Dive Brief:
- Angie’s List, the website with reviews for businesses, has dropped its paywall to become free for all users.
- The site was previously only available to subscribers who paid $40 annually.
- The site will now have a "freemium" model for users. Browsing will be free, but other services will come at a cost, according to TechCrunch. The company has not yet revealed the specifics of its new pricing model.
Dive Insight:
Before dropping the paywall, Angie’s List was only reaching about 1% of the population. Now, service providers such as contractors and lawn service companies will likely get an SEO boost simply because more original content naming the business has become publically available.
Search Engine Land reports that having these user reviews become public could benefit companies because the website is trusted and its users tend to craft detailed reviews. Search Engine Land recommends that businesses should claim their profiles in order to be notified when new reviews are added to the website, adding that businesses should save every new review in case it gets altered or deleted later on. Reviews will help SEO, but they are also useful in disputes with customers.
Shares of Angie’s List are down 75% from three years ago. The removal of the paywall should boost website traffic and could potential lead to new revenue opportunities down the road. Yelp's rise as a popular (and free) online reviews site has encroached on Angie's List's business, which had initially carved out a niche in home services. The removal of the paywall could help Angie's List compete with the social reviews site.
“We get over 100 million visitors each month, but 90% of them have been bouncing because of the reviews paywall,” CEO Scott Durchslag told TechCrunch. “We expect to see traffic explode with the change.”