Zomato to show separate restaurant ratings for delivery and dining

Firm also working on weeding out fake or paid reviews using machine-learning algorithms

Food aggregator Zomato said on Thursday that it has revised its rating system for restaurants on the app, and will now show separate ratings for delivery and dine-in. 

The firm also declared its ratings algorithm its "most precious intellectual property" and will not disclose it to anyone. 

The delivery ratings will be visible in red while dine-in ratings will show as black stars. 

"You will now see two ratings on the restaurant page telling you how users have rated food ordering and dining-in experience with the chosen restaurant. The colour scheme of black and red is retained throughout our app for ease of identification. The ratings will be contextual, that is, when you are browsing restaurants to order food, you will only see the delivery rating indicated by red stars; similarly when you are planning to go out, you will only see the dining rating indicated by black stars," said Riddhi Jain, global head for new products at Zomato. 

The change will be visible to users in all of Zomato's food delivery markets - India, UAE and Lebanon. 

The firm will also focus on weeding out fake or paid reviews for restaurants. Using machine-learning algorithms, Zomato is figuring out if any restaurant has indulged in practices like offering users free meals in return for five-star reviews, approached popular Zomato users to write positive reviews for restaurants or used PR agencies to farm reviews. 

Zomato is identifying all such "bad actors" retrospectively. "If a restaurant has engaged in review solicitation of any kind in the past, they will see a negative impact on their ratings with immediate effect," said Jain. 

A "suspicious reviews" banner will also be added to restaurants who are found to have indulged in manipulating their ratings through any of these means.