After spending time googling for reviews of web hosts through out the years, and finding the majority of the reviews to be exagerated or falsified. I have decided to spend sometime developing my own, except with a difference.

1. No leader board - All of the review sites have a leaderboard of the best hosting websites, I think this is unfair to the starters and gives the big companies an unfair advantage by pushing the visitors towards the leaders.
2. Reviews Confirmed - Any reviews will go for 2 methods of moderation the first by the staff that run the review site this will check for excessive language and general check that the review would be ok to go online, secondly the host would receive a notification to confirm that the website is indeed hosted by themselves however the host will not see the review until it passes both these checks and is in the public domain. Once it is in the public domain only under circumstances where the review is found to be falsified would it be taken offline or edited by the review site staff.
3. Uptime Provided By External Company - I also believe that the review sites who monitor uptime should stick to what they know best monitoring their own sites. I am currently in partnership with a professional uptime company who would keep track of the uptime of the company, the hosts would be able to add each of their servers instead of their main website to give a fairer statistical view overall.

I am not releasing details about anything else as of yet. I just wanted to see what other peoples ideas are and if they have anything else they think I should be looking into while developing this review site.

What do you do when a negative review is posted, validated by you and the web hosting company denies that the site was hosted with them?

Valid Point but for one the hosting company will not see what was posted only the domain that the review is concerning.

But as an alternative solution all reviews could be posted but there can be a tag attached to the review stating weather or not the hosting was confirmed.

While it is a great idea on not revealing the content of the review to the hosting provider, it reminds of signing a blank check kind of situation... Given that most reviews that are written by intrinsically motivated people are negative, what would make a company want to validate anything at all?

Another point. It is only obvious that most reviews will be written about globally well known large companies like HostGator, BlueHost and so on. How will you establish contact with those companies to review/confirm each review? Just wondering about the process and how simple it would be for both large and small companies.

I remember years ago there was a hosting review company that validated the reviews through DNS and IP lookups to the hosting companies. It also required the commenter to upload a file to their site to validate that they were indeed the webmaster for the site in question. They also not only gave the opportunity for the person to post their review, but allowed hosting companies to respond to the review (positive or negative).

MOST people that take the time to rate a hosting company are actually posting negative things rather than positive. When things are going great, people don't seem to take the time to spread the word. This is something that EVERY business deals with over time.

Must as Artashes said, the "blank check" can pose more problems than solutions.

That is so true. Unfortunate, but true.

Because although a lot of reviews are negative, there are those that when they find a service that has brought them a lot of joy or have had excellent service and support while at a company they would often post at to spread their experience. Would they really miss out on the chance for positive feed back?

I have been thinking about this. As per my earlier post, I have moved towards just tagging the review as confirmed or not as the case maybe instead of not posting it at all. As these big companies wont be able to spend much time going through validating all the reviews. My idea is that when say 25+ reviews are entered onto the system but have not been confirmed as of yet. It would flag up to a member of staff at the review site who would then try chase down a contact at the company. Do you believe this method would be a method that would work for large companies as well as small?

Validating using DNS and IP lookups is fine. But what if the account is a client of a reseller, they are on their own dedicated ip and are using their own nameservers how would the staff be able to confirm the account is indeed hosting by the company? I believe that might run into difficulties.

As for your webmaster validation I believe that to be a GREAT idea! But how would you validate if for example the service they have is a shoutCAST server or gameserver etc? As with many of them there is no webspace available and the dns is non existant as they enter via IP and port.

I thank you for all your comments as it has given me a lot of ideas and I am starting to change my views on ideas I initially came up with.

you just dont get it do you. validated reviews or not 99.9% of reviews are negative. no one seems to right positive reviews, they just review a site that the have negative things to say and 9/10 the reviewer would have had strong words with the host before posting a review, so the host would be aware of the domain associated with the reviewer, so would not validate the review as they would know it would be negative

This is where attitudes have to change, only web hosts can promote the use of reviews. Many people believe that a host shouldn't contact the customer asking for a review of their service so far as many believe this will push good reviews only promoting the company in a positive light.

But I believe this is the way forward as long as the host pushes the need for TRUTH in their review, with all the good experiences along with the bad experiences and how they resolved any problems.

pushing clients to do this will only lead to negative reactions and reviews from clients.
a majority of these so called review sites are run by those who only want to put down hosts/competitors and are in no way interested in the truth.

our support tickets have a link to our own review page, but i will never push clients into leaving reviews as this is their choice and not yours as a host to force them into doing.

Well if a customer never has a need to contact your support. Pays their bills by clicking on a link in an email or by a automatic subscription, when would they ever see your review link?

Its only with a reminder, gentle suggestion or an extreme problem with the company that the customer would think of making their feelings about the company known.

they are clients we all want, if a client has no need for support and pays bill on time then you are running a smooth service.

the review link is in my signature so any emailks sent out its thier, my clients are well aware we have a review page as its also linked on our main site. but i would never push clients into leaving reviews as i stated before this is their choice and no host should push clients into leaving reviews

In EVERY business, the management should be prompting for a comment card or asking how things are. This is why you now see fast food places offering a chance to win $10,000 if you fill out a comment card. But this is usually an INTERNAL thing, and not posted publicly.

We poll our customers on a regular basis not so much for the positive things, but the negative things. What they want to change, and how we can improve their experience with us. Doing this is the only way you can get a feel from the customer as to what you're doing right, and wrong and where it leaves opportunity for improvement.

While we have customers from time to time contacting us about a review they saw on a review site, there's very few signups that ever come from a site review page or Top 10 type page.

we have a feedback survey we add to our monthly newsletter, but we would never push clients to leave a public review.

Understanding how your clients feel about your service is extremely important. You may think they're happy, but they could be searching for a new provider.