Starz.pk – Another star for local business listings
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I just came across this site, Starz.pk. The site is a local business listings site and I was astonished to see the number and details of entries available on this website. The site has listings for 26 possible cities of Pakistan. You can search a wide range of business listings and I must say, the people maintaining this site have done a nice job. I tried several searches in Lahore and always ended up with a relevent list of results. Some of the searches I tried on the site were printing, kabab, fish, books, stationers, dentist, vegetable, sabzi, chinese, dvd, cinema, cricket, software house, milk shop and even tyre shop. Wow, I do get results, may be not very close to my current location, but still, most of them make sense.
The information on the site is again a community effort and the site expects the users to add businesses to the directory. Users can enter the name, contact details, payment modes and ratings for a business. You may or may not be the owner of the business and if you find your business added to the site already, you can take the ownership. The site is well-built, well-maintained and good-looking. I also found several business listings with the Map location and a very neat Google Maps integration that shows the location of the business on a detailed map. Honestly, this is the first time I’ve seen a site giving you driving directions for a local business destination (obviously using google maps). The home page is kept alive by adding dynamic sections like latest reviews, top-reviewers, new-arrivals and featured members.
Signing up is also simple and once you have logged in you can rate a business from 1 to 5 stars or you can write text reviews about the business. The site does’nt say it explicitly but I’ve seen that the moderators are pretty active and they keep reading every post and keep things clean on the website.
Then, I tried adding a business and it works like a charm. Well, to give it a shot, I added a fake business and within minuts the entry was gone from the site. Good job Starz moderation team. Right now, there is only one big down-side of the site. There are a lot of entries for the larger cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, though I dont find many entries in Faisalabad, Haiderabad, Gujranwala or even Quetta. The site owners should put an effort to draw more contributors from smaller cities to make this site a success.
Cross post from Basit’s blog.
11:02 pm
Hi Basit,
Welcome. Please note though that Green & White focuses only on original content because it is syndicated to CNET and the Washington Post.
Cross posting doesn’t really help here.
Btw, we already covered Starz.pk in Novemeber of last year.
8:58 am
First they copied the look and functionality of yelp.com pixel for pixel, before being forced to change it by G&W readers.
Now they are copying data from karachisnob.com and phonebook.com.pk. Check listings for the formatting of the telephone numbers and addresses. Some match Karachisnob, others match phonebook.
11:04 pm
hmmm, not a very ethical thing to do, but its not possible to list every business in Pakistan by their own they might as well have copied it from some yellow pages directory….
11:10 pm
Website has got lots of info. Overall good effort.
They offered a dinner for two scheme. I was amongst the lucky winners, but i never got my payment cheque despite my several requests
8:42 pm
Dear Manzoor,
So you want to say that its okay to copy from other’s site without permission?
11:38 am
So Nomi, in other words you are trying to say they cheated you? What a sorry state of affairs for this country. How can a website like Green and White still try to promote these kinda websites
1:31 am
@Beenish, thanks for your expectations, but we don’t suppose to know the actuality of any things above that’s what the readers usually do as Zuhayr as pointed out that they did change their site after being forced by readers here,
this is the concept of a community if Nomi was cheated i would guess either some one from Starz.pk come and explain if not then he might be telling the truth,
11:09 am
@Noman – I apologize for you not getting the check. Apparently, there were two Mohammed Nomans’ who won in that draw and by mistake both the checks where sent to him.
New check has been mailed to you. My sincerest apologies.