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Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

sfgate.com

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Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#61

Post by crazygringo »

nickstinemates wrote: post #26
dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

Yeah that's the part I don't get too.

It's normal for a new local restaurant to get a bunch of good reviews because locals are trying it for the first time and want to help. Then it's normal for reviews to drop off because every local who would leave a review, has. Then it's normal to start attracting negative reviews from people who have never visited because local competing restaurants have realized where the downtick in their own business has come from, and so start trashing the competition. And then the negative reviews stop because the competing restaurants were satisfied they'd left enough negative reviews.

These stories have been going around about Yelp for over a decade at this point. And Yelp has churned through so many salespeople... you'd think there would have been tons of credible whistleblowers by now if this were really how Yelp operated.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#62

Post by [deleted] »

dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

[deleted]

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#63

Post by emodendroket »

irskep wrote: post #34

Edit: I would have loved to add to the conversation, but people do love their pitchforks and I should be working instead of commenting on HN. :-) Admitting you worked for Yelp on HN: not even once

Yeah, the only way you could have it work perfectly would be actually manually reviewing each review. Which would make the business model not work.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#64

Post by emodendroket »

FireBeyond wrote: post #59
irskep wrote: post #34

Edit: I would have loved to add to the conversation, but people do love their pitchforks and I should be working instead of commenting on HN. :-) Admitting you worked for Yelp on HN: not even once

> It's amazing to me how many people have conspiracy theories about Yelp reviews, when in reality it's just really hard to determine good vs bad actors in review systems and it's possible to do a bad job as an engineer. When cards are cloned, it's exceptionally easy for a bank to determine which merchant is compromised by looking for common denominators. Take three actors. What are the odds that two of them have revi…

I can see some ways that might go awry (what if I like reviewing every new restaurant that opens?). But more importantly, bad actors will figure out and work around each heuristic like this you make.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#65

Post by winrid »

irskep wrote: post #34

Edit: I would have loved to add to the conversation, but people do love their pitchforks and I should be working instead of commenting on HN. :-) Admitting you worked for Yelp on HN: not even once

It doesn't matter what you did as an engineer, and in fact automation isnt really a big part of the discussion.

If sales people etc have special access to add or remove reviews, which they do, or at a minimum leave negative reviews themselves when you don't pay, it is corrupt. It is well documented at this point that they do this.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#66

Post by emodendroket »

winrid wrote: post #65
irskep wrote: post #34

Edit: I would have loved to add to the conversation, but people do love their pitchforks and I should be working instead of commenting on HN. :-) Admitting you worked for Yelp on HN: not even once

It doesn't matter what you did as an engineer, and in fact automation isnt really a big part of the discussion. If sales people etc have special access to add or remove reviews, which they do, or at a minimum leave negative reviews themselves when you don't pay, it is corrupt. It is well documented at this point that they do this.

That’s not what the article describes at all so I’m curious what documentation you are referring to.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#67

Post by Solvency »

emodendroket wrote: post #47
nickstinemates wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

Yeah I find it a bit hard to believe. If you really think reviews are inauthentic it’s not hard to click on their profiles and see. I find it hard to see much evidence for astroturfing. If anything I think it’s fairly generous about not putting negative feedback front-and-center. That, and, as the article details, and I’ve seen in my own personal experience, business owners are extremely aggressive about trying to ge…

I am friends with 3 different businesses in my town. A baker, a cafe, and a small restaurant. All three of them have experienced the exact same thing. I've seen it happen first-hand on their accounts.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#68

Post by emodendroket »

ryaniscool wrote: post #5

First 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.

Which is the flip side of aggressive removal of possible fake reviews people are clamoring for.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#69

Post by jollyllama »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #46
nickstinemates wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

secrets can't be kept in any large corporation therefore this is a conspiracy theory of course secrets can be kept in large organizations, but it's funny how often that get repeated.

ITT: people who have never heard of NDAs

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#70

Post by emodendroket »

wccrawford wrote: post #20
ryaniscool wrote: post #5

First 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.

Yeah I had a similar experience with a plumbing business I chose not to hire after their rude and aggressive salesman came and insulted me in some misguided bid to get me to sign a contract.
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