171–180 of 331 posts
Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If this is sufficiently widespread, seems like there's an opportunity for a honeypot operation. I.e.: (1) Guess at what information triggers this kind of shakedown by Yelp for a new business. E.g., credit-card sales data for new restaurants. (2) Set up a fake business that pushes all of those buttons. E.g., register a new restaurant business in the state; temporarily rent a space and maybe put up signage; generate re…
Good 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…
This is why Craigslist does great. They take a small fixed fee on volume and don't favor listings. A good restaurant directory - some exist for restaurant niches, but none in general - could clean up with non-obtrusive ads if the focused on completeness and accuracy with a fairly minor feature set. It would just require having enough capital and time to establish social trust. Curating reviews is just broken, just li…
> Yelp, founded in San Francisco in 2004, is deeply entrenched in American consumer habits is it really? couldn't tell you the last time i loaded yelp.com on purpose.
I am surprised a yelp/google alternative has not been created with a feature to establish provenance of a review. Perhaps something like a receipt which contains a unique link and that person can provide a review through the link. The review will be posted as "verified transaction" on the site and overall score of the restaurant is determined from there. "Anonymous" reviews can still be posted but won't be factored i…
Turns out a lot of restaurant owners would prefer to straight up own the reviews/influence it themselves rather than get legitimate, anonymized ones. There's just not that much of a reason to genuinely improve as a service when there's so much cutthroat competition
While on the subject, are there any review sites anywhere, not just for locations but also of products, that can be trusted? It seems to me that all of them can be and actively are gamed. Googling using the extension site:reddit.com caught on for a reason.
I keep seeing people swear by the NY Times' Wirecutter and they do have a much more upfront set of standards for reviewing products, but I've actually been pretty underwhelmed by the recommended buys from them. Still, I respect that they're trying. Wish that Consumer Reports was more easily available now too.
They also seem to have a much broader range of things covered now, so I think the strategy was to go cheaper, faster, wider.
Good 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…
Google Maps is terrible for hiding results. I'll use the filter to show restaurants with a 4.5+ star rating, and it hides dozens of places 4.5+ stars while instead showing results 4.0 - 4.4 stars and even some that have no reviews at all. I find the arrogance insulting. You want to see 4.5+ star Japanese food restaurants? Well, I don't think that's best for you, and I'm going to replace some of those results with 4.1…
Good 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…
Google Maps is terrible for hiding results. I'll use the filter to show restaurants with a 4.5+ star rating, and it hides dozens of places 4.5+ stars while instead showing results 4.0 - 4.4 stars and even some that have no reviews at all. I find the arrogance insulting. You want to see 4.5+ star Japanese food restaurants? Well, I don't think that's best for you, and I'm going to replace some of those results with 4.1…
But there's not really any alternative. Apple Maps can't show me things because it's missing the entries entirely. Yelp became useless years ago. I feel like we're going back in time because the best way to find local restaurants has become walking / driving around the neighborhood to see what's there, or getting word of mouth recommendations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes they show TripAdvisor reviews instead of Yelp.
Huh. Wonder if it's a regional thing? I don't recall ever seeing that and I just checked about 25 places in my city and none of them had TripAdvisor.
-Apple Maps native reviews
-Yelp
-OpenTable
And I'm definitely seeing a lot less Yelp than I used to. At least in Toronto, yelp is pretty much dead anyway. People mostly use Google Maps.