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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

#341

Post by istjohn »

zelon88 wrote: post #223
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…

This. After I received my first positive review on the site they called me and tried selling me all kinds of advertising. Hundreds of dollars per month worth. I declined, and around the same time my review went from being on my business page to being buried behind a "View Reviews that are not recommended" link. It's a total scam and they should be dragged into court and their internal memos and procedures turned insi…

As long as we're sharing anecdata, I too was agressively pursued by their sales department after my first couple reviews. I declined, and nothing happened. My business became one of the highest-rated in its category locally. I even sucessfully requested the removal of a fake 3-star review (I know all my customers, and the reviewer was never one). And all along, I never paid Yelp a cent. I have since spent money on Yelp, but it was not necessary to reach the top of my local Yelp listings.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#342

Post by _august »

Foursquare! I've been using it pretty regularly and it always seems to give me cool neighborhood gems compared to over-advertised entires that Yelp gives you. You can kinda even feel that the app was built with some heart.

Also, I love the filters on there compared to Google (Google maps always seems to hide a lot of places)

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#343

Post by anarazel »

smelendez wrote: post #233
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…

Well, it's especially annoying with something like Yelp that you often use on the go and sometimes in stressful situations (somebody in your group is hungry and ornery). Downloading an app can take an unpredictable amount of time and bandwidth, and once you download it you may have to log in, remember or set a password, deal with 2FA, click a verification email, etc. .

After enough of these experiences I nearly always carry a bunch of fruit bars and such around. Both improves the groups mood, and usually allows to find better food afterwards.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#344

Post by parthdesai »

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…

There is a whole article on cbc about it.

Here is the link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/yelp-accused-of-bullying-bu...

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#345

Post by scrollaway »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #326
Deimorz wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: self-promotion I worked at reddit for almost 4 years, but quit and started a non-profit so I could work on building a site that would be able to stick to the principles I believe are important: no advertising or investors, open-source, privacy, higher-quality content, etc. It's not incredibly active yet since it's in invite-only alpha, but it gets several hundred posts a day and is coming along well. Ther…

How are you going to pay for it?

Happy Tildes user here. I believe Deimorz has some stated plans on how it will pay for itself (non-profit, donations, etc) but here's the thing:

I used to ask myself that question, then I realized it doesn't matter. Communities come and go. Slashdot used to be good. Reddit used to be good. That they're not anymore doesn't matter.

It sucks to up and leave a community once in a while, but it's not like you lose everything you did there. Social apps are intrinsically focused on the short term (past & future). It's okay to change which websites you visit once in a while.

I highly recommend Tildes. I enjoy my time there. It's pretty quiet and has very high signal, very low noise. If one day it has to be shut down because the bills can't be paid, that will suck… but there will be others.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#346

Post by ex3xu »

1024core wrote: post #299
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…

I hear what you're saying. But bear in mind that there's an entire "SEO" industry out there, which tries to shake down businesses by either promising to improve their search rankings, or threatening to tank their search rankings. So I'm sure your friends got a bunch of calls about this. But are you (or they) sure it was Yelp, though? Often it's some scammers in foreign countries like India.

No, this is not some conspiracy theory by a few anecdotal players. This is a quite well-documented phenomenon well-known to small business owners across a wide variety of industries. I understand that the instinct is "There's no way a big company could be doing something so obviously unethical and get away with it". But just do your own research, there's articles detailing sales calls that literally offer to remove bad reviews. Only Yelp has algorithmic control over what reviews get put into "not recommended", and one of the "coincidences" that happen after these calls is that 5 star reviews start disappearing. And do you think it is a coincidence that those positive reviews get restored after a business pays for advertising services?

Yelp has been involved in class acton lawsuits for this behavior no fewer than three times, and while they deny everything the court ruling astoundlingly claimed that this behavior isn't illegal or extortionary:

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Yelp-can-give-paying-cli...

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#347

Post by dnhz »

untog wrote: post #125
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!!!!

To be fair, iOS offers no capability to list the browsers a user has installed on their phone. So they have to assume Safari, which is a fair assumption for 90% of users, I imagine.

Gmail somehow knows. Every time I click a link, it asks to open in Safari or for me to install Chrome. I check the never ask prompt, but it always asks.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#348

Post by istjohn »

acdha wrote: post #205
DerfNet wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't know, I've heard an awful lot of people who aren't tech/privacy nerds joke about how Yelp allows you to pay to remove bad reviews or add fake ones. It seems to be a common belief in at least the food industry and that employs an awful lot of people who may hear and propagate it.

And yet no one can produce any evidence. It's just an easy excuse for a manager or owner whose location is getting poor ratings. My personal experience is that Yelp has an agressive sales force, their fraud detection system seems to fairly frequently raise false positives, but a business can do great on Yelp without paying a penny if they have happy customers.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#349

Post by bromuro »

humbleMouse wrote: post #273
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!!!!

Well to be fair the reddit app is wayyyyyy better than the web interface and works amazingly well.

I also like the app more than the website, and the new website over the old one.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#350

Post by thsowers »

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!!!!

Every browser on iOS including Chrome has to use Safari's render engine
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