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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

#101

Post by kevinmchugh »

annexrichmond wrote: post #94
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…

I have seen this same claim so many times over the years and not once I have seen direct evidence of it, just hearsay. "My friend", "My wife's cousin", etc. How hard would it be to show before/after screenshots, timestamps of Yelp sales calls, etc.

It's also really hard to tell if Yelp is doing it. I would absolutely believe there are third party scammers posing as Yelp

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

#103

Post by FireBeyond »

emodendroket wrote: post #64
FireBeyond wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Of course they will, but that shouldn't negate the need to identify and shut down interactions which are quite definitively problematic.

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

#104

Post by Solvency »

emodendroket wrote: post #57

> Before Fake Review Watch and all her research, Dean used review sites often, she said. But now she tells everyone she knows to stick with good old word-of-mouth — especially with recent additional hits to the online system, like the surge of reviews spurred by COVID-19 policies and new reports of AI chatbot-written Amazon reviews. Kind of sick of reading this advice. If I knew someone I trusted to recommend me a co…

This is where NextDoor comes in. I guarantee your entire town is likely already on there talking about contractors they've used. The app is slow and sluggish but it's legitimately where most homeowners and "regular townsie folk" are these days.

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

#105

Post by axus »

crazygringo wrote: post #61
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 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 downt…

Apparently Yelp will remove positive reviews that have been posted before, and save up negative reviews for publication after the advertising pitch; to be unpublished if advertising is paid for.

They may not actually be writing the reviews, simply choosing when to publish or unpublish them, and in what quantities, and which to count for the overall rating.

It doesn't matter who's casting the reviews, but who's counting them.

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

#106

Post by ryandrake »

I hate to be dismissive, but this is kind of a "Water Is Wet" article. Does anyone really think online reviews are anything but totally gamed, bought, and paid for? It's kind of a Universal Law Of Spam: Any place on the Internet where users can add content and where content might be profitable to someone, will eventually end up full of spam and paid-for content.

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

#107

Post by bequanna »

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…

It is easy to imagine that (some) Yelp sales reps are following an unofficial playbook to manufacture negative reviews around the time they engage prospects.

If one sales rep is caught, easy for the company to label them a rogue, bad actor.

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

#108

Post by aphatankha »

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?

[dead]

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

#109

Post by mywittyname »

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…

This has been known for like 10 years now. I can't believe anyone actually still uses or trusts Yelp reviews.

There were lawsuits in the early 2010s over trying to reveal the identity of negative reviewers because so many restaurants were claiming they were fake/extortion.

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

#110

Post by nedFlan »

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?

I’ve heard this story more than once from business owners.

Small biz across the world are subject to the reach of social media addicted primates with persecution complex. Few will take the risk of a review bomb or nobodies traveling to vandalize their business.

It’s not a new meme by any means: https://fortune.com/2015/04/07/yelp-reviews-controversy/

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