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Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

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Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#51

Post by TarpitCarnivore »

dfxm12 wrote: post #44
ghaff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not great but TBH I still find it to be better than nothing. You've pretty much described every review site on the Internet. "My hotel room in Manhattan was small." You don't say. I still prefer Zagat (though it's not what it was when it was pretty much limited to foodies) where it's available. But if I'm in an area I don't know well I still will take Yelp over picking a restaurant on total whim or because it ha…

Your choices aren't just Yelp and nothing though. There are things that are better than both, like Foursquare.

I always appreciated Fourquares more straight forward Good, OK, bad approach to reviewing.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#52

Post by pbhjpbhj »

5874-4b22-a4e0 wrote: post #41
duxup wrote: post #4

I abandoned Yelp as a user pretty quick as it was just too much to filter through so many reviews by people who 1) Had some one off bad experience that is probably not representative of anything. 2) Wished that place they reviewed was like some other place that is kinda the same but ... it's twice the price so why are you comparing?

Seems a lot of reviews are hidden. Suspect they hide good reviews unless the owner pays to be an advertiser.

I understood they do NOT hide reviews unless you pay; so if you get bad reviews you can sign up and hide them.

But perhaps they do the other thing that you suggest too.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#53

Post by bhj »

tashoecraft wrote: post #14
sharemywin wrote: post #3

I don't understand why they don't offer delivery like grubhub?

The problem I have with yelp is really the central idea of it. Who said random people are good at reviewing restaurants? Everyone's meaning of good is different, everyone's expectation for everything is on different scales with different meanings. Consolidating it all into a simple interface doesn't work. I really want two different services, one for finding something I'll be very happy with and may return to (usuall…

I think they could have leveraged their friends system to weigh the reviews more based on "people like you". In other words, use all that data to show the rating they think you'll give (a la Netflix).

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#54

Post by closetohome »

SnowingXIV wrote: post #15

Yelp is incredibly annoying as a business owner. After signing up to setup basic NAP consistency, they will automatically flag it as some sort of tag often incorrectly and then continue to call and email you asking to spend advertising dollars on their site for months. Even after asking them to no longer do so. I'm glad google reviews and others have taken their place.

I set up my business profile pretty thoroughly, and only ended up getting one or two sales calls and a couple of emails that I unsubscribed from. Maybe they hard-sell other business types more, but I didn't really get much.

I did end up helping the restaurant down the block when they got scammed by a service claiming to be Yelp, that actually took over their profile and was making them pay to make changes to it. I think a lot of supposed "Yelp scammed me" stories are actually that - third parties.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#55

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dfxm12 wrote: post #44
ghaff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not great but TBH I still find it to be better than nothing. You've pretty much described every review site on the Internet. "My hotel room in Manhattan was small." You don't say. I still prefer Zagat (though it's not what it was when it was pretty much limited to foodies) where it's available. But if I'm in an area I don't know well I still will take Yelp over picking a restaurant on total whim or because it ha…

Your choices aren't just Yelp and nothing though. There are things that are better than both, like Foursquare.

Tripadvisor has always been best for me, in the UK, but you do have to interpret reviews carefully.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#56

Post by smelendez »

notyourday wrote: post #28

Yelp in NYC is infuriating to use. Not only it does not know neighborhoods, it is incapable of identifying rivers that separate areas. Ask it for places in Greenpoint and it would happily include stuff in Manhattan, sometimes well before it runs out of the Greenpoint options which could be OK had Greenpoint not been separated from Manhattan by the East River. Yelp is also happy to manipulate reviews contrary to their…

It was honestly faster to do a lot of searches with the old paper Zagat books than modern Yelp, since they were compiled by people who understood the cities they were covering.

I don't remember this being as much of an issue when Yelp launched? It seems like there are certain restaurants (advertisers? mathematically trending places?) that they're determined to shoehorn into any search result.

Also, it's frustrating how every review site I've tried constantly turns off the "open now" filter. I get that people want to plan tomorrow's lunch at 10pm, but other people just want to quickly find a decent place to take their hungry friends.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#58

Post by zjaffee »

tashoecraft wrote: post #14
sharemywin wrote: post #3

I don't understand why they don't offer delivery like grubhub?

The problem I have with yelp is really the central idea of it. Who said random people are good at reviewing restaurants? Everyone's meaning of good is different, everyone's expectation for everything is on different scales with different meanings. Consolidating it all into a simple interface doesn't work. I really want two different services, one for finding something I'll be very happy with and may return to (usuall…

The thing about yelp that's nice is you can see aggregates, rather than some individual persons good or bad review. This includes, what dishes are popular at a particular place, and how popular regardless of any one opinion is a given restaurant (number of reviews). Additionally, being able to filter for niche things such as specific regional ethnic restaurants.

The actual reviews themselves are honestly the worst part of the whole site.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#59

Post by notyourwork »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #37

In contrast to many posters here, I really like Yelp (as a user, at least, never been a restaurant owner). I sort by number of reviews and find places that are highly rated (4 stars or so) and almost always this has worked well. Other services I've tried are not nearly as easy to use or reliable.

What other services have you tried?
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