It's essential for marketers to know what customers and prospects are saying about their brand, campaigns, products and so on.  I want to know everything someone thinks of my company - I don't care if they want to comment on the carpet color, it's all important and helps me piece together how clients perceive me (and if my marketing is influencing their perceptions).

There's a plethora of rating and review sites now.  I've always approached reviews with a healthy dose of skepticism.  For one thing I know SEO - good search engine optimization equates to plenty of reviews written to lend authority.  I also know that companies are going to seed review sites with doctored reports.

Turns out that Yelp is the fairest of the review sites.  You can read the full story here.  Suffice to say, you need to monitor sites like Yelp, Citysearch and Yahoo Local to know what others are saying about your company.  Regardless of whether the reviews are accurate or not, you must be aware that people not only go to these sites, they make buying decisions based off the content in them.