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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

#371

Post by lozaning »

jkchu wrote: post #194
kadabra9 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. Hopefully this is a wakeup call to Yelp and other slimy sites that try to extort users into downloading their app. Also, small pro-tip for anyone unaware. If you are on mobile web and on Yelp, but don't want to download the app, hold down the refresh button, and select 'Request Desktop Site' - this will load the non mobile version of the site that will not force you to download the app. The UI…

This may be an unpopular opinion, but is Yelp really being slimy by pushing users to download their app? Seems to me it's more that they are being too cheap/lazy to properly maintain both a mobile app and a mobile site. Certainly not behavior that benefits their users, but I feel slimy implies that they are doing something dishonest.

In that case just deep six the app and let everyone use the website. Surely running just a website and a mobile website has to be less work than running a website, a half functioning purposefully neutered mobile website, and and app. They're user hostile, so slimy or not, fuck 'em.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#372

Post by pmiller2 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #134
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!”.

My guess is that it’s harder to block ads on an app. And apps can track more details about you, yielding more revenue (or potential revenue to an acquirer). Investors probably ascribe more value to apps-based services than web-based.

Hammer, meet nail. This right here is likely the true reason. Also, it's easier to access stuff like location history.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#374

Post by trhway »

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?

taking out the cost of the workforce (R&D, sales, associated GnA) working on revenue generation, ie. ads, analytics, etc. i'd suppose the rest of the costs of a typical Web2.0 site (like Twitter, FB, Reddit) comes down to basically hosting only and isn't that high - can probably be easily covered by donations. Or a real example - without meaningful monetization and thus related costs, WhatApp was fine with 55 employees serving $19B worth of user engagement.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#375

Post by archon810 »

nickrivadeneira wrote: post #369
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.

Just to give some balance to the echo chamber here, I would miss Yelp. I never try to use the mobile site, so I've never felt that pain. Most people I know are in the same boat. It's pretty silly to suggest that nobody would miss Yelp.

I just visited a country without Yelp and really missed it. Google reviews were quite active, and I was pretty impressed with automatic translations into English, but Yelp would have been a helpful tool I'm used to as well.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#376

Post by vageli »

lgleason wrote: post #89
momentmaker wrote: post #5

Maybe now local businesses are realizing they don't want deal with the mob-like business practice Yelp had been accustomed to over the years.

Yeah, but Google reviews are essentially the same thing.

> Yeah, but Google reviews are essentially the same thing.

How so? I've registered businesses on Google and never gotten a sales call from a Google rep.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#377

Post by dasil003 »

spiznnx wrote: post #367
jkchu wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but is Yelp really being slimy by pushing users to download their app? Seems to me it's more that they are being too cheap/lazy to properly maintain both a mobile app and a mobile site. Certainly not behavior that benefits their users, but I feel slimy implies that they are doing something dishonest.

Yelp cares a lot about app installs because web traffic is fragile. When Google ranking changes their traffic immediately changes, which is not desirable for building a stable buisness.

Feels a bit like looking for your keys under the streetlight. App users may be 10x more valuable but it doesn’t mean you can force them. There are lots of services that I will use frequently through a website but would never install an app.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#378

Post by smsm42 »

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.

I am not very happy with some of Yelp UX decisions, but if their service goes down, it will be missed very much by me. I know their ratings are not always reliable, but I haven't found any better alternative. It is somewhat weird that one of the obvious things that people started working at decades ago, still doesn't seem to have a satisfactory solution.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#379

Post by flattone »

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.

Companies interacting with their customers the way gansters and drug dealers might ... So fun.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#380

Post by 1024core »

ex3xu wrote: post #346
1024core wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> No, this is not some conspiracy theory by a few anecdotal players.

I've been working in the search engine industry for more than 15 years (as in, worked on core ranking algorithms and other infrastructure for a long time). I've heard similar reports countless times about ranking algorithms that our team controlled, and it was all just speculation.

Once again: Yelp has been around for 10+ years. By now, surely someone will have iron-clad proof that they paid to get bad reviews removed. I have not seen any.

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