Aug 27, 2015 - Generates lots of unique content for Apartments.com SEO ... but best believe we worked hard for the littl
Apartments.com Consumer Reviews August 27, 2015
Background Why consumer ratings and reviews on Apartments.com? • Top requested consumer feature heard in focus groups – Consumers trained by Amazon, Yelp, Google and other industries – Will look elsewhere if not available
• Generates lots of unique content for Apartments.com SEO (https://econsultancy.com/blog/9366-ecommerce-consumer-reviews-why-youneed-them-and-how-to-use-them/)
Advertiser Benefits: • Build your community’s credibility • Increase your community’s visibility • Improve lead quality • Foster trust with potential renters
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Review stats overall
110,000+ reviews submitted in 5 weeks
82% of reviews are 3+ stars. •
35% 5 stars
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29% 4 stars
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18% 3 stars
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9% 2 stars
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9% 1 star
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Calculation Apartments.com is receiving more positive ratings & reviews with the campaign than in the 2 years prior. CoStar Building Rating = 3 stars Consumer Ratings on Apartments.com: 2 reviews @ 5 star 1 review @ 4 stars 150 (CoStar Rating = 50 x 3 stars) + 14 (sum of the 3 consumer ratings) 164 ÷ 53 3.1
In general, the impact on the overall Apartments.com community rating has been neutral to positive. 4
Moderation process 1. Third-party machine moderation (filter) 2. Third-party human moderation 3. CoStar research moderation Rejection criteria: • Readability and usable content – reviews with random characters, meaningless word strings, and unintelligible sentences • Profanity and offensive terms • Personally identifiable information (PII) – Full names of staff or reviewer, email addresses, or full apartment address in the comment • Review is not about the property at all • Reviews that may raise Fair Housing Act compliance concerns 5
Example of a good review “Although we are not tenants (yet) at this apartment building, we found this place quite nice and clean. When we visited, we toured the apartment building and everything looked well maintained and organized. The laundry room facility and the two pools are well kept and cleaned. We were hoping to be one of their tenants but they didn't have any available 2 bedroom apartment that was on the 1st floor. We are hoping that they will have one available soon.”
Note: Not eligible to win the contest, as this person is not a resident. 6
Example of a rejected review “Winning a year worth of free rent would mean so much to me and my family its me and my daughter and fiancé I’m only 23 and times do get a little hard for us but best believe we worked hard for the little things we have nothing is ever easy and we make the best out of every situation this would be a true blessing like honestly who doesn’t want to win free rent for a year I know I do it would be would like a life savior I’ll keep my fingers crossed nothing is wrong with trying”