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Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

chicagotribune.com

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Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#31

Post by ddw »

flourophore wrote: post #10

How can a computer evaluate the 'realness' of a review? The idea of Yelp, crowdsourced business reviews, is great, but do we really prefer trusting super active web content contributors, seeking cyberspace attention, over experts (eg Zagats)?

I think they do things like filter out reviews from a user that has only posted one review, or if your name appears to be fake, etc. But who knows how exactly their algorithm works.

They're afraid of competitors leaving negative reviews for a business and there's probably something to that, but there's no transparency about it. And they've been doing the extortion thing for a while now: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/yelp-under-fire-from-...

I always thought it would be great if there was a Yelp for landlords - because landlords are rarely held accountable and it's not like you ask for references before you sign a lease - but there would probably be too many false reviews posted to make it work or tenants wouldn't feel comfortable speaking freely (because unfortunately tenants still need references). There's actually a website trying it, but doesn't seem like it's going anywhere right now: http://www.donotrent.com

Hopefully people will see Yelp for what it is: a small sample of the population that may be dissimilar to you writing probably biased reviews.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#33

Post by huhtenberg »

pbreit wrote: post #22
marquis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect that the note is then buried or removed under Yelp's labyrinthine terms of service.

Wrong. The note goes right in the same box as the review.

Wrong too. The note goes on guy's website, not on Yelp's. "We noticed you came here from Yelp. Yadda-yadda..."

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#34

Post by mikeleeorg »

In case you want to dig in deeper, Frank Brader's dog business on Yelp now has 4 stars from 5 reviews:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience-traini...

Justin G, the negative reviewer, was a Yelp Elite member from 2006-2008:

http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=z25c9TyWY1TdVEGxkj34...

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#35

Post by marquis »

tomeric wrote: post #3
nirvana wrote: post #2

Does anyone know a place where I can post my review of Yelp.com?

You can review it on Yelp.com: http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco

Reading this was fascinating and considering the number of unhappy reviewers over happy, their own 3-star rating seems far-fetched.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#36

Post by muhfuhkuh »

cletus wrote: post #4

This raises several important issues. The first is that most people don't review things. No matter how easy it is the vast majority of the population just won't do it. The simpler you make it the more that will but the simpler it is the less useful it becomes. This has several important implications. - It makes local hard to scale because your audience size is that much smaller that reviews are far less reliable both…

"It makes local hard to scale because your audience size is that much smaller that reviews are far less reliable both in frequency and volume"

I've been a member of Angie's List for over 2 years now. It's not only saved me countless amounts of money over choosing nationally-advertised service companies for stuff like plumbing and HVAC work, but it's saved me tons of aggravation filtering out the honest, hard-working businesses from the fly-by-night charlatans who pile on services and "annual maintenance contracts" that are just code for finding yet another problem next year.

How do they get "local" reviews? Simple. If you pay for it, you'll review to keep the cycle of reviews going. If you're invested $30-60/yr. to subscribe, you feel like you have a vested interest in keeping both the review site and the service provider alive. I liken it to the SomethingAwful forums: the ones who subscribe are also the most frequent posters.

But, Angie's List also uses their own tactics to keep reviews flowing and fresh. They will email reminders to review service providers you've recently browsed if you decided to use them. They'll even call you to record a review over the phone and then they'll transcribe it.

It's why they've been blowing everyone else out of the water in "local" search since the 90s.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#37

Post by mikeleeorg »

kenjackson wrote: post #29

Given Yelp's size, why doesn't it employ some collaborative filtering options? In general I don't care about everyone's reviews (especially of restaurants). But it would be interesting to know -- for people who like White Castle, McDonald's, and Denny's, but not Applebees -- what would they recommend. This is not the type of thing you could typically get by reading reviews by themselves (and maybe those people wouldn…

There's a new mobile app called Ness (http://www.likeness.com) that's trying to do this. I happen to agree with you, so I really hope Ness can pull this off. I'd really like a recommendation service that knows my personal preferences.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#38

Post by pbz »

pbreit wrote: post #16

The article could have revealed that of the 18 "hidden" reviews, 14 were the only review by the Yelper and 11 were in a one week period. These are two of the main criteria for Yelp's filtering. I'm surprised people believe that Yelp would be so clumsy and unethical to simply penalize non-advertisers.

I'm surprised people think they wouldn't. They have the perfect hideout. Whatever the case they can always blame it on the "algorithm," and short of auditing their source code, nobody can really prove them otherwise.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#39

Post by pixcavator »

cletus wrote: post #4

This raises several important issues. The first is that most people don't review things. No matter how easy it is the vast majority of the population just won't do it. The simpler you make it the more that will but the simpler it is the less useful it becomes. This has several important implications. - It makes local hard to scale because your audience size is that much smaller that reviews are far less reliable both…

>>It's why I think companies like Google (disclaimer: I work for Google) should stay out the content business.

Isn't AdSense content business?

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#40

Post by termie »

pbreit wrote: post #16

The article could have revealed that of the 18 "hidden" reviews, 14 were the only review by the Yelper and 11 were in a one week period. These are two of the main criteria for Yelp's filtering. I'm surprised people believe that Yelp would be so clumsy and unethical to simply penalize non-advertisers.

There is certainly a ton of press around this coming from several reputable media outlets for months. Google for 'yelp extortion'. So you shouldn't be surprised. This is a real problem for them. At minimum, here is a documented case of legitimate reviews that simply aren't shown. They are basically saying 'The computer did that, so fuck off' and end up coming off like a bully, which by all measured terms they are.
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