A recent Nielsen study found that 24% of US Internet users accessed user reviews prior to making an offline purchase. I am interested how the SuN community perceives the value of user ratings.

We use Google Analytics to get a sense of what people are looking at on our site, and how long they spend reading which pages. Recently, we finally put up a testimonials (reviews) page, and that`s almost immediately gone to our #2 position, particularly in length of time.

No doubt about it, the reviews are helping a whole lot more than hurting or being ineffective.

Craig,

That’s good news. Can you tell if your review section is generating incremental traffic? About 25% of search results link to user generated content. Routinely adding new content in the form of user reviews is an effect way to help keep your site fresh and raises its organic search value.