Frequently Asked Questions

Pub listings

How do pubs get listed on the site?

Simple - we visit them. Or you suggest them. If you are a brewery or chain, then please contact us with ways of submitting large lists of your venues.

I'm the landlord/landlady/manager/licensee/brewery owner of a pub, how can I get detailed information about it to appear on the site?

You can register with us for an account which will allow you to take advantage of a range of services for pub licensees. Just click on the "Register now" link on your pub's page.

Why haven't you been to any pubs in ... ?

We visit them in our spare time. There are quite a few for us to get through, and we just haven't had the chance to go to them all yet. Sorry.

You've got a pub's details wrong, can you fix them please?

Certainly. Just let us know what we've got wrong by visiting our contact page.

Can I search for pubs with a certain feature or facility?

Sure, use the full pub search. If you're interested, you can look at the current list of pub facilities that we use on this site.

Ratings

How do you work out a pub's rating?

Any registered user can give a pub a rating out of ten. A pub's rating is the average of the ratings given to it by all users. Ratings given by the BITE team count for no more or less than ratings given by any other registered user. So don't shout at us if your favourite local's only rated 4/10.

This pubs's terrible! Why has it got a high rating? / This pub's great! Why has it got a low rating?

See above. We don't have any more control over the ratings than you do. If you don't agree with a pub's current rating, then rate it yourself. If you still don't agree with it, well, get all your mates who love it too to rate it.

Why are there lots of pubs with ratings higher than the top 10/40 pubs?

Only pubs that have been rated by 25 or more people appear in the top 10 and top 40. This is to try and make the tables reflect only pubs that are genuinely popular, rather than letting a pub go straight to number 1 just because one person happens to like it.

Reviews

What kind of reviews are allowed?

We don't want offensive, pointless or totally irrelevant reviews. This doesn't mean you can't say anything bad about a pub, but if you don't like it, try to explain why. The aim is to help other users of this site; if you just want to have a rant, you're probably better off talking to your mates. Personal attacks on staff aren't allowed. If the barmaid was slow at serving people, then saying so is fine, but calling her a minger isn't.

Don't post anything that isn't true. For obvious reasons.

Please make sure your reviews actually say something about the pub, rather than just the previous people who've talked about it. If you disagree with what someone else has said, say why, don't call them a wanker. If you think the last 5 reviews were all left by the same person because they were posted within 10 minutes of each other and spelt "beer" as "bear" (yes, really, people do that), there's no need to point it out - do you really think you're the only one clever enough to notice?

We're quite happy for owners and staff to post details occasionally about their own pub, but only if they include facts that will be useful to site users ("we've just started serving Sunday lunch between 12 and 3" is fine, "our food is great" isn't). It's also very important to state clearly what your connection with the pub is. We'll take down reviews from staff pretending to be customers.

Oh, and one last thing - if you're going to accuse someone of doing something illegal (we're talking anything from letting in a few underage kids to selling class A drugs from behind the bar here), don't do it on this site, go tell the police.

To try and make sure people stick to this policy, only registered users are allowed to post reviews. We don't check all reviews before they appear, but we will investigate any reports we get about reviews that don't conform to our policy.

We do not allow website / email addresses or phone numbers in comments.

I've found a review that I don't think should be allowed, what should I do?

We don't see all reviews before they're shown, so we appreciate being informed about reviews that shouldn't be on the site. If you find an inappropriate review, click on the "Report for removal" link underneath the review to tell us about it and we'll be happy to check it out. If we agree that it should go, we'll remove it.

Why does it say the review I've just added needs to be approved by a moderator?

Could be any one of several reasons. If you've left a few reviews before that we've had to remove, we might be keeping a close eye on things you say. But don't get too paranoid - we could be doing a similar thing to a particular IP address, or to any reviews about a particular pub, so it's not necessarily anything to do with you yourself. Whatever the reason, your review will be checked and if there's nothing wrong with it then it'll show up as soon as we've approved it.

What if my review doesn't get displayed?

Even if your review isn't displayed because it doesn't fit with the guidelines above, it can be seen by the people who run the pub if they're registered for our licensee services. So there's still a chance your views will be made known to someone who can act on them.

Your account

What are you going to to with my email address?

Nothing you don't want us to do. We'll send you newsletters if you ticked the box saying you wanted to receive them when you registered. You can change your mind whenever you want by going to the "My BITE" area of the site and updating your preferences. There are other features of the site that allow you to ask us to send you emails at other times - for example, when someone adds a review of a pub you're interested in - but we'll only do this if you ask for it.

I've forgotten my password, what can I do?

Just go here, enter your username or your email address, and we'll email you a new one.