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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

#331

Post by duxup »

village-idiot wrote: post #11
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?

The number of people who clearly had no idea what they were signing up for was always amusing to me. Example, if you go to a hole in the wall taco joint, you're going to get greasy tacos served on plastic or paper plates. I mean, it's not fancy, but they're also $1 each. By complaining about that on yelp you're just showing off your silliness, not providing anything useful to other potential customers.

I had a great neopolitan style pizza place open in my neighborhood. It was inundated by bad reviews by people who were upset that it was "just floppy thin crust pizza" and so forth.

Over time word got out and its reviews stabilized as their pizza and ingredients are top quality. But man for a while it was all just some idiots who just wanted some dominoes like pizza.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#332

Post by _cs2017_ »

This has probably nothing to do with them losing advertisers, but I really dislike the app UX. Examples:

1. Videos auto play in the app, stopping my music or whatever else I'm listening to. And I can't disable that feature.

2. Frequent crashes and other glitches (eg, the Recent category doesn't actually show many of the places I visited today).

3. No way to save default settings, like sort by rating. So with every search I have to manually set those preferences. Similarly, no way to save searches or even to go back to a previous search I just ran.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#333

Post by fencepost »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #106
ghostly_s wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that I would take some random stranger's advice because they earned some 'Yelp Stars' or whatever by wasting a bunch of their time on the site trying to feel important is ridiculous. I stopped looking at these pretty quick after I realized what a time-sink it was that did not seem to result in me patronizing any better places than I was before. (And the fact that Yelp seems to go out of there way to prevent…

If a place has 700 reviews and a 4.5 star rating that's good signal that it's good, regardless of how many words are put into the 3 reviews you see on the front page. If a place has 5 reviews and a 3 star rating that doesn't mean anything to me. Maybe it's great maybe it sucks, but I'm not turned off by it. It's just basic stats. If you're trusting one good 500-word yelp-elite review on a listing with 2000 2-star rev…

If a place has 700 reviews and a 4.5 star rating

If a place has 5 reviews and a 3 star rating

And if a place has 500 1-star reviews, someone there probably pissed off a person or group with an online following that decided on trashing.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#334

Post by antichronology »

_cs2017_ wrote: post #332

This has probably nothing to do with them losing advertisers, but I really dislike the app UX. Examples: 1. Videos auto play in the app, stopping my music or whatever else I'm listening to. And I can't disable that feature. 2. Frequent crashes and other glitches (eg, the Recent category doesn't actually show many of the places I visited today). 3. No way to save default settings, like sort by rating. So with every se…

google maps has a lot of ratings and I find is good at suggesting a list of places from which I can select one. Look into the explore around me feature

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#335

Post by askar_yu »

rhacker wrote: post #130
mlrtime wrote: post #9

I don't have any sympathy for a site that purposely cripples the web mobile site to force you to install their app. They lock you out of pictures after around 20 so you have to go to desktop or install their crappy app. Yelp will not be missed.

It's sad but many companies have tunnel vision - probably getting thousands of reports of people complaining of this. Unfortunately they think, for whatever reason, those are all outliers. It takes a good scathing top-rated post on HN to let them see. I'm sure a developer at Yelp that has been complaining to management for years is going to take this thread and show someone that can change it. But I think it's too la…

Exactly. One of my favourite apps, Quora, also did it some time ago (may be they still do) - forcing you to install the app if you're browsing them on mobile. I remember being shocked - shocked because while this (horrible) practice became a common thing, I'd always though of Quora highly, and assumed they'd never do something silly like that, but no, they'd disappointed.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#336

Post by CamperBob2 »

DerfNet wrote: post #123
dunpeal wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yelp was involved in more than a few shady dealings over the years, and most people remember that. They manipulate their own rating for money, and for that reason many consider these ratings - their core product - to be unreliable and misleading. They will not be missed.

I don't think "most people" are even aware of Yelp's previous issues. It's probably more just Google eating their lunch.

The thing Yelp has never understood is that when they hide, deprecate, or remove a review for no good reason, the person who posted that review gripes about it to a half-dozen of their friends.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#337

Post by Crespyl »

wlesieutre wrote: post #240
Scoundreller wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a matter of time before they acquire the top app or two and block the rest.

IIRC the official app is from them buying AlienBlue, which used to be the best one on iOS. These days it's Apollo. Apollo recently moved some push notification features behind a subscription to cover ongoing costs, separate from their "Pro" one time in-app purchase, so I think Reddit is at least taking a cut from API usage by other clients.

I don't use the iOS versions, but IIRC they never really did anything with AlienBlue after the purchase, and the "official" mobile app is a totally separate project.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#338

Post by tootie »

Scoundreller wrote: post #102
makecheck wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile browsers should differentiate the style of links with URLs that resolve to apps. I am tired of tapping links expecting to remain in Safari and having useless “open in app?” prompts instead. I’m not IN an app, I’m in a browser; I want to use the browser. And when cancelling the prompt gets you nothing, it really feels like Yelp is screaming “NO SOUP FOR YOU!”.

Reddit keeps asking me if I want to download their app or Open in Safari... regardless of which browser I’m using. Not every iOS user is using Safari!!!!

Try https://i.reddit.com. It's super barebones and hasn't been updated in years, but it's also super light and fast and still works just fine.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#339

Post by crkhms »

I don't get the negativity here, Yelp is an incredibly useful service; especially living in NYC. With such a dense amount of restaurants in the city, you need some way to cut out the cruft.

I'm yet to eat at a Yelp 4-star restaurant in NYC that I didn't think was good. Besides Foursquare as an alternative, the reviews on Google, TripAdvisor, etc. are all way too inflated.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#340

Post by chocolatkey »

tootie wrote: post #338
Scoundreller wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit keeps asking me if I want to download their app or Open in Safari... regardless of which browser I’m using. Not every iOS user is using Safari!!!!

Try https://i.reddit.com . It's super barebones and hasn't been updated in years, but it's also super light and fast and still works just fine.

Despite its early iPhone-era skin which may not appeal to all, this is a great find. And so fast compared to the new mobile. Thanks
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