as I just wrote above, services like theserviceguide.com can be a part of an overall picture of a company, but shouldn’t (in my opinion) be the only part of it that you trust.

The only way to build real long-lasting trust in an online community is to use rating/ranking that is based upon the social network - not just anonymous reviews. If my mom or neighbor reviews a business I trust that more than some random person (who may be a shill for the company getting reviewed). That type of system where your online trust is based on your offline trust is the basis for the lijit social bookmarking and rating service and I think it will become a powerful force in areas like this over the new few years.

If theserviceguide.com used services like Lijit to build their rating/review network then they’d have something really powerful.