"Only 1 Star for Bad Taste"... Naver 'Star Rating' to Disappear

[Asia Economy Reporter Bu Aeri] Naver is abolishing the star rating system.

On the 17th, Naver announced, "We will gradually improve the Smart Place review system by the third quarter of this year." This applies to businesses registered on Naver Smart Place, such as restaurants and cafes.

The star rating system based on scores will be removed and replaced by a "tag cloud" provided based on Naver's artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The "tag cloud" is statistical information in the form of hashtags derived from visitors' reviews.

Naver's AI technology extracts keywords that introduce the unique characteristics of businesses by referencing visitor reviews and constructs the tag cloud. According to the company, this allows users to recognize various strengths and personalities of businesses that were difficult to capture with the uniform metric of star ratings.

Until now, the star rating system has been the "global standard" for evaluating restaurants and others. However, business owners have expressed concerns that malicious star ratings from some users significantly affect potential customers.

The review environment, which was mainly focused on short comments, will also change. Users will be able to prioritize reviews from people with similar taste preferences and subscribe to reviewers to view only their reviews. Additionally, users can check the "restaurant list" through reviewer profiles.

Naver will also introduce a feature tentatively called "Messages Only for the Owner," allowing customers to inform business owners of complaints without publicly posting them as reviews.

Han Seong-sook, CEO of Naver, said, "Many of the difficulties faced by offline small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in online spaces stem from the star rating system and simple comment-based review environment, which have already become global standards. We will experiment with review methods to satisfy both business owners and users and take the first step toward the successful digital transformation of offline SMEs."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.