Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews. Here’s How You Fix It • Hacker News Board

Re: Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews. Here’s How You Fix It

#21

Post by spotting » Tue, Apr 24, 2012, 5:01 PM UTC

ed209 wrote: post #9

It would be interesting to see a crowd-sourced recommendation site based only on positive recommendations. Something like a Net Promoter score to tell me where is good. i.e. you can only leave feedback for a place if you would actually recommend it to someone. Every business can have bad days, and a negative review can put a prospective customer off even if actually 99% of the time that's a good business. This isn't…

I work for a startup in Sunnyvale that is trying to do something like that.

Would you mind looking at (the web site listed in my profile) and describing what is still missing?

edit: removed link

Re: Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews. Here’s How You Fix It

#22

Post by edw519 » Tue, Apr 24, 2012, 5:02 PM UTC

1995

Q: How can you verify the quality of a ?

A: Ask your .

2009

Q: Same question.

A: Don't need no stinkin' people. We have the internets!

2012

Q: Internet solution doesn't work. How do we fix it?

A: Use the 1995 solution.

Re: Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews. Here’s How You Fix It

#23

Post by mamasays » Tue, Apr 24, 2012, 5:08 PM UTC

Yelp has been having problems for a long time, especially with small business owners. The site is killing small business owners, just do a Google search and you will find endless complaints about the site. Truth is Yelp cannot control the reviews, they can't guarantee them and their Filter... if it works only 50% of the time then it is worthless.

Re: Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews. Here’s How You Fix It

#24

Post by bobbydavid » Tue, Apr 24, 2012, 5:08 PM UTC

Disclaimer: I don't work for Yelp but I have created other user-ratings-based sites before.

It's not entirely fair to criticize Yelp for under-emphasizing negative reviews.

One of the big hurdles to overcome on a user ratings site is that people are most motivated to write reviews when they are outraged. There is a massive selection bias, and if nothing is done to alleviate this, your site runs the risk of becoming a soap box for ranting.

You work harder to get positive reviews than negative ones. If you receive 2 bad reviews and 2 good ones, that does not mean 50% of people are dissatisfied.

This should be the motivation for preferencing good reviews over lots of one-off bad reviews.

BUT: Yelp made the cardinal sin of "objective" ratings sites: their profit comes from the entities they are rating. Ergo everything on their site is questionable.

Re: Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews. Here’s How You Fix It

#25

Post by ckdarby » Tue, Apr 24, 2012, 5:09 PM UTC

I have no pity for this guy...seriously he only went by Yelp's reviews and did no further research.

This article just proves how stupid consumers can be when making important decisions.

When I read the article I didn't see the guy mentioning looking up the company on the BBB or even simply Google'ing "[Company] scams" or "[Company] scammers".

Yes, Yelp could implement better solutions to protect consumers but ultimately the consumer needs to do adequate research before purchasing.

Re: Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews. Here’s How You Fix It

#26

Post by Symmetry » Tue, Apr 24, 2012, 5:10 PM UTC

This seems like pretty much the exact problem that social networking was designed to solve.

Re: Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews. Here’s How You Fix It

#27

Post by spotting » Tue, Apr 24, 2012, 5:11 PM UTC

tocomment wrote: post #15

This sounds terrible. I wonder if this space is ripe for a new startup to gradaully take over? If you guys made a competitor to Yelp, how would you improve on it?

We have put a lot of time and effort into making a local recommendation engine that is primarily powered by your real friends and acquaintances.

I'm not sure how it compares to other sites, but you can see the URL in my profile.

Re: Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews. Here’s How You Fix It

#28

Post by egypturnash » Tue, Apr 24, 2012, 5:11 PM UTC

jv22222 wrote: post #12

twoodfin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely Yelp can pick up on a continuous, consistent pattern of negative reviews. But a continuous, consistent pattern of one-shot negative reviews is also not particularly difficult for a competing business (or anyone with a grudge) to reproduce. This is a hard problem, and I don't think the credit check-style identity verification questions suggested in the post are going to solve it. For one thing, I think an ove…

Why would they find it creepy? You wouldn't need to say your using credit history. It would be as simple as asking the user a question "Please validate your a real person by answering these few questions". As far as the user is concerned it's just a few questions and answers.

...about stuff Yelp has no business knowing, or asking about.

Re: Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews. Here’s How You Fix It

#29

Post by bcrescimanno » Tue, Apr 24, 2012, 5:15 PM UTC

ckdarby wrote: post #25

I have no pity for this guy...seriously he only went by Yelp's reviews and did no further research. This article just proves how stupid consumers can be when making important decisions. When I read the article I didn't see the guy mentioning looking up the company on the BBB or even simply Google'ing "[Company] scams" or "[Company] scammers". Yes, Yelp could implement better solutions to protect consumers but ultimat…

So there's a resource out there that claims to let the customer do a good portion of that research by aggregating real customer reviews and you berate him for using that research? Calling the guy "stupid" for believing a bunch of supposedly satisfied real customers while at least 10 extremely negative customer experiences were hidden from him is bullshit.

Re: Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews. Here’s How You Fix It

#30

Post by mdc » Tue, Apr 24, 2012, 5:19 PM UTC

ed209 wrote: post #9

It would be interesting to see a crowd-sourced recommendation site based only on positive recommendations. Something like a Net Promoter score to tell me where is good. i.e. you can only leave feedback for a place if you would actually recommend it to someone. Every business can have bad days, and a negative review can put a prospective customer off even if actually 99% of the time that's a good business. This isn't…

Personally, I use the negative reviews much more than the positives. Especially on business reviews on Angie's List or book reviews on Amazon, I get a lot more info from the negatives. The company itself is usually able to tell me the positives. I don't let a few negatives rule out my business, but it allows me to compare more accurately between alternatives.