Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.
Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
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Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#12A bit of a side note, but this is super rare: > Meanwhile, Dean took SavantCare to small claims court over the letter and calls she later received, and won a $275 judgment in March 2018 for “negligent infliction of emotional distress.” NIED claims are nearly impossible to win. In law school we were taught to point them out on issue-spotting questions, but that they were basically unwinnable.
so you're claiming that since there was a win, that it was that egregious?
The article doesn't say whether Savant Care showed up. If they didn't show up it would have been a default judgement.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#13Good for her. Yelp's business model seems to work best if they can pick winners, which is unfortunate. If I search for "dinner" on Yelp for "current location" and look at the map, it leaves out an astonishing number of places that I can see within a mile if I drive down the street. And if your business model is centered around hiding all but the winners - who might pay for placement + reviews both - then you have to…
> It's a broader internet problem in general - "trending" algorithmic reinforcement stuff will push everyone towards the ONE TRUE BEST HOTTEST MOST POPULAR bbq/ramen/whatver place, when probably there's half a dozen other options within 10% of taste and quality, that some people very well could legitimately like better if they heard about them too.
Instagram doesn't help -- gotta get a shot of me eating noodles at the hot new place! There's a new ramen shop in downtown San Mateo that has a 30-person line outside at all times... I can't imagine it's that much better than the half-dozen other ramen places within 3 blocks, but by god it's new, and anyway would people be lining up like this if it wasn't good? I better get in line too...
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#14[deleted]
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#15Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.
No review site depending on users is perfect but I've found it's the best option for a quick "what's a good restaurant for x cuisine" in America.
I've found Google Maps or Tripadvisor to be too hit-or-miss especially when traveling abroad where Yelp isn't as prevalent.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#16I don’t use the reviews, just the listings. One of my favorite local restaurants purposefully asks for one star reviews on yelp, as they were listed there without their consent.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#17Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.
At least in New York, it is. It’s less prone to the cost noise that infects the other rating services—where a 3 star could be due to bad food or someone being surprised by New York prices. (There is also a scourge of paid top ten articles that makes a simple search useless.)
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#18Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.
The Apple Maps integration seems to be most of what's propping them up these days. It's especially infuriating because you can only see about 2 reviews before you're prompted to download the Yelp app for "full access".
I thought Apple was supposed to be working on their own review system or switching to a different service, but I haven't seen anything come of that.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#19Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.
I find that if a restaurant has 4.5 or 5 stars (assuming a decent number of reviews), typically it is very good. However, plenty of the places I eat/enjoy have 3 stars (none have 2 or 1). So I use it as a rough filter for that purpose.
It's also useful for seeing if particular menu items are good, since fake reviews don't typically get into that much detail (or at least there are other real reviews that would outweigh them in search results for that item).
FWIW, I live in silicon valley.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#20First and only Yelp review I ever left was three stars for an Indian restaurant in 2011. It was quickly hidden because "it didn't pass the bot filter" or something. I've never used it since as a reviewer or to find places. It lost all credibility on my first interaction with it.
My wife left a bad review for a restaurant and was stalked and harassed by the restaurant owner for years afterwards.
Since she couldn't get Yelp to help with that, it makes every review suspect. It doesn't take much of that behavior to convince people to only leave good reviews, and then they're basically useless.