User generated ratings and reviews are extremely important in e-commerce. Empowering consumers to make more informed choices by providing access to others feedback is generally accepted as a very good business practice.

And now businesses can extend the value of that user generated content beyond the confines of their own sites, via integration with search engines. Back in April, Bazaarvoice partnered with Google to enable its 800 customers to display ratings & reviews from their websites in Google search results (both natural and PPC). Now Bing has announced that it’s getting in on the action with an agreement with ResellerRatings.com. More than 570 online retailers, including Newegg, TigerDirect, DiamondShark, Buy.com, B&H Photo Video and Auto Parts Direct, work with ResellerRatings.com to monitor and respond to reviews. Bing previously provided consumers with product reviews only. In addition to Bing, ResellerRatings reviews are syndicated with Google Product Search, TheFind.com and ShopWiki.com, and others.

User-generated content, such as reviews, has always been an important ingredient for ranking high in natural search as crawlers like fresh content. The integration of ratings & reviews within SERPs make it even more important to encourage and nurture user-generated feedback.