I recently made the decision to reduce my WeddingWire advertising campaign from a Featured listing to a Basic (free) listing.  This affects my ads for Portland wedding djs, Eugene wedding dj’s, wedding djs in Seattle, wedding dj’s in San Francisco, and also Boise wedding DJs and Sacramento wedding djs.  There are many ways brides and grooms can search for wedding DJ’s on WeddingWire.  For instance, they can search for Portland Wedding DJs by the number of reviews, average review rating, DJ name, and whether or not that vendor is a Featured (paying) advertiser.  Since I actually provide wedding dj services in Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle and Boise, it’s important for me to rank at the top for all those areas.  With a Featured or Spotlight listing, those advertisers appear on the 1st page of results.  But if someone is searching for say a wedding dj in Eugene, OR there could be Featured listings shown, but also some other very qualified Eugene wedding DJs that aren’t listed until the 2nd or 3rd pages because they don’t pay as much as other advertisers.

You could then hope that someone sorts their search by Average Rating.  On the surface, you would think Bass is Loaded! would rank at the very top, being one of the best rated wedding djs in the country.  Not the case.  Let’s say a bride in San Francisco is searching for a wedding DJ in the bay area and she searches for San Francisco wedding DJs by Average Rating.  The resulting list will show all the 5-star rated wedding dj’s in the San Francisco area.  In other words, a company that has 2 reviews with 5 stars would rank higher than a company that has over 100 reviews with an average rating of 5.0 consisting of only a handful reviews that are just under 5.0.  Another way of looking at this is if one student in a classroom had only two questions on a test and get them both right, and another student had 150 questions and got 98% of them right, that the first student would get a better grade.  Interesting concept, but perhaps not resulting in the best student.

Anyway, after deciding not to renew my WeddingWire Featured listings, the very first lead I received came from a bride looking for wedding DJs in Portland when she was able to find my company.  I asked her how she found me.  She said she sorted the listings of Portland Wedding DJs on WeddingWire by the number of reviews because she figured that Featured advertisers paid to be there and that sorting by the number of reviews would be a more accurate way to look.  She was absolutely right!

So I encourage brides and grooms to be thorough in their search for wedding vendors.  If using a site like WeddingWire or some other online resource where vendors pay to be on that site, definitely take the time to sort by the number of reviews if you can.  Just because a wedding DJ in Eugene shows up on the first page, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best choice, it just means they have the most expensive ad.  And also be sure to check out all the organic results online (the ones provided by Google and other online search engines).  Some of the best wedding DJs can be found organically, where you come across their website on your own.  Happy searching!