The problem is that financial advisors are not allowed to post testimonials, and even if someone else posts something about a specific financial advisor on the site, there is no way of knowing who actually posted it, Alfred says. The whole concept could "violate the spirit of the law. It is fairly complicated."

The Advisers Act prohibits SEC-registered investment advisors from using any advertisement that contains any untrue statement of material fact or that is otherwise misleading. The rule broadly defines "advertisement" to include any notice, circular, letter or other written communication addressed to more than one person, or any notice or other announcement in any publication or by radio or television that offers any investment advisory service. The rule also states that an advertisement may not use or refer to testimonials, which include any statement of a client's experience or endorsement or refer to past, specific recommendations made by the advisor that were profitable, unless the advertisement sets out a list of all recommendations made by the advisor within the preceding period of not less than one year, and complies with other, specified conditions.

BrightScope still hopes to launch the service by next year, but "we are not sure it will happen at this point," Alfred said.

Mary Supovitz, president of the National Association of Plan Advisors, said that it is hard to know how BrightScope's review product would unfold. "There are obvious pros and cons. If I recall, people enter information along with their review. You never really know where that information is coming from. You don't know who prompted it. We'll see how that goes. Across all types of businesses, if you look at all the information you can get about products and services in the marketplace, that kind of thing is always true. One bad experience goes viral. People never know the whole story. It could be very valid and maybe not. The verdict is still out on that one. For a lot of advisors, it could be useful too."

The company's new Q&A section will initially be opened up to paid BrightScope subscribers, Alfred said. Those are individuals who have "gone in and customized their profile above and beyond the public data. That is our plan right now. We think that could evolve. We are learning so much as we launch new features for this product. When we launched our first product, we had no idea how it would be received. We change strategies quickly if necessary. We are not sure how widely available our answering ability will be on day one, but it should evolve," he said.

Alfred said he hopes that once RIAs on the site start answering financial questions, people searching the Internet will find the threads and "if you are highly rated [on the BrightScope site] it will expose you to more potential customers who are not looking for you. It is a good way to become subject matter experts."

BrightScope already is testing the Q&A feature and hopes to launch it by the end of the year.

BrightScope launched a rating system for financial advisors in April that got many in the industry up in arms. Much of the complaints were the result of incomplete information BrightScope got from the Securities and Exchange Commission and FINRA, Alfred said.

The company launched its BrightScope Advisor Pages because it was the "next frontier," Alfred said. There was a large set of data that had not been published in the public domain. Financial advisors fill out forms that are recorded with FINRA, and while that information is in a database, people searching the Internet may still not be able to find it.

"If you are a broker, you are familiar with the filings FINRA puts in its database. If you are an investor and you want to look an investor up, and you know the name, it will generate a PDF report telling you about the advisor," he said.

The problem with that system is that if a consumer does a Google search for a specific financial advisor and doesn't find anything, "they think it doesn't exist," he said. "We are publishing it in a way so other search engines can see it. Because of the way we structure our database, you can search information across all dimensions."

BrightScope's database allows consumers to search an individual, a geographic location or companies with a certain amount of assets under management, he said. "They can't do it with the government database or quasi government database. We thought consumers should be able to do that."

BrightScope also provides 401(k) ratings and financial intelligence to plan sponsors, advisors and participants in all 50 states. The company's mission is to "increase the retirement security of America's workforce by bringing transparency and efficiency to the 401(k) plan market."