There are many indexes of home services available to the consumer in today's online world. Yelp, Angie's List, and Checkbook are what I would call the first tier, followed by the second tier listing providers like yp.com and citysearch.
My question is how do these services stack up? What is the signal to noise ratio of the various service indexes? How hard is it to get a fake business onto one of these and then to vote it into the top ten of its profession using fake accounts? That is the real measure of these indexes: how good are the businesses that are recommended by their index, or even better, how real are the reviewers?
The profession of locksmith is heavily spammed because there is much money to be made ripping people off. Therefore, there is an incentive to get high ratings on service indices so that more people will call you. This in turn means that people who are not good at their job must either pay others to leave fake reviews, or that the ambitious but unskilled must make numerous fake logins to leave themselves fake reviews.
There are many ways around this problem. Yelp has a much ballyhooed algorithm that detects fake reviews. Google Maps/Places requires that you have a phone number to get a login and leave reviews. Angie's List requires that you pay money to join their service and leave reviews as well as read them. The lower tier service indices don't seem to have any requirements for leaving a review and let anybody who shows up make new logins and vote for their own business, and also lack the sophistication of having a filter for fake reviews.
Now that we see what the stakes are and what the problem is, let us examine these various service indices and see how many fake locksmiths are in the top ten list due to positive reviews!
Yelp:
The top ten locksmiths recommended by Yelp include a few companies who routinely rip people off. Examining the reviews left for them you can see several that are obvious fakes written by friends. Still, the results are for the most part real and if you call the first ten results you won't get ripped off. There are thousands of fake listings on Yelp but their algorithm keeps the fakers from writing a lot of fake reviews for their fake businesses so most people never see the fake listings, even though there are so many. That said, if people try to find the locksmith closest to them in the event that they are locked out, they will most likely end up calling a scammer. Yelp therefore gets a B.
Google Places/Google Maps:
If you search for "Seattle Locksmith" then you get "SEATTLE LOCKSMITH" at number five in search results. This goes to "prolocksmith-seattle-wa.com" who are bunglers of the highest order. A search for "locksmith" centered on the Seattle Metro area gives us "Renton Locksmith Inc" at number four, and if you call them the same much-maligned schlemiels of pro locksmith seattle wa will show up. Google has thousands of fake listings and, though they make you jump through hoops to leave reviews, it is apparently easy to leave five fake reviews for your fake business listing because many of the fakes have this: five fake reviews left by fake people for a fake business. Google is really slow to remove these even when people tell them that they are fake. Not only that, but many of these spam entries actually have negative reviews that aren't weighted well. Three one star reviews out of six reviews and that one still as an overall rating of four stars. Therefore Google gets a D. They do a terrible job, but at least most of the top results of a search for locksmith yield good locksmiths. That changes frequently though whenever they change how the results are stacked because locksmith scammers figure out how to game Google's system. Google should figure out how Yelp does it but apparently they aren't hiring the best and brightest anymore and can't compete. Of course, the stakes are also higher on such a high profile website, so they should actually get a C-. They figured out how to get rid of spam in gmail, they can figure out how to get rid of spam in Google Maps.
Thumbtack:
Thumbtack is a new entry in this market. They are trying to surpass Yelp et. al. in a short time by advertising. I have been seeing their name everywhere including in my latest issue of "The Economist". Do they offer good quality listings though? They helpfully offer a page with "The Top Five Locksmiths in Seattle". Of those five, zero are real. Thumbtack hopefully shows improvement in the coming months, because right now they are worse than every other ratings website out there in the top tier. Thumbtack fails.
YP.com:
YP is a second tier site because there are only three real locksmiths in the top 30 they recommend. They clearly demonstrate to me that their ratings system doesn't work. I would not recommend hiring anybody off of yp.com as it is quite clear that in an industry in which I know everybody locally, all of the entries in that category are fake except for 10%. Also, the first six "results" are ads. I have been noticing YP is advertising more, I see their banners and billboards around town, but unless they can provide meaningful results they will not succeed and their marketing campaign will be worthless. You need to have a product before you start advertising a product in most cases. I don't know who would advertise on this index because it is clearly not a very good one. YP fails.
Citysearch:
Only one real locksmith in the top ten results for the search "locksmith in seattle". Top result is "Loyal Locksmith", an infamous scam. Citysearch fails.
Bing Local:
One real locksmith out of ten results. Bing fails.
Yahoo Local:
Two real locksmiths out of fifteen total. Pretty dismal but at least they beat Bing. Yahoo still fails, though at least the top result is fake.
Findalocksmith.com:
All of the results are vetted by the ALOA, a professional locksmith organization. Not every locksmith wants to pay to be a member and so they only list those who pay them. This is not ideal but you are guaranteed to get a real locksmith if you search their website. They get a B because they shut out real locksmiths who aren't members, but their results are 100%.
Locksmithdirectory.com:
These dopes are 100% fakes. There are rumors this company is actually owned by the guys who run the locksmith scam call centers. The only results you get from this company's search results are fake. The only useful thing this website provides is unintentionally giving you a list of who you should not call. Locksmithdirectory is a big fail. The biggest fail.
Superpages:
Top five results sorted by ratings are fake. 14 out of 22 of their listings sorted by "relevancy" are fake. Superpages seems to be at the top of its heat, though this is not saying much. They get a D but only because in the relevancy results the top four are real locksmiths. Superpages is terrible but they don't fail.
Best.King5.com:
Many of the results of their top ten actually are real. If you read the votes though, you see that many people here are actively trading votes out in the open. "Hanson Chiropractic in Everett supports you! We would love a vote in return! Good luck!", for example. AAA Locksmith closed down years ago and yet they are still receiving votes on King5.com. 3 votes after this company dissolved means it is easy to game votes on this ridiculous third tier website and anybody who advertises here is an idiot. There is a smattering of real locksmiths in the results, but after the top five it is mostly fake businesses. I can't recommend hiring anybody off of king5 because of the corruption that is evident in their ratings system. They get a D.
Homeadvisor:
It is kinda tough to actually see a list of who they recommend. I am currently waiting in a chat that has been forced on me. "Bill" is "helping" me. To see the business listings you have to make a login. "Bill" helped me find the top four locksmiths in Seattle that are recommended. "Downtown Locksmith" was number two, right after some outfit from Silverdale. Number four was a franchise locksmith from Snohomish County. "Bill" told me they vet all of their contractors, but how did "Downtown Locksmith" make it into the bunch? Not a single respectable Seattle locksmith is in their results. Homeadvisor stinks. Homeadvisor gets an F.
Dishonorable mentions of third tier crap listings indices: Manta, Kudzu, Citysquares, locksmith.net, locallocksmiths.net, buildzoom, thelocksmithspot.com all have terrible results with most or all of their search results full of fake businesses. Additionally nobody has ever heard of these websites so why would anybody use them?
To review, locksmith scammers have infiltrated and gamed nearly every ratings site for the Seattle area. The only reliable websites for finding a locksmith in Seattle judging from this brief survey are Yelp, Google Maps, and findalocksmith.com. Of course, these are eclipsed by word of mouth. Who can you trust more than friends and family? Ask them who to hire. It costs very little to have some person in Maylasia or the Philippines sit around making fake profiles and fake reviews for a fake business (less than $10/review on Google Maps), but it would cost a lot to pay your friends and family to lie to you. If you need a locksmith, call a few places and get an estimate from each one. If they refuse to give you a price, ask for a free estimate. Hire the most reasonable one! Don't trust online aggregators of reviews, because in most cases they are sh*t.