Not that my self esteem depends on it, but I like to get helpful votes for my reviews. I see others with a MUCH higher ratio of helpful votes to total reviews than do I.
Is it my reviews?
Is it the places or locations where I review?
Am I not likeable?
Help me.....
Well, no need to be brutal! lol There are locations that just don't lend themselves to a lot of reviews. Some of yours have 32 reviews, 25 reviews, even one place has only your review. So those locations don't get a lot of traffic. The more popular a place, the more likely there will be a lot of people reading reviews and the chance of helpful votes increases.
Some of the places you have reviewed have over 200 reviews. But when you look through 4 or 5 pages of those reviews, no one else has helpful votes either. So the people who look at those reviews, if they do, aren't into voting.
There's nothing wrong with your reviews. The ones I read are full of helpful information. Sometimes, it just takes a mention of one thing, like "the beds had allergen free pillows" or "the toiletries were by XYZ" or "the hotel was 2 minutes from the bus to downtown" for someone to find the exact bit of information that they are looking for, so find the review helpful.
In one of my reviews, which had plenty already, I wrote that I tried to catch the eye of a server to bring me the bill and how difficult that was, until finally I walked up to the cash register. I'm convinced that that detail created a helpful vote, a detail about service that most people perhaps would want to know about in a review. But ultimately, you never can tell what makes someone mark a review as helpful.
Carry on. Your reviews are helping numbers of people that you will never know about. Just keep on giving.
Edited: 11:48 pm, November 22, 2012
I don't care whether my reviews get voted helpful or not. I never check.
Edited: 11:58 pm, November 22, 2012Mixandmatch, thank you. I feel better.
Hans_den, I admire your self assurance.
Sometimes it helps to post links to your reviews in replies on the forums where appropriate.
For instance, someone asks, "What's a nice place to stay in Y Town?" and you reply, "I stayed at Hotel Restful in Y Town, and had a wonderful stay. You can read the review I wrote at (link here)" .
If your reviews have more traffic more people are likely to find them helpful. Otherwise they go further and further down the page, and most people will only read the first few reviews.
Yes I also dont care how many helpful votes I get also. Rest assured many will read your reviews but couldnt be bothered clicking on the helpful link.
Keep up the good work.
Tommo
There is no rhyme or reason to why you get helpful votes, numerous factors as explained already, then add on top of that just how bothered the reader is at the exact time they read your review (assuming they are the type who votes a review helpful in the first place, and that must be a very small minority of all readers)
I personally seldom hit the helpful link but if I read a really good review I try to do so....if I remember. Sometimes I forget!
Tommo
Hi
I too like getting helpful reviews and I see nothing wrong with that. To me it does show that someone who has read your review thought enough of it to click on the button and vote and I am lucky enough to have received a few votes over the years
As has been said you do tend to see more helpful views being given in certain destinations but there is hard and fast rule
I have often found that most of the people who are not bothered about them or see no need for them have very few to their name
I'd say a lot of the Caribbean locations tend to get the most helpful votes, as others have already said due to more traffic. A couple of my reviews for hotels in the Caribbean have had double digit helpful votes - but I'd also say it's a double-edged sword as due to the popularity your review quickly moves further down the line as more and more reviews are added.
I've also noticed that my reviews of various attractions in Amsterdam have done well with helpful votes.
At the end of the day, it is what it is - most of us don't write the reviews for the helpful votes.
Rhapsody, TA recently sent me an email claming that in the past year, more than 150000 members or visitors had read a review of mine. Of course some may read more than one review of a particular contributor.
However, I have fewer than 2000 'helpful' votes and have been a member for more than four years, so the ratio of 'helpful' votes to 'readers' is very low. Sometimes I may have several hundred viewers but no helpful votes, yet some less well known destinations that one writes about may collect 7 or more helpful votes quickly - possibly because TA readers are annoyed at the dearth of Internet information on a particular establishment or area and are so 'grateful' that they click on the 'yes' ('helpful' vote) option available on the site if they are a TA member (which is of course free).
Edited: 5:56 pm, November 23, 2012
