VH — The review is thorough and covers all pertinent aspects of the product / service being reviewed. Details about the pros, cons and, most importantly, personal experience are included in the review.

H — The review covers most of the pertinent aspects of the product / service being reviewed, but is lacking some of the info that would be helpful to a consumer who was researching a product / service and trying to make a purchase decision. An example would be a review of a PC or laptop that does not list the software included along with the PC. In this example, I would not expect the review to include detail on what each included software program was used for and how well they liked each software program, only to list what was included along with the PC or laptop.

SH — The review covers some of the pertinent aspects of the product / service being reviewed, but has a lot of info missing that would be helpful to a consumer who was researching a product / service and trying to make a purchase decision. An example would be a review of a new HDTV that only describes how well the TV displayed HDTV, but did not describe the reviewers experience watching regular TV sources and DVD sources.

NH or Off-Topic — The review is offensive or otherwise completely unhelpful to a consumer. This category should really be self-explanatory.

Also, almost as important as the content of the review, is the organization of the information. Not everyone cares about every detail of a product! The most helpful reviews are the ones that contain all of the relevant information about a product or service, and also allow the reader to easily find the information that he / she is most interested in.

If you ever have a question or comment about a rating I've given you, feel free to e-mail me and let me know!

Last Updated: 03/07/2008