Help
Registration
In order to be able to use all of the Review USA services, you have to create a new user profile. First, make sure that the JavaScript function of your browser is enabled. Then go to the starting page, click on the "Register"-tab and fill in the fields of the appearing form.
Create a unique member name and a password. A status indicator next to the concerning field informs you about the availability of a member name.
To guarantee a maximum security of your data, a password length > 6 is required. The password has to be repeated to avoid problems caused by typing errors.
Choose a member name and a password that you can easily remember.
Enter a valid e-mail address in the specified field.
Before you can complete the registration process, you have to type in the presented security code. This procedure helps to prevent automatic registratons and thus keeps Review USA free of spam.
With clicking the "Register"-button, you are almost done. Within the next few minutes, you will receive an e-mail with further instructions and a link to activate your profile.
Using the Services
Once you have activated your profile, you can already use all the services provided by Review USA by simply logging in to our site.
Find Companies
To search for a certain business in a given city, use the search function as follows:
In the first field, enter a keyword that describes the business, e.g. its name or its branch of trade. In the second field, enter the city where the business is located.
Where it is appropriate, you can limit your search to specific sources:
"All Favorites" will search the whole database; "My Favorites" will search your own entries; "My Watchlist" will search all entries added by people on your watch list.
Another way of searching in our database is to click an item in one of the tag clouds e.g. in "recent tags", "popular tags" or "popular cities". Once the search results are displayed you might refine your search by choosing additional tags for filtering. Just click the plus sign next to an item in "related tags" on the right hand side to do this. Click the item itself to perform a new search that is factoring in this other tag only.
Read Reviews
Click the title of a record to open the associated entry. First of all a business card is displayed containing current contact data as the address, the phone number, the website and the email address of the company. In case of using skype™ you may click the phone number to call the subscriber. You might also click the URL of the website to open it or click the email address what will commonly activate your default email-client.
The reviews are shown below the business card. Ratings range from 1 to 5 indicated by the number of yellow asterisks in front of the title. Usually you will also find a more detailed description, the date of the review and the assigned tags.
To change the way of sorting click "date", "title" or "rating" on the upper right side. Click the same phrase twice to change between ascending and descending order.
Finally there is a position plan on the right hand side of the screen showing the company and other establishments near there. You may change the level of scale with plus/minus signs, reposition the center of view with the arrows or overlay a satellite picture.
Add a Business
Click the "Add Bookmark"-tab to add a new business review to the database.
First, use the search form to ensure that the specific business has not yet been added to the database. If so, you can simply use the "Rate It"-button on the businesses' "Ratings"-page to add a new review.
If the business isn't listed yet a notification saying "no bookmarks available" should appear. Use the form below to create a new business entry. In contrast to adding a new review the form requires filling in the businesses' contact data: URL, business name ("Title"), street, ZIP & city, phone, fax, mobile and e-mail address. (Required fields are indicated; filling in the other fields is optional.)
The "Description"-field is where you can leave a detailed report of your experiences with the business in question. Keep your report clear and objective in order to make it as helpful as possible to the other users of Review USA.
You can use the "Tags"-field to add keywords that will be considered by the search function. (Keywords must be separated by commas.)
The most important element when reviewing a business is using the "Rating"-field to assign a rating number from 1 to 5 to it. (5 is best.)
Reviewing a Business
Click the "Add Review"-tab to add a new business review to the database.
First, use the search function to ensure that the specific business has not yet been added to the database. If so, you can simply use the "Rate It"-button on the businesses' "Ratings"-page to add a new review.
Creating a new business entry, in contrast to adding a new review, requires filling in the businesses' contact data: business name ("Title"), URL, street, ZIP & city, phone, fax, mobile and e-mail address. (Required fields are indicated; filling in the other fields is optional.)
The "Description"-field is where you can leave a detailed report of your experiences with the business in question. Keep your report clear and objective in order to make it as helpful as possible to the other users of Review USA.
You can use the "Tags"-field to add keywords that will be considered by the search function. (Keywords must be separated by commas.)
The most important element when reviewing a business is using the "Rating"-field to assign a rating number from 1 to 5 to it. (5 is best.)
Choose the desired state of privacy: "Public" makes the new record accessible to all of the visitors, "shared with watchlist" makes it accessible to people on your watchlist and "private" makes it exclusively accessible to yourself.
A set of automated functions delivers recommended contents for some of the input fields. For example: If you have specified an URL the title, the description and the keywords (seen as tags) from this website will be adopted. Try this feature with prefix numbers, zipcodes and cities as well.
Share your Opinion: The Watch List
If there is a review that you find especially helpful, you can add its author to your watch list. Click the author's name and a page containing all of the reviews left by this author will appear. Click "Add to Watchlist" in the "Actions"-box.
From now on, everytime you click the "Watchlist"-tab on the Review USA-starting page, a complete list of reviews left by this author and others you added to your watchlist will appear. Other authors might add your reviews to their watchlist as well. Taking this into account you will get the idea of this website that can be described as a platform for review-sharing.
When viewing your watchlist you may click a specific author in the "watching"-box on the right hand side to confine to his reviews. Having done this you might there is also a function to delete this specific author from your watchlist by clicking on the associated function "Remove from watchlist" on the right hand side.
Add a Review
In order to add a new review click on the "Rate It"-button on a businesses' "Ratings"-page or the phrase „Rate it“ at the end of a record’s tag list when viewing a search result list. Principally the form resembles the form used to add a business except that you there is no need to provide the already recorded address data. In order to add tags you might write them down in the provided field or choose some of the popular tags below by clicking them.
Uploading Pictures
To add pictures to a businesses' record in the database, do the following:
Use the search function to go to the "Ratings"-page of the business in question and click the "Add Image"-button.
You will be asked to specify a name for the image you want to add. Use a name that describes the image's content as clearly as possible.
Enter the path to the image file on your hard drive or use the browse function to locate it.
(Supported image formats are GIF, JPG and PNG.)
Click on "Add Image" to upload the file.