A recent article about people blaming GPS units for car accidents caught my attention (summary: driver blames GPS unit for leading him onto a MetroNorth train track). Based on the 8000+ reviews for GPS units we have in the HiS database, the word "route" tops the list of words/phrases appearing in negative comments (617 times). Other top sucky words in GPS reviews: "turn", "screen", "maps", "street", "car", "software", "directions". "Railroad" did not
appear, however.
Fun fact: "wife" appears in 40 positive comments about GPS units.
Showing posts with label stats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stats. Show all posts
GPS units: top sucky words
User reviews: too many, biased, funny...
There have been a few recent blog posts about user product reviews: there are too many, they are biased, they can even be entertaining.
Yes, there are too many user reviews. And yes, they are biased.
"Bazaarvoice trend analysis has shown that product and service reviews are very positive, with an average rating of 4.3 out of 5," said Brett Hurt, CEO of Bazaarvoice, in a statement.
For example, the distribution of reviews collected for HiS resemble a "J":
There just can't be that many good products!
This was one of the motivations for starting HiS - give consumers a way to easily view the negative user experiences of all products, even the stellar ones.
GPS manufacturers - ratings over time
I've been searching for the right analogy to show ratings and number of reviews. Both variables are important - a few positive reviews shouldn't have anywhere near the impact of a large number of negative reviews.
So I did a little experiment: For some major GPS manufacturers, I plotted both the number of reviews and HowItSucks (HiS) rating for Jan - Nov 2007. The results are pretty interesting:
- Garmin GPS units really don't suck
- TomTom, Magellan, and Mio units kind of suck
- Mio's have risen in popularity in the 2nd half of 2007
Click for larger version of image.
Most reviewed products - last 4 weeks
just for curiosity's sake, I wanted to know the most reviewed products (this includes all reviews, positive and negative):
Of course, this is just for products HiS covers (which isn't all Amazon products... yet :)).
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