Boorah "Zagatizes" restaurant reviews from the Web

A new restaurant reviews site scrapes the Web for criticism and generates Zagat-style evaluations.

Rafe Needleman Former Editor at Large

Rafe Needleman reviews mobile apps and products for fun, and picks startups apart when he gets bored. He has evaluated thousands of new companies, most of which have since gone out of business.

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Rafe Needleman

Feb. 1, 2007 3:30 p.m. PT

Boorah, a new restaurant reviews site, scrapes the Web for criticism and generates Zagat-style evaluations. (Lawsuits are sure to follow.)

Unlike Zagat, which has its own volunteer army of reviewers, Boorah scours reviews from sites like Insider Pages, SFGate, and blogs, and extracts content from them. The site parses all the data and assigns scores for food, ambiance, and service for each restaurant.

The site has a relationship with OpenTable (my favorite Web site ever) and will let you make direct reservations for restaurants that take them.

What I liked about Boorah: it has a very good search engine, with fields specific to dining out ("Romantic," for example). It also has a great "Open Now" search category.

You can see similar technology at work on the technology reviews aggregator sites Viewscore and Wize.

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