Since online bingo has gone from strength to strength, and now mobile bingo is becoming increasingly popular too, the number of sites you can choose to play at is getting bigger by the day.
Many players who are looking to join a new site sensibly choose to do some research before making an informed decision, and bingo reviews are a great way to help you sort the good sites from the bad sites, or are they….?
Back when online bingo first began to gain popularity, the number of review sites was quite small. However, thanks to the increasing number of fans all over the world, there are now hundreds of bingo site reviews as everyone seems to have something to say on the subject.
While they say “knowledge is power”, you can’t possibly expect to read thirty or so reviews regarding each site that’s of potential interest to you, so here are a few things which may help you to determine whether a review can really be relied upon.
It’s all about the detail
If you’ve ever read bingo reviews before, you’ll probably have noticed that some have more to say than others. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; however, a fifty word article won’t be long enough to cover all the basics let alone any more detailed information you might want to know (like banking methods), while a four thousand word article will probably have you falling asleep before you’ve even got halfway through it.
Some sites don’t even provide reviews and just include an affiliate link to send traffic over to a particular site in return for a commission fee.
The best way to determine whether a reviewer has given their full attention to a site or not is to check whether the most important information has been included such as:
- accepted currencies
- software used
- deposit and withdrawal options
- loyalty schemes
- welcome and re-deposit bonuses
- customer support, game types, etc.
Can you trust star ratings?
With so many sites available to play, from Bingo Fest’s Bingo Games to biggie Tombola prizes, review sites have started to use star ratings to help you distinguish the quality between them.
Star ratings or marks out of five or ten can be handy when you’re trying to see which sites rank more highly than others. However, if every single review on a website gives top marks to all of the dozens of sites on its pages, you might wish to consider whether you can really trust the scoring system.
A non-biased site will probably include reviews with 10/10 along with 8/10 and 7/10. Some reviewers choose not to use ranking systems at all, leaving the reader to make their own mind up after they’ve digested all the information on offer.
What types of sites should I trust?
Some of the best online bingo reviews can be found on websites that purely concentrate on bingo. However, others take a wider approach and also cover casino, poker, sports-book and other gambling sites. We wouldn’t particularly recommend one over the other as, at the end of the day, it’s all about the quality within the articles that counts.
Websites that provide a wider perspective can be handy if you’re thinking about joining an online bingo site that also operates an online casino or poker site that you may wish to play at, and should tell you whether funds can be used seamlessly across all the various portals.
However, bingo-only review websites can have more specialist authors, and therefore may cover FAQs and topics that a casino writer would not.
Look for comments
Another good way to check for high-quality reviews is by looking to see if there’s a section for reader comments. If so, look at what other readers have said about the articles. Did they find them useful? Did they say that the information included is out-of-date? Have they added any vital information that might affect your decision whether to sign-up or not?
Is the information up-to-date?
In all fairness, keeping an review site bang up-to-date can be a full time job. After all, bonuses are subject to change on a regular basis as are other ongoing and one-off promotions, and while one month a site might not offer a certain type of game, it may well introduce it at a later date. However, you need to be sure that anything that’s going to really sway your decision about joining a site is correct.
So, for example, if the 300% welcome bonus on offer at site A is just too good to refuse, make sure you head over to site A to check that the offer is still available.
Equally, if you’re planning to avoid a bingo website because the review says that it doesn’t offer your preferred payment method, pay a brief visit to Site A to make sure that it has not been recently added as an accepted banking method.