For sure. Most businesses would be happy to pay a dollar or two for traffic sent their way from various channels, including some kind of directory with reviews. You just need to show proof that a given customer came from that directory. A single-use coupon code springs to mind, a fake phone number (one per directory service per business), bounced links embedded inside driving directions, direct link to a page where one can order or reserve a spot and such, etc. Anything that attaches a token to a user will work as a proof.

It's all possible, but simply asking for $100 is a lot easier because the power disparity is so huge.

Then there is the fact that is Facebook ever shows interest they can easily crush the entire market - they don't need to make immediate money and the identity of the reviewers is better known, providing higher quality score.

Probably not at scale. Newspapers, websites, guidebooks are going to be fragmentary and often not very fresh. There used to be actual restaurant guides (like Zagat--which sold to Google) but, like everything else, most people want free. I miss the old Zagat; the demographic and preferences of people who filled out their surveys was probably pretty close to me. There's still a website but it's not what it used to be.

Form a mutual company where businesses listed on the directory pay a nominal fee to list and collectively own the business. Profits are returned back to the owners to keep costs down.

That being said, I've heard everything about the ratings business is a lie, so there seem to be insiders claiming that there's a lot of fuzziness to the problem.

I haven't thought about it too deeply, but i'm wondering if theres just an unsolvable gap between "business owners just bury bad reviews" and "irrational customers can sink small business owners."

I'm assuming that manual curation of reviews is necessary here, it may not be.

Not on a micro-level, no, but on a platform level irrational customers can be dealt with. If they consistently rank low across all businesses you just normalize their votes or remove them as outliers. If they vote randomly it will simply average out (both for the user and for the businesses with more than 10 reviews). If they have a particular consistent bias (e.g. against a particular ethnic group, or particular kind of food) clustering could help (if you can label the clusters, I have some ideas). You just have to work on this, but I don't know if anyone in power cares enough?

Also consider that customers themselves might have (non-algorithmic) reputation that will decide if/how they can affect the reputation of others. Pagerank, if you will.

The entire field is crying out for big data, but then drowns in big dollars.

The problem isn't technical. The problem is the lack of stable, profitable business models around reviews that are long term compatible with being honest.

I think there are compromises, such as doing away with a star rating review system, and only showing positive reviews.

The unfortunate side effect is you never end up learning which companies to stay away from, because a system like that only focuses on the good, but you need a system that benefits both buyers and sellers.

Zagat was successful, perhaps that is replicatable.