What is theSUGGESTR all about?

Personalized Suggestions

theSUGGESTR is all about providing you personalized suggestions rather than a list of search results. Our personalized suggestions for restaurants, hotels and other businesses make sure you spend your money at places you'll love.

Finding (and remembering) Places To Go

While we know you'll love our personalized suggestions we also know that you get suggestions from other sources as well. You may get suggestions from your favorite food related TV shows. Our special TV Show maps let you see all the places visited on some of your favorite TV Shows. Our wish list feature lets you save any suggestion, whether from our engine, your friends or our TV Show maps so you can access them at any time. Think of it as a "to do" list for places to visit.

Staying Connected

To make our suggestions and your wish list as useful as possible you need to have access to them at all times. For that reason we have integrated with sites such as Twitter, FireEagle and plan on integrating with more sites (e.g. FaceBook) in the near future.

Site Update

In November 2009 we totally updated our site. While we hope the new look of the site is something you like, what you don't see is probably the most exciting part of our update. Also our site is now ready to expand to offer you even more great functionality.

Click here to learn how it all works.

How It Works

We'll be the first to admit that how our site works isn't the simplest, but that's because it DOES WORK. Here's our best attempt to explain what you need to know to understand how our site works in 3 simples steps.

You Rate Businesses

Using our simple rating slider you rate some businesses (restaurants, bars, clubs, doctors, etc). Our Rate Places screen will show you some of the most commonly rated places in your area making it easy for you to rate a number of places quickly.

We Run Our Engine

Our unique recommendation continually runs to determine 3 key factors:

• Businesses that have a similar following.
• User's that have similar tastes to you.
• Your taste profile (based on tags and ratings.

Using these 3 factors we can make predictions on how well you'll like a business that you've never been to. Even cooler than that we explain to you WHY we came up with the prediction. These predictions are then turned into our suggestions.

You Get Suggestions

Once we can make predictions for you we automatically generate personalized suggestions for you. These suggestions are for your favorite neighborhoods only. You can also use our search interface to see your personalized suggestions in a more specific area (using our map) or narrow down by cost or tag. This allows you to combine the get personalized suggestions for exactly what your looking for.

Dirty Details

theSUGGESTR uses a technique called collaborative filtering (like Amazon and Netflix do to suggest books and movies) to determine which restaurants, bars, hotels and other local services are best fit for YOU! So unlike many other local search sites you're able to get an accurate prediction of how well you'll like a place that you've never been to! You can ask for suggestions for a specific type of business in a specific area - e.g. "A Mexican restaurant in Phoenix that I'll love!" or you can have your suggestions sent to you automatically for your current location or your favorite locations!.

Getting Good Suggestions

Suggestibility

Having trouble getting good suggestions? The most likely reason is a low Suggestibility Score. Your Suggestibility Score is a single number that indicates how well we can provide you suggestions. It's on a scale of 0-100 and we believe really good suggestions start coming in once you have a score of 10 (of course they get even better if your score is 100). You can view your Suggestibilty Score from your account home page.

Improving Your Suggestions

Here are some simple ways to improve your Suggestibility Score and in turn your Suggestions:

• Rate Businesses - This is by far the #1 thing you can do.
• Tag Businesses - Tell us what you like about your favorite businesses.
• Invite Friends - The more people and businesses we can profile the better we can be.
• Add Favorite Neighborhoods - This will help us suggest more places for you to go and rate.

Rate Businesses

We provide 2 easy ways for you to rate as many businesses as possible. First, from the top menu you can click "Quick Rate" - this allows you to quickly enter in a business name and then use the slider to rate it. You can also use the rate place link to quickly rate multiple businesses at once. Remember, the list of places you see are the most popular businesses in your favorite neighborhoods - so don't forget to add to your favorite neighborhood list.

Tag Businesses

Tagging is a popular Internet concept where single words or short phrases are used to describe a person, place or thing. We use tags so we can get an idea of how to describe a business. This can be a description about the place or something notable or remarkable about it. For example you could tag your favorite Italian restaurant with the following tags: "Italian", "Authentic", "Meatballs", "Wine". Our suggestion engine uses your tags to help find other places you may like. The more places you tag the more accurate these suggestions are.

To tag a business just go to that businesses page and begin typing in the "Tags" area.

Invite Friends

We're not sure if it counts as community service but by inviting friends you help not only yourself but all theSUGGESTR users. The more ratings and users there are the more accurate our suggestions will be. Invite some friends and see how similar your tastes really are.

Add Favorite Neighborhoods

Tell us about the places you frequent most, your favorite cities, frequent business destinations, etc. Understanding where you are most often will help us suggest places for you and places for you to rate.

Searching

While we talk about our suggestions going beyond search to provide you a personalized experience we still think being able to search amongst our suggestions is very important in you finding the place that your looking for.

We've made it easy to find exactly what your looking for in just a few steps.

Step 1 - Start Your Search

From our header or from the "Get Suggestion" link you can quickly start your search by telling us what your looking for and where. For example you may enter "Mexican" and "New York, NY" or "Pizza" and "02142". Our search works best if you start a more general term.

Step 2 - Use The Map

Use the map to either narrow down or expand the range of where you want to search. All of your searching will use the map window's view to filter results.

Step 3 - Narrow Down The Results

You can use the filter your results by using our "Narrow By Tag" feature. Just select the tags you wish to filter by. For example if you search for Mexican, you may see additional filters for tags like "Margaritas" or "Spicy" - by clicking on one only places that match the tag will be shown.

You can also filter by cost by clicking the cost ranges your interested in.

Step 4 - Change the Sort

We allow you to sort by a number of different criteria, most importantly your personalized predicted rating. Remember, you can only see your personalized predicted score if you are registered and logged in.

Step 5 - Reading the Results

Finally when looking at the results you will be shown your predicted rating (if available) or the average rating. You can hover over the links to get more information about the business and it's ratings.

Your Wish List

Wish List

Ever have a friend tell you about a restaurant that sounds great and then a week later try to remember where it was? Or maybe you were watching TV and saw a great local diner in Sacremento that you want to try on your next business trip. We've created our wish list feature to make it easy to add these places to your "to do" list. Then using our website or mobile site you can quickly check if there are any places on your wish list wherever you find yourself.

You can add items to your wish list from our search screen and from the business' home page by just clicking "Add To Wish List".

Alerts

Don't forget you can automatically be notified when you're nearby a place on your wish list using our Alerts Feature.

Why We're Different

Unlike many of the local search sites you may be used to we are not designed as a local search site. Instead our goal is to provide you suggestions based on where you are. Our goal is to provide you suggestions for places you don't even know your looking for. By knowing your tastes we can provide you with suggestions for places your near without you having to search. We don't intend to replace sites like CitySearch or Yelp but rather act as an initial discovery site for you to be made aware of places you're likely to love.

Stay Connected

Using theSUGGESTR.com to get personalized suggestions is made even more useful to you through a number of features that allow you to stay connected at all times.

• Mobile Site - Whether your looking for a restaurant or bar or even trying to improve your suggestibility our mobile sites makes it easy to enjoy theSUGGESTR.com from your cell phone.
• TV Show Maps - If your like us you're addicted to watching shows on Food Network and Travel Channel, well now you can quickly see where you favorite TV personalities suggested you try.
• EmailBack - Email us from your home or phone with a request for a business and we'll email you back instantly.
• Alerts - We can automatically notify you (via email) whenever your within a short distance from places on your wish list, your personalized suggestions and more.
• FireEagle - Our integration with FireEagle allows us to know where you're at while respecting your privacy. This allows us to provide you location specific features (like Alerts).
• Twitter - Tweet your personal suggestions and ratings to your Twitter account automatically.
• BrightKite - Post your personal suggestions and ratings to your BrightKite account automatically.

Mobile Site

Our mobile site (http://m.thesuggestr.com) allows you to get your personalized suggestions on the go using just about any web-enabled mobile phone. No downloads, No fancy phones.

Our mobile site enables you to:

• Get Personalized Suggestions.
• Check your Wish List.
• Rate Places.

We're always working to improve our mobile site so check back soon!

TV Show Maps

Our special "TV Maps" allow you to quickly see all the places visited by some of your favorite travel and food related TV shows. We currently have maps for the following shows:

• Diners Drive-Ins & Dives(Food Network)
• Rachael Ray's $40 a Day(Food Network)
• Food Paradise(Travel Channel)

Of course we'll be adding more soon. If you have a suggestion on what show we do next don't hesitate to contact us.

EmailBack

Every want to send a quick email to a friend to get a suggestion for a local restaurant? Well we can be that friend, 24 hours a day 7 days a week. All you need to do is send an email to suggest@thesuggestr.com - in the first line of the email say what your looking for and in the second where you're looking near.

For Example:

Pizza
Brooklyn, NY

You can use a street name, city, state or zip code for the address.

What's even better is that if you send the email from the email address you're registered with we'll provide you personalized suggestions automatically.

theSUGGESTR Alerts

Our theSuggetstr Alerts feature will automatically email you when you are near any of your personalized suggestions, wish list or near any other tags you want including those places seen on some of your favorite food based travel shows. Imagine automatically being emailed when you get within 25 miles of a place on your wish list or someplace you saw on the latest episode of Diner's Drive-Ins and Dives or Food Paradise. With theSuggestr's Alerts it's not only possible, it's easy.

Currently, to utilize theSUGGESTR alerts you must link your FireEagle account to your theSUGGESTR account.

FireEagle Integration

FireEagle, by Yahoo, allows us to know where you are without you telling us. This way we can provide you the most accurate suggestions for places nearby. Linking your account with FireEagle is required to utilize our theSUGGESTR Alerts feature..

Once your are logged in to theSUGGESTR you can link your account from the external accounts page.

Twitter Integration

By linking your account to Twitter we will post a Tweet to your account each time you rate a place or a place is personally suggested to you. This way you can keep your friends up to date on your favorite places.

Don't forget you can always follow our Twitter Bot to keep up to date with all the latest activity from our site.

BrightKite Integration

By linking your account to BrightKite we will post a message to your account each time you rate a place or a place is personally suggested to you. This way you can keep your friends up to date on your favorite places.

Don't forget you can always follow our BrightKite Bot to keep up to date with all the latest activity from our site.

Blog Affiliate Program (Beta)

How It Works

• Blogs register with theSUGGESTR.com
• Bloggers write their blogs as they normally would (being sure to include some type of rating in their blog).
• theSUGGESTR.com will automatically review new blog entries and build ratings and reviews into our site.
• theSUGGESTR.com will use these ratings in our similarity scores and suggestions to help match our users with blogs they may enjoy.

For Bloggers

For Bloggers of Foodie, Travel and Local Review blogs you get the following benefits without having to do ANY extra work:

• A personalized "blog" page with a doFollow link to your blog and a list of all your ratings (including a map).
• Snippets of your review/rating on the corresponding businesses theSUGGESTR.com page (including a doFollow link to your blog Entry)
• Your blog's account's ratings will be used by our suggestion engine to find other user's with similar tastes to yours (this will help drive user's to your site that have similar tastes and interests).
• Your blog's account will also get personalized suggestions for new places to try out and review.

In short you'll get good, targeted traffic as well as some free doFollow links without having to do ANY extra work, all we ask is that you place our affiliate blog badge on your blog.

For Our Users

This program will benefit our users as our site is mainly focuses on providing suggestions based on personal tastes but is not focused on detailed comprehensive reviews. By linking to more comprehensive reviews from trusted blogs we can provide additional details to our users after we make personalized suggestions for them.

Signing Up

The program is currently under an invitation only policy, however you can Apply Now to have your blog reviewed for this program.

FireFox Plug-In (Beta)

Making Rating Places Easier Than Ever

Our goal at theSUGGESTR is to give you the best personal suggestions possible. To do that we need your ratings and ratings from people like you! Our new toolbar allows you to rate places as you browse some of your favorite local search sites such as Yelp, CitySearch and even Google Place Pages. With just a click of your mouse you can rate a business and improve your suggestions.

You must be logged in to download the plug-in.

My Maps

Making It Easy to Find Your Suggestions

Google's My Map feature allows you to "sync" your suggestions map with Google so that you can have access to your map from Google's My Maps link and/or their Google Maps for Mobile application. This feature allows you to quickly find the suggestions near you. To utilize this feature your account must be linked to Google.

You can learn more about Google Layers and My Maps by clicking here or here.

RSS and KML Feeds

Every user has their own personal RSS (geoRSS actually) feed and KML map file for their personalized suggestions and their wish list. This means wherever you are you can quickly check around you for places on your wish list or places personally suggested to you by our site.

Using your iPhone, Android Phone or Blackberry you can quickly see your suggestions laid out on a map.

Register Now.