know.
More recently a lot of the innovation seems to be around looking for ways to lend authority to entities rather than content – entities can be people or businesses (often small businesses).
On the small business side reviews and recommendations are the most obvious way to extend the ebay concept to entities like restaurants, clubs, bars and other local businesses, and for the last couple of years a number of companies have been doing that with varying degrees of success – e.g. Yelp and Qype.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Establishing authority on the web | The Equity Kicker
