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Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

cnbc.com

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Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#311

Post by thoughtexplorer »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #210

Good. Yelp is utter trash. They've shaken down several friends of mine who own and run restaurants. Either you pay for their premium services or a bunch of 1 star reviews start magically appearing on your business Its a well known racket and they should be run out of town on a rail for it. On a more personal note, they also refused to adequately protect my wife when we encountered and reported an unscrupulous vendor…

> Either you pay for their premium services or a bunch of 1 star reviews start magically appearing on your business

How do you square that claim given that both current and former Yelp employees say they do no such thing?

How do you know those reviews are fake vs coincidence? I've heard a lot of anecdotes and conspiracies about this, but have never seen actual proof. No documents, recorded phone calls, court cases etc? And given how many people have worked at Yelp it's strange no one has blown the whistle yet if they engage in such practices. They would be an instant hero.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#312

Post by ljm »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #266
wlesieutre wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you want to view it in the official Reddit app for the best experience ? No, no I don't. And the official reddit app is not the best experience.

It's not even close to the best experience. Often when I "open in the app", I just get sent to the homepage of my app with no way to find the random post I had been trying to view.

They don't clarify who the experience is best for. Is it best for the user? No. Is it best for their business model? Most likely.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#313

Post by nhauz »

oe wrote: post #302
nhauz wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wish I could add those to mobile Safari :P

Install an ad blocker that supports hiding page elements. I added these to 1Blocker on iOS.

That one costs money. Is there a free blocker? I use Firefox Focus, but it does not let me add custom elements.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#314

Post by falsedan »

timr wrote: post #300
ilikehurdles wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There. is. no. evidence. of. this. I'm not sure how otherwise skeptical techy people imagine a conspiracy into reality with nothing to back it up. Don't you think that of the thousands of people who have worked at yelp, that one of them would have spread news about it with their peers? The "shakedowns", floods of negative reviews, sudden filtering, etc. Every single instance is some anecdotal story online, and has ne…

Thank you. It's pathetic how far the conversation on HN has fallen.

Almost as bad as levchins…

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#316

Post by wilg »

DelightOne wrote: post #195
wilg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the most interesting/telling user experience things in the industry today is why people feel so strongly about not installing apps. It seems like it spans most people, from novice users all the way to technology experts. Personally, I've never understood it, since nearly every mobile website is terrible. I prefer installing the app. Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve. If you don't…

Apps simply often have alot less value to offer. And with a higher price attached. See permissions, tracking, notifications, worse UX sometimes, ad-blocker missing/ad-land. Some are more affected of the issues, some less. > Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve. No.

Why don't you think any of the problems you mentioned are worth solving?

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#317

Post by jessaustin »

nasalgoat wrote: post #6

If your business model is essentially extortion, you have to wonder about long-term viability.

AdWords seems to be set for the foreseeable future.

Before the inevitable protests, here's how it works. AdWords is quite willing to take money from Business A's competitor Business B for the precise phrase "Business A", as well as numerous other phrases that obviously refer to Business A. As a result, searches by naive mobile users for "Business A" will instead yield on-screen directions to "Business B". Business A will only find out about a small fraction of this traffic redirection, but it will still hurt them. In order to fix it, they only need to pay more money to AdWords than their competitors. That may be legal, but it is certainly extortion.

[EDIT:] To return to the topic of Yelp, it may be that extortion works when you've got the muscle to enforce it. Google have that, but a site like Yelp where most of the traffic is coming from a search engine probably doesn't.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#318

Post by falsedan »

stanleydrew wrote: post #307
rchaud wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Apple tend to buy relatively unknown companies and fold their IP into their products? Beats Audio was the only major one I remember them absorbing, and was rebranded as Apple Music. But Beats had that upscale demographic and positive brand image that Apple covets so dearly, whereas Yelp feels very much like a bygone brand of the 2010s IPO rush (along with Groupon and Foursquare). Not sure Apple would be inter…

I don't think Apple cares about any Yelp "IP". It's a local establishment discovery and review site. You suggest "they can just pay for the POI data." Which is basically what I'm suggesting. Yelp's actual underlying asset is its POI database. Apple might want that if they decide to own rather than rent (which is a transition Google made a while back). Not at any price, but if Yelp continues to struggle the valuation…

Wow, I would have thought the revenue stream from advertisers, the returning users that make the ads worth buying, or the reviews that tie them together would be more valuable assets than then location data anyone could scrape out of the state business register.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#320

Post by vikingcaffiene »

thoughtexplorer wrote: post #311
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #210

Good. Yelp is utter trash. They've shaken down several friends of mine who own and run restaurants. Either you pay for their premium services or a bunch of 1 star reviews start magically appearing on your business Its a well known racket and they should be run out of town on a rail for it. On a more personal note, they also refused to adequately protect my wife when we encountered and reported an unscrupulous vendor…

> Either you pay for their premium services or a bunch of 1 star reviews start magically appearing on your business How do you square that claim given that both current and former Yelp employees say they do no such thing? How do you know those reviews are fake vs coincidence? I've heard a lot of anecdotes and conspiracies about this, but have never seen actual proof. No documents, recorded phone calls, court cases et…

I square it by actually knowing people who've been affected. It's not like it was ambiguous or hard to figure out how it works. Its a VERY commonly known thing in the F&B industry and they all hate Yelp for it.
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