It is hard enough for owners of restaurants, car dealerships, beauty salons or other small businesses to keep up with customer demands in person. Now, add on top of that the virtual free-for-all that takes place every day on Twitter, Yelp, CitySearch and countless other blogs and social networks. The chatter is enough to overwhelm even the most prepared small business owner.

But Seattle's Marchex recognizes that problem as an opportunity, and today it is releasing a new online tool to help those small business owners better manage their brands and images online. "It in essence helps a small-medium business ... understand at a very visceral level what customers are saying about them," explains Matthew Berk, vice president of product engineering at Marchex.

Dubbed Marchex Reputation Management, the new tool breaks out the percentage of positive and negative reviews about the business, shows whether online directories are listing contact information accurately and displays a competitive market analysis as to how your brand is holding up online compared to the coffee shop down the street.

That means if the "snobby sales manager" continues to get lambasted online, the retailer can do something about it.

"If you are a small business ... people are talking about you," said Berk. "And that can have a strong bearing on whether or not you get new customers and whether or not existing customers return to you. For a (small to medium-sized business) to actually get a handle of all that dialogue as it continues to grow is a huge a time suck."

Of course, this isn't a new problem. And some other players -- namely Bellevue-based Visible Technologies and San Francisco-based BuzzLogic -- also are attacking the problem with nifty online tools. Berk admits that the product is in the same vein and applauded some of the offerings already out there, but he said Marchex is targeting a different user base by going after smaller customers that may not have $100,000 a year to spend on social media analysis.

Asked about competitors on the small business front, Berk said: "We love that question, because we can't find any." There are some keyword alert services built on top of Google, but for the most part he said no one has offered a service based on the all of the data flowing through various social media channels.

Marchex culls the data from more than 8,000 sources, and its database includes more than eight million aggregated reviews on 16 million U.S. businesses. (Sources include local blogs as well as sites such as CitySearch and Twitter. They are currently looking at ways to pull in information from Facebook). Marchex also combines the reviews, so a business could see how they perform across various review sites such as Yelp and Twitter.

That, Berk said, provides a more useful overall picture and saves the restaurant or spa owner time of cruising around to multiple sites.

At first, Marchex was looking to tap that vast warehouse of data to create a new consumer search offering. But on closer look, Berk said they realized that problem was largely solved.

"Nobody has taken all of that data and made it useful for the (small and medium-sized business)," he said.

Initially, the product will be free during a trial period. But Marchex -- which eventually will sell the offering through channel partners -- plans to charge between $40 and $60 per month.

About 45 customers have been testing the service, including businesses such as Calidora Skin Clinic in Seattle. Megan Bassetti, vice president of marketing at the chain of skin care clinics, said before the Marchex offering she spent time checking out multiple review sites. "Now I can visit the Marchex site and see all reviews across all sites and all our profiles and respective reviews in one place," she said.

At this point, small business owners can share positive consumer reviews to their own blogs or Twitter accounts.

And over time, Berk said that functionality will be enhanced. "We look at this as the listening phase, and the next phase is the talking phase and making all of this information really actionable," Berk said.