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The Problem With Personal Injury Lawyer Rating Sites – Avvo.Section of Avvo Lawyer Profile for Michael P. Ehline, Esq.The Story of AVVO.Attorney Michael P. Ehline of Ehline Law Firm Personal Injury Attorneys, APLC, is one of the first 5000 or so original Avvo members. His partial public profile is above for reference. Michael Britton Avvo founded AVVO in 2006. Formerly, he was an expedia.com executive, according to the AVVO website.
He proclaimed that there must be a more efficient way to choose experts besides ‘pay-to-play’ Yellow Pages. At that time, attorneys and physicians frequently used the Yellow Pages as an avenue to advertise their specialized services. Here is an example of an attorney user profile on AVVO. The mission of Avvo is to ensure people have the best opportunity to make sound decisions for vital matters like legal and medical requirements.
How is the AVVO Rating Achieved?1. AVVO lets consumers look at professional information about attorneys. So it includes reviews by clients about specific attorneys. But it also contains peer ratings by other lawyers. 2. Avvo has its lawyer ratings for no cost on its website.
An Examination of Avvo’s Criteria and Practices.The process is as follows:
1. With scrapers and other data, AVVO creates profiles of at least 90% of all practicing attorneys. And this includes professional information about the attorney and a rating by AVVO. 2. An attorney has the option of claiming the free profile Avvo creates, and they can edit it as many times as they’d like via the use of their username and password assigned after registration. 3. Once an attorney claims their profile, the choices below are provided: a. Keep the basic profile for free (contains ads purchased by other attorneys). b. Upgrade profile to “Avvo Pro” for a monthly fee of $49.95. (does not have ads and provides advanced marketing tools). c. Purchased advertisements: d. An attorney ‘Sponsored Listing’ includes a picture the attorney offers, preferred tagline, and the choice of having their rating and customer reviews by Avvo on their listing. Also, AVVO randomly places sponsored, paid ads on its advice and search sections.
These are for consumers to use when they are looking for law services.e. Display advertisements f. The attorney is paid for a display ad and is placed on the pages for attorney search results, competitor profiles, Q & A pages, and legal guides. (pages for legal advice). Of course, potential clients typically see the paid ads first.
The more time an attorney stays on Avvo’s site, the more business potential clients they are likely to generate. Ironically, Avvo’s site is somewhat like the advertising model ‘pay-to-play’ version of the Yellow Pages. Ironically, that purportedly caused Britton to start the AVVO website to begin with.
AVVO assigns a calculated rating to each lawyer’s profile. AVVO’s opinion on the importance of attorneys’ profile information is what these weights reflect. But legal expertise ratings are just the general opinions of AVVO.
Ultimately, the smarter and more technical the firm or their SEO guy, the better they rank on AVVO. Similar to Google, AVVO also uses a mathematical algorithm. So it creates ratings from the use of their secret numerical system.
The basis used for the Avvo rating is background info. But the weight assigned to the information remains a secret. And this is mainly because Avvo does not want bets made on the rating system. AVVO states they want reliability. So this is why their inner-workings are secret. But a little reverse engineering can tell you a lot about the AVVO algo.
In Summary.Avvo’s attorney ratings come from AVVO’S proprietary, secret system. And various kinds of attorney information get assigned specific weights.
The basis of Avvo’s ratings is:
Our Closing Opinion:In a world of automated algorithms, Avvo is a smart business model for those wishing to make money off publicly available attorney information. And they charge a fee to enhance the listings or sell other forms of advertising to lawyer and law offices. For finding an attorney, it is probably better to go online and do a search.
That way, you browse the recent verdicts and settlements of the website that you like. Then you can call an attorney who looks good.
All online user ratings are suspect. Semi intelligent people can easily fake or game AVVO. So AVVO should not be the last word in your search for the best personal injury lawyer.
AVVO is useful if you pay to get your listing on the home page, for example. Other lawyers and consumers may click your enhanced or PRO listing and drive traffic to your website. So at least this can help your Alexa rating, etc.! https://ehlinelaw.com/blog/problems-attorney-rating-sites
He proclaimed that there must be a more efficient way to choose experts besides ‘pay-to-play’ Yellow Pages. At that time, attorneys and physicians frequently used the Yellow Pages as an avenue to advertise their specialized services. Here is an example of an attorney user profile on AVVO. The mission of Avvo is to ensure people have the best opportunity to make sound decisions for vital matters like legal and medical requirements.
How is the AVVO Rating Achieved?1. AVVO lets consumers look at professional information about attorneys. So it includes reviews by clients about specific attorneys. But it also contains peer ratings by other lawyers. 2. Avvo has its lawyer ratings for no cost on its website.
An Examination of Avvo’s Criteria and Practices.The process is as follows:
1. With scrapers and other data, AVVO creates profiles of at least 90% of all practicing attorneys. And this includes professional information about the attorney and a rating by AVVO. 2. An attorney has the option of claiming the free profile Avvo creates, and they can edit it as many times as they’d like via the use of their username and password assigned after registration. 3. Once an attorney claims their profile, the choices below are provided: a. Keep the basic profile for free (contains ads purchased by other attorneys). b. Upgrade profile to “Avvo Pro” for a monthly fee of $49.95. (does not have ads and provides advanced marketing tools). c. Purchased advertisements: d. An attorney ‘Sponsored Listing’ includes a picture the attorney offers, preferred tagline, and the choice of having their rating and customer reviews by Avvo on their listing. Also, AVVO randomly places sponsored, paid ads on its advice and search sections.
These are for consumers to use when they are looking for law services.e. Display advertisements f. The attorney is paid for a display ad and is placed on the pages for attorney search results, competitor profiles, Q & A pages, and legal guides. (pages for legal advice). Of course, potential clients typically see the paid ads first.
The more time an attorney stays on Avvo’s site, the more business potential clients they are likely to generate. Ironically, Avvo’s site is somewhat like the advertising model ‘pay-to-play’ version of the Yellow Pages. Ironically, that purportedly caused Britton to start the AVVO website to begin with.
AVVO assigns a calculated rating to each lawyer’s profile. AVVO’s opinion on the importance of attorneys’ profile information is what these weights reflect. But legal expertise ratings are just the general opinions of AVVO.
Ultimately, the smarter and more technical the firm or their SEO guy, the better they rank on AVVO. Similar to Google, AVVO also uses a mathematical algorithm. So it creates ratings from the use of their secret numerical system.
The basis used for the Avvo rating is background info. But the weight assigned to the information remains a secret. And this is mainly because Avvo does not want bets made on the rating system. AVVO states they want reliability. So this is why their inner-workings are secret. But a little reverse engineering can tell you a lot about the AVVO algo.
In Summary.Avvo’s attorney ratings come from AVVO’S proprietary, secret system. And various kinds of attorney information get assigned specific weights.
The basis of Avvo’s ratings is:
- Critical factors in selecting an attorney, according to Avvo’s opinion.
- When provided, attorney information, AVVO delivers the data to the AVVO attorney profile.
- How the information gets weighted remains secret.
- Regardless of the weight, no proof exists that attorney information is factual.
- Information obtained from the internet is not verified, not a precise source for getting a true story. (online user reviews and even colleague ratings can be faked by use of algo defeating methods, by use of voting rings, etc.)
- Avvo has demonstrated many cases of researching lawyers’ experiences where the data gathered misrepresented the attorneys’ information. For example, the specialties provided by attorneys have not been correct.
- Attorneys are not assessed, interviewed, or met in person when information is collected. The attorneys are being evaluated blindly.
Our Closing Opinion:In a world of automated algorithms, Avvo is a smart business model for those wishing to make money off publicly available attorney information. And they charge a fee to enhance the listings or sell other forms of advertising to lawyer and law offices. For finding an attorney, it is probably better to go online and do a search.
That way, you browse the recent verdicts and settlements of the website that you like. Then you can call an attorney who looks good.
All online user ratings are suspect. Semi intelligent people can easily fake or game AVVO. So AVVO should not be the last word in your search for the best personal injury lawyer.
AVVO is useful if you pay to get your listing on the home page, for example. Other lawyers and consumers may click your enhanced or PRO listing and drive traffic to your website. So at least this can help your Alexa rating, etc.! https://ehlinelaw.com/blog/problems-attorney-rating-sites
ATTORNEY PROFILE: TRICIA DWYER
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