Google purchased Zagat in September of last year (2011), and finally fully incorporated their ratings into their massively re-vamped Google+ Local listings in May of this year.
Zagat uses a 0, 1, 2, or 3 point rating scale, which apparently throws a lot of people for a loop. People seem to like either a 1 to 5 scale, or at least a "4 stars" sort of scale. And people are so used to "3" being a run of the mill rating, that there has been a lot of purported user confusion.
So Friday, things changed...
The same basic framework is there for a 0 to 3 scale, but now they've masked the terms under the simple terms "Poor-Fair," "Good," "Very Good," and "Excellent."
Overall, I think this is a very positive change, as it doesn't do much to the underlying system, but it does serve to simplify things for the average reviewer.
My only preference would have been to keep the number for the business reviews, but append to them the secondary title. So it would read something like: "0: Poor - Fair," or "3: Excellent."
Thoughts? Do you think this makes things easier, or is it an unnecessary dumbing down?
