Help/FAQ

The ABCs of YellowBot

Ideally, we shouldn’t need to tell you any of this. If we’ve done our job properly, the site will just make sense. But some people like instructions and hopefully, if you’re reading this, you’re one of those people. There are a few building blocks of your YellowBot experience which you’ll use over and over again:

• Locations
• 

  Locations are the places and businesses which make up your world (and ours). We try to tell you the things about locations like the address and phone number, give you a map, and provide some useful ways to find them. The business details page presents this information, plus all of the reviews and tags that other YellowBot users have written about this business. You must be logged in to create your own tags, ratings and reviews while you are on a business details page.

  When we’ve got something wrong, we’d appreciate it if you’d submit a correction. (Every business details page has a link to send us your updates.) When you can’t find someplace that ought to be here, we’d really appreciate a submission.

• Ratings

• We’ve thought long and hard about ratings. Should it be a scale of 1 to 10? Or 1 to 3? And we needed to figure out what kind of dingbat we could use to represent the scale. Skyscrapers? Ice cream cones? Frying pans? Stars may seem boring, but at least everyone understands that they stand for quality. So stars it is.

  We want you to give the locations in your world a star rating. But ratings by themselves are pretty useless, so with the star rating we ask that you give us a review.

• Reviews
• 

  This is the heart and soul of YellowBot. Your review is the story of your experience at that place. It should be meaningful and informative and reflect your personal style.

  What would you tell a friend about the place? Describe the price, quality, service and atmosphere. Were there any special or unique things about this business? Can you share any hints that would make another YellowBot user’s experience a good one?

• Recommendations

• So, what’s the difference between a recommendation and a rating? Think of a recommendation as a quick yea or nay vote on a place. Not scientific by a long shot, just an indication of how you feel. You can add or change a recommendation at any time, either on the location’s profile page or on search results. We plan to add a few cool features around recommendations in the very near future, so get recommendin’, Hoss.

• Tags
• 

  Tags are the flava, the juice, the mojo of YellowBot. Use tags to add categories, attributes, and basic “seasoning” to your world. Tags are searchable, of course, but also drive navigation through your neighborhood. Whenever you search on YellowBot, you have access to all of the tags created by other users.

  Honestly, we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what you can do with tags, and so have you. A couple of tips about tagging:

  1. Be consistent – use the same wording everywhere
  2. Be specific – vague terminology returns vague results
  3. Be helpful – if you don’t know why you tagged a dance club with “curly”, chances are no one else does either.

  One pretty useful thing we’ve done is to allow multi-word tags. You can tag a restaurant with “Chicken Tikka” or “weekends with the kids” if that’s something that you will want to remember about it.

• Friends and Neighbors

• We built YellowBot so that you’d have a place to share information with the people you know and love, and for you to meet new people whom you’ll come to know and love.

  

  You create a neighborhood by adding other YellowBot users as friends. You can also invite people to join YellowBot and they will be added to your list of friends.
  Use YellowBot to help you organize events, introduce friends to the best that your neighborhood has to offer, or create an itinerary for out-of-town guests.

• Searching

• At its simplest, every search on YellowBot consists of a what and a where.

  Enter a company name, a type of business, a keyword or a tag into the what box at the top of any page. The where can be a city and state, (e.g., “Beverly Hills, CA”) or a zip code (“90210”). Click “Go”. You’ve done this before, haven’t you?

  We’ll remember the last place you searched, so you don’t have to continually re-enter the where term if you’re searching locally. The where box will also auto-complete city names, so try entering the first few letters and then pick from the list, if that works better for you.

• Advanced Searching

• We’d like to think that the basic what/where search will always return exactly what you’re looking for. But when it doesn’t, here are a couple of cool tricks you can try in the what box.

  Search By Name or Tag - You can limit your searches to matching your what term to either names or tags. Type name: before your search term to search by business name only. Type tag: before your search term to search by tag only. For example: If Gino's Pizza is the place you want, you can search for it by typing name:Gino's. If it’s parking lots you want, without wading through listings for every community park, try tag:parking or tag:valet.

  1. Quotation Marks – To ensure that multi-word terms are searched for together, place quotation marks around a phrase, such as a business name or tag. For example: “Gino’s Pizza” or “family law.”
  2. Wildcards – Use * in place of text that can be different for each result. For example: “Gino’s piz*” would return both “Gino’s Pizza” and “Gino’s Pizzeria” in your search results. “Caf*” would show businesses with names or tags that include both “café” and “cafeteria”.
  3. Required Terms – Put + before words that must be in your search results. For example: “+gino’s pizza cafe” would return “Gino’s Ristorante” (which is also tagged with “pizza”), “Gino’s Pizza” and “Gino’s Café” but not “Tommy’s Pizza” or “Jean-Pierre’s Café”.
  4. Excluded Terms – Put – before words that should not be in your search results. For example: “-gino’s pizza cafe” would return “Tommy’s Pizza” and “Jean-Pierre’s Café” but nothing with “Gino’s” in its name.
• The MyAccount Page

• The MyAccount page is your public calling card on YellowBot. Whenever you tag or write a review, it is automatically linked to your MyAccount page.

• Your Tags and Reviews

• We’ll show all of your tags in a “tag cloud” in the top center of the page. Tags are automatically sized based on the frequency that you have used them. Click on a tag to browse a list of businesses you have tagged with the same word.

  All of your user reviews are shown underneath your tag cloud.

• Account Settings

• The left column of the My Account page features a simple dashboard that will let you personalize your My Account page. Just click on any field to personalize it.

  You can invite friends to join YellowBot by clicking the “Invite Friends” [check name] link here. You can also view the status of invites you’ve already sent.

• Photos and Videos

• Don't see a Videos or Photos tab on your MyAccount Page? That's OK! That just means you haven't uploaded any videos or pictures yet! As soon as you upload your first video or picture, then the appropriate tab will automatically show up on the page for you. You wouldn't want us to take up valuable space on your web page for something that doesn't exist yet, would you?

• Photos
• 

  There are two types of Photos you can upload: Personal and Location. All photos that you upload are automatically displayed on the Photos tab of your MyAccount Page. From there, you can easily delete existing photos, select a new primary account photo and review all your existing photos.

  Personal photos tell others users about you and can be selected as your avatar, that will be displayed next to your name throughout the site by reviews, recommendations, tags and so on. You can upload a new personal photo by clicking on the "Upload a photo" at the top of the Photos page.

  Location photos are those that you upload on a specific location's profile page and are linked to that place. When you click on these pictures, they will take you to the profile page for that location.

  We support the following types of files for photo uploads: JPG, GIF and PNG.

• Videos

• Videos are uploaded on the Profile page for a business or location. Once they have been uploaded, they are automatically displayed on the Videos tab of your MyAccount Page. This is where you can easily review your existing Videos and click through to any business that it is associated with. You can also delete any Videos that you uploaded from this page.

  We support the following types of files for video uploads: MOV, MP4, AVI, MPG, MPEG, FLV, ASF, WMV, 3GP, 3GPP, 3G2

• Lists
• What Is A List?
• 

  User lists are a way for you to organize any group of businesses or locations that you find on YellowBot. You can create a list for any purpose you can think of and add any business to that list, or even add it to multiple lists if you want.

  Businesses that you add to a list don't have to be related. Unlike search results, they don't even have to have anything in common at all. Suppose you create a list called "Places To Check Out". As you are browsing through search results here on YellowBot, you run across a business that looks interesting, but not really what you are looking for at the moment. Instead of looking for a piece of paper and writing it down, or trying to remember it, just add that business to your "Places To Check Out" list for later reference. Then, when you have more time, just go browse the business in that list and they are right there at your fingertips!

• Public or Private

• By default, when you create a list it is marked as "public" - all your friends can see your list and the businesses in it. This is a super easy way for you to share your favorite (or hated!) businesses with the friends in your neighborhood.

  Don't worry, though. If you want to keep a list to yourself, we thought of that, too. Just go to your MyAccount page and click on the Lists tab, then click on the name of the List that you created. In the section labeled "Public/Private" you'll see a link "Make Private". Just click on that to make the list, and everything in it, completely hidden from everyone but you.

• Collaboration and Sharing

• You don't have to work alone when working with lists, either. Lists can be shared with your friends, and best of all, you get to control how much they can (or can't!) do.

  When you go to the List tab on your MyAccount page, then click on the name of an existing list, you will see a list of all the friends in your neighborhood in the section labeled "Add/Edit Users". Next to each person's name, you will see a dropdown list with three options in it.

  • None - Even if your list is marked as being "Public" setting this option will prevent that user from seeing your list. We'll leave it up to your imagination for reasons why you might want to use this option.
  • Edit - With this option, you can actually give one of your neighbors the ability to add and remove businesses from your list. This is a great way to create a shared, group list of favorite places amongst a group of friends. Just remember, everyone with this privilege has the ability to delete businesses from the list as well as add them, so be careful who you give this to!
  • View - If you use the Make Private option to hide your list from your neighbors, you can use this option to make a list visible to only specific friends, one at a time. This might be handy if you want to share a list with your significant other but keep it hidden from your general neighborhood.