Consider reputation
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Diners are getting mouthy on sites for amateur restaurant reviews, with over one-third of adults saying they check the word on the Web before visiting new restaurants online, eMarketer notes.

The figure comes from 2006 research by the National Restaurant Association, which reports a 13 percent jump from confessed pre-dinner trawlers in 1999.

Top sites for amateur restaurant reviewers include Dinesite, Citysearch, local.Yahoo.com and Chowhound. Recently subscription-only Zagat introduced its own online feedback function, and Yelp has made waves with its crew of "elite" diners, who visit new restaurants en masse before penning their reviews.

Marketing professor Michael Solomon called this a "pernicious trend" that must be wrestled from the hands of those who might slant reviews by "placing their own employees or paid shills in the audience." Only then, he said, can restaurants truly benefit from the power of crowds.