Bizwiki, the UK Business Wiki site founded on the principle of allowing users free access to edit, update and add data to business records, has joined the call to free access to parts of the data held by government departments.

“We’ve seen just how much demand there is for relevant information online, to the degree that thousands of people have signed up over the last 12 months to help Bizwiki compile and improve records about local businesses across the country,’ said Matt Aird, co-founder of Bizwiki.co.uk.

‘What we are now asking is that the government move to make more taxpayer’s data available to them. In short, we believe that access to publicly acquired data should be free.’

‘Free access to public datasets would have a huge impact on usability and accuracy,’ added Keith Hinde, Chief Technical Architect for Bizwiki. ‘By cross referencing businesses people list on Bizwiki with Companies House data, we could provide a cleaner, deeper and more reliable dataset to end users, reducing the need for manual moderation or checking.’

‘Using PAF data, we could enhance usability and consistency with guided address editing or detailed validation’, he continued. ‘With access to the Ordnance Survey’s AddressPoint data, we could provide much more accurate plotting of businesses on maps, making it easier for customers to locate businesses and hopefully reducing the time spent driving around trying to locate a particular business.’

Agencies ranging from the Ordnance Survey to the Highways Agency are either government-owned or receive large portions of their income from the public sector or taxpayer, but charge for data with exacting copyright restrictions that prevent or hamper re-use of the data.

Following in the footsteps of the Guardian Technology’s drive for free public access to data about the UK and its citizens and organisations such as INSPIRE’s campaign ‘State-collected Geographic Data is public property’, Bizwiki is joining the argument in favour of liberating public access to non-confidential company and mapping data.

‘If there is one thing that the growth of the business on the internet has shown us, it’s that there are tremendous benefits to making more data available to people for free,’ concluded Matt Aird.

For more information about Bizwiki, the free business wiki that anyone can edit, see http://www.bizwiki.co.uk

For more information about INSPIRE, see http://publicgeodata.org/

For more information about The Guardian’s Free our Data Campaign http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/

Although anyone can write on Bizwiki, all entries are held for approval by editors and many have to be edited by the editorial team before being published. Submissions are usually reviewed on a “first come, first served” basis but that doesn’t mean they are published that way.

If you want to ensure your Bizwiki submission, be it a new listing or a revision to an existing listing, is approved quickly it helps to present the editor with little or nothing to correct.

You have added your company to Bizwiki (or someone else has) and people using the site can find your address, telephone number and read a little bit about your company.

Does it end there?

Absolutely not!

Sometimes all people need is the facts.

I was struck by the truth of a paragraph in a recent post by Brian Wool discussing the local search offerings presented by the major players at the Santa Clara Search Marketing Expo last week.

In regards to ‘cool’ photo options for local-listings Brian says, “If you’re a dentist in Omaha, Nebraska, what impact will a photo have on a potential new patient? ……. Providing information on the services, procedures, and insurance plans you accept would probably work better.”

In the last post we discussed ways in which companies can encourage satisfied customers to post positive reviews (along with some tips on how to make sure they are satisfied customers).

Now we come to the difficult task of dealing with negative reviews. In a recent post Chris Linnett says that companies have three alternatives for dealing with negative reviews: flame the publishers, simply let it play out or get directly involved, to which I have added a fourth option below.

In our initial post in this series I stated that “Online reviews are one of the best things that could have ever happened to marketing-led companies.” But how do you get reviews? And how do you go about ensuring that the reviews are positive, or at least not negative?

8 ways to Increase Your Positive Reviews

Bizwiki is a user generated business directory. This means that YOU can write on this site. As a business owner or manager the ability to submit your company, free of charge, and add to and update your Bizwiki business record gives you the opportunity to go far beyond the standard directory style listing or phone book entry.

We want Bizwiki users to be able to find out all about your company and so we are offering companies the opportunity to add a wide range of information about their company’s products, brands, specialities, areas of expertise, geographic locations they serve, awards they’ve won, associations they belong to, special mentions and so on.

Bizwiki has added new features that allow our users to review companies and services, as well as adding information about them. Allowing users to submit reviews of businesses, restaurants, clubs, schools, venues and just about anything is becoming more popular on the web, and I’m sure most business owners and managers have seen reviews of their own or another company online. Sometimes they’re positive, sometimes neutral and sometimes a customer is so unhappy with the service or product that they feel compelled to write a negative review.

Started in 2006 and open as a public-beta since June of last year, Bizwiki is finally officially live today. We’re cutting the ribbon (or more literally, removing the Beta ribbon that’s been on the top left of all pages since last June) and announcing the site more widely to the general public.

We are very happy to be able to say that Bizwiki has already had over two thousand people sign up to help add content and edit the site, with many more expected now that the site is officially live. Now is a good time to thank everyone who has contributed to making this site what it is, thank you.

It’s all passed in a blur of new features being added, people signing up, improvements being made and a large amount of contributions to the information on the site, but believe it or not Bizwiki has now been live to the public for six months.

And what an eventful six months they have been, too.

We have continuously been impressed with the quality of information that has been added by the general public. Yes, there has been the occasional piece of ‘self-promotion’ or advertising-copy masquerading as a review, but that’s par for the course on the modern internet and most of these have been removed within hours. What is far more impressive is the amount of businesses that have been added, contributions submitted and genuine reviews we have received from people who are trying to help improve the quality of information available for others.