351–360 of 464 posts
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.
No Reddit, I am not installing your fucking app. I clicked decline a dozen times in a row, get the hint.
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> 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...
"What I got without spoken direct words..."
"The restaurateur says the representative didn’t blatantly tell Dloomy he could solve his problem by paying up, but he believes that was the underlying message"
It sounds like motivated reasoning and applying an existing narrative to the advertising calls.
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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?
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> 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...
There are plenty of salty business owners, and somewhat understandably. Yelp is far more proactive than, say, Amazon in policing reviews with its automated software. They do sometimes filter legitimate reviews, particularly when a reviewer has few other reviews on the site and is very flattering to the business. They do not want businesses to game the system by bribing customers or recruiting friends and family.
But of course, sometimes this incorrectly flags legitimate positive reviews. And when simultaneous negative reviews don't get filtered, this is understandably frustrating for businesses. And it doesn't take much imagination for a slightly paranoid owner to wonder if Yelp's pushy sales efforts have a nefarious undertone.
But this aggressive quality control is what makes Yelp ratings so much more useful than Amazon ratings. And if businesses can keep attracting positive reviews, especially from established reviewers on the platform, and perhaps more importantly, avoid negative reviews, their ratings will rise. And they will have to fight Yelp's slightly trigger-happy automated review moderation whether or not they give money to a Yelp sales rep.
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.
Ever notice how you get a 404 occassionaly when going through the list of businesses? That was a scraping trap.
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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 everyth…
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.
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…
I'm rarely looking at 1 restaurant at a time, I'm trying to compare 5, or 6 or 10.
The Yelp app has no means of doing that.
Also, I can't easily select some text in the app, like the name of a dish I'm not familiar with, and quickly trigger a web search in another tab to do some quick side reading.
I have the Yelp app installed, but 9 times out of 10 the browser is how I prefer to use search for restaurants.
Because of Yelp's frustrating site restrictions, I find myself often using Google instead, even though I prefer Yelp!!!!!!
How ridiculous is that!!
Browsers also seem to have better low bandwidth performance than most apps. Probably because doing constrained network communications is hard and only browsers have the billions of reps needed to practice getting it right. With most apps I find that network handling in poor network situations (like is all too common when traveling and looking for a restaurant) is inferior to most browsers.
So yeah, Yelp would definitely win me over if they kept their site browser and low-bandwidth friendly.
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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.
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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 b…
This is hearsay that is quoted in the article you link to, but I would like to see proof of positive reviews being restored after purchasing advertising. This would not be difficult to document if it is happening.
Lawsuits in which Yelp has prevailed are not compelling evidence for the claims of malfeasance.
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.
just curious why you're against downloading the app? I work on native apps and just wondering why you have a preference for mobile web.
I'm rarely looking at 1 restaurant at a time, I'm trying to compare 5, or 6 or 10.
The Yelp app has no means of doing that.
Also, I can't easily select some text in the app, like the name of a dish I'm not familiar with, and quickly trigger a web search in another tab to do some quick side reading.
Often not all text in Apps is selectable and copy paste-able.
I have the Yelp app installed, but 9 times out of 10 the browser is how I prefer to use search for restaurants.
Browsers also seem to have better low bandwidth performance than most apps. Probably because doing constrained network communications is hard and only browsers have the billions of reps needed to practice getting it right. With most apps I find that network handling in poor network situations (like is all too common when traveling and looking for a restaurant) is inferior to most browsers.
So yeah, Yelp would definitely win me over if they kept their site browser and low-bandwidth friendly.