Grayboxx Releases National Version of Its Local Search Engine

SARATOGA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Grayboxx Inc., an online local search firm, today announced that the company’s unique "neighbor-recommended" local search engine has concluded its national trial phase and is now available across the United States. Using its PreferenceScore technology, www.grayboxx.com provides more than 185 million automated rankings and recommendations for local businesses in more than 4,000 yellow pages business categories. In addition to implicit neighbor recommendations and updates to the PreferenceScore algorithm, the national release of grayboxx will allow users to see reviews gathered from third-party sites.

“Grayboxx’s PreferenceScore technology provides a way to easily poll a community’s interest and preference in a local business, anywhere, anytime,” said Bob Chandra, founder of grayboxx. “Local search services that rely solely upon user-generated reviews do provide useful information, but there is a huge gap between the number of available reviews and the number of local businesses in the United States. Grayboxx’s depth and breadth of automatically generated local business rankings and recommendations reliably fills this gap.”

Local search needs PreferenceScore

Grayboxx is the only nationally available local search service that works equally well for people in big cities, small towns and everything in between. Until now, most people living outside big cities had no online local search service that provided comprehensive business recommendations, and in large cities it was difficult to find recommendations for businesses outside of the popular ‘restaurants,’ ‘nightlife’ and ‘shopping’ categories.

How PreferenceScore works

Grayboxx takes the guesswork out of local search. While many search engines can generate a list of businesses, only grayboxx—with its unique PreferenceScore technology—tells users which businesses are most popular with their neighbors. To do this, the grayboxx patent-pending PreferenceScore system uses aggregated, non-personally identifiable information about millions and millions of everyday interactions (purchases, reservations, etc.) to determine which businesses are “neighbor recommended.” Grayboxx works with a variety of third-party vendors to access this data, but it does not acquire, track or keep any personally identifiable information about its users.

New Feature Set Based on User Feedback from the National Rollout

Based on user input from its five-month cross-country city tour, grayboxx has added several features that improve upon the beta service. The PreferenceScore algorithm has been refined to sharpen its accuracy in representing neighborhood preferences for local businesses. Also added is the capability for users to see user-contributed reviews gathered from popular third-party sites. In the coming weeks grayboxx will allow people to add their own reviews of businesses directly on grayboxx as a complement to the primary method of PreferenceScore.

Grayboxx’s PreferenceScore method provides objective context about which businesses are most popular. Since the vast majority of business categories rarely generate user reviews, the PreferenceScore system is often the only way to tell which businesses people favor.

About grayboxx

Grayboxx is a local online search Web site that provides the most meaningful and extensive recommendations on local businesses and professional services in thousands of categories for cities throughout the United States. For more information, visit http://www.grayboxx.com.

“grayboxx” and “PreferenceScore” are trademarks of grayboxx, Inc. All other trademarks referenced in this release are the property of their respective owners and are hereby acknowledged.