Where do the neighbor recommendations come from?

Put simply, our recommendations come from other people in your neighborhood. When folks buy things from a store or make reservations at a restaurant, they are expressing their interest in local businesses. We add up and make sense out of these indications. Our PreferenceScoring™ approach provides recommendations in over 4,000 kinds of businesses.

We're able to show you the best of everything in your neighborhood, as evidenced by the very actions your neighbors have taken with local vendors (all data is evaluated in a strictly aggregated, non-personally identifiable basis). With this powerful approach, grayboxx provides millions of helpful rankings for everything from Bike Shops in Moscow, Idaho to Plumbers in Boston. No more guesswork. Grayboxx provides meaningful recommendations in 4,000 of the 5,000 standard yellow pages categories — everything from antique shops to violin stores and everything in between.

Why you'll find PreferenceScoring Indispensable

Below you'll find a comparison for "public golf courses" in Denver, Colorado. Grayboxx has 1000 neighbor recommendations for the top 5 results, while the other local search engine has only 4 ratings.

Until now, if you wanted to find local recommendations outside of restaurants, hotels, salons, nightlife, art & entertainment, it was nearly impossible. Today, grayboxx makes finding a good cobbler, carpet cleaner, or plumber just as easy as finding a trendy, new restaurant.

grayboxx Features

  • Accuracy: With grayboxx, you have statistically significant business rankings. A search on grayboxx typically yields dozens of ranked businesses, each of which often has anywhere from 5 to 100 neighbor recommendations. This beats having to choose based on one or two user-written reviews, whose experiences may not always be representative. It helps to hear the whole community speak.
  • Trust: Grayboxx PreferenceScoring is unbiased. It is not easily gamed since it's based on user actions with local businesses and not proactive interaction with the site.
  • More Options: Find dozens of recommended businesses closer to where you live and work. Seeing is believing; try it!

Why aren't neighbor recommendations always shown in order, from highest to lowest?

Grayboxx ranks businesses not just on number of recommendations but also on how relevant the business is with respect to what you're looking for. A search for "tennis" might pull up tennis instructors first, then tennis equipment, and then gyms. So even though ClubOne Gym has 150 recommendations, Joe's Tennis Classes having only 15 recommendations can show up higher on the list because its more "relevant" to what you're looking for than a gym. If relevancy is a tie, the higher rank goes to the business with the larger number of recommendations.

What if I need more info to make a decision?

Once grayboxx orders results by PreferenceScore, you can click "More Info" to read user reviews from third parties as well business hours, services and other information. Grayboxx saves you time by ranking businesses and then giving you the option to conveniently find out more.

What about User-Reviews?

User-reviews have been an important development in local search and bring a personal touch that can help consumers determine which businesses and services they choose. However, there are limitations. People like to talk about certain businesses and not others. Would anyone have incentive to rank a notary or patio furniture store? Probably not. Because of this, reviews in many business categories are unavailable. By combining our PreferenceScoring™ methodology with user-review, grayboxx can close this gap and provide you meaningful insight into all businesses.

Can people add comments on grayboxx?

No, currently we link to third-party user-generated reviews.

Do businesses pay or sign-up to be included or ranked higher?

No.

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