Benchmarkr.com - Review Any Product Online

Benchmarkr is a site where, like Consumer Reports, you can view side-by-side comparisons of products to make an intelligent purchase. The difference is, with Benchmarkr, you can also create and submit your own product-to-product reviews. To upload your own review, just register on the site (free of charge) and type in the products you wish to evaluate. You don’t need to select from a database – all evaluations are 100% user-generated, so if you want to submit a report that contrasts Chia Pets vs. Pet Rocks, you can. The only data you select from a drop-down list are the “My Benchmark is about” and “Sector” categories (for example, “The product”, “Garden/Pets” and “Pets”, respectfully). From there, you can specify that you want to make a comparison across any set of criterion you want (remember, it’s all user-generated). Lastly, give your opinion on how the product performs under each category using a star system (1 to 5). You can share your review with the community, add a chart, and store it for later editing.

“Create professional benchmarks easily. Share your opinion about products, software, etc.
Add value to any benchmarks using web based vote”.

A great tool for anyone who feels the need to get their opinion out in the open. Benchmark is unique in that its content is 100% user-generated, and you aren’t limited to a database of products or having to select categories from pre-generated lists.

The site is actually quite complicated; I had to watch their Screencast demonstration twice in order to make Benchmarkr work for me. Could the site supplement the screencast with an FAQ or “About” page? It’s great that users can enter whatever terms they want into the blank fields, but how does this work when you’re searching for reviews of the same product created by another user? What if other users name their products slightly differently; will this affect search results? Wouldn't most people be too lazy to do this, and just check out Consumer Reports instead?