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

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

#141

Post by ceejayoz »

jonknee wrote: post #120
steve8918 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree that a lot of valid reviews are being thrown out with the bathwater. There should be a better mechanism to show all unfiltered reviews. The thing that Yelp that makes it stand above other review sites is that they incentive positive reviews. Like Yelp or not, the idea of "Yelp Elite" is actually a great idea, because it is able to draw out a lot of medium to great reviews, stuff you would rarely see on oth…

> I do agree that a lot of valid reviews are being thrown out with the bathwater. There should be a better mechanism to show all unfiltered reviews. What's tricky about it now? Click "X filtered" reviews and you can read to your heart's content.

After you fill out a totally unnecessary captcha that seems to only be there to make some users give up at that point.

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

#142

Post by ceejayoz »

derwiki wrote: post #114

For the record: the sales organization at Yelp has a read-only copy of business data in Salesforce. Salespeople are not able to fiddle with reviews in the main database. They're two completely different systems. There's no possible way a salesperson can hide/show reviews to try and sell advertising. The salesperson can _claim_ to be able to do it, but they're lying.

Does Yelp policy forbid sales people from being friends with customer service / database / etc. folks?

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

#143

Post by hncommenter13 »

Maxious wrote: post #132
hncommenter13 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what? Yelp is pulling credit histories of people who join the site? If they are, that is way out of bounds for what users typically expect when joining an online review site. As a simple reviewer, I'm not engaging in any business with them, they're not offering me credit, and pulling a credit report on some anonymous internet user would not only be expensive but would require some serious disclosure (as having cr…

Did you read the article before commenting? The article proposes that Yelp should provide people the option to use their credit rating to prove they are not a sockpuppet in return for Yelp displaying their review. It is only an option, credit ratings are only used because they are a pre-existing identification and authentication source and most importantly YELP IS NOT DOING THIS YET.

As a matter of fact I did, and you're right: I mis-read the parent comment as present tense vs. potential future tense. My apologies.

That said, I think some of the problems with the credit report solution still stand; namely that pulling credit histories has a cost (both to the reviewer and to Yelp). I would worry about what they would do with that information beyond merely authenticating me as a "real person" and I would expect that fewer people would be willing to review a local donut shop if doing so required a credit pull.

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

#144

Post by mapster »

I agree, though the example gripe is problematic as the moving industry is largely unregulated. It is full of outfits that are subcontracted by the big movers. Extortion is commonplace (moving truck is near your new home. they stop and call on phone asking for $2k more before they arrive and unload your property), and is considered a contract dispute and the police will not get involved, citing such.

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

#145

Post by klodolph »

rogerbinns wrote: post #73
gdilla wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a shamless plug, but I work on mobile apps at Fodor's Travel. We've been doing print travel guides for 75 years. We now have apps, in addition to books. We're professional curators. That means every restaurant review (and shops, hotels, etc) has been written by an actual human professional who's opinion we hope you trust (we're a little more upscale than Lonely Planet, but we have our hip moments). So in a way,…

Places have good days and bad days (or even hours). Your reviewers could get made. While the reviews may be spot on, they are a one point in time random sample. The other problem is that not everyone is the same. For example I absolutely hate "attentive" staff in a restaurant (let me eat in peace and if I want something I'll ask for it), but want the check as quickly as possible on finishing while others like to slow…

As a counterpoint, I don't like the same movies Roger Ebert likes. But his opinions are consistent, and I know well enough where we are different, that I can usually estimate from the text of his reviews how well I'd like a given movie.

Reviewers may prefer attentive staff, but the good reviewers (which exist) know that not everyone shares their preferences. That's the difference between a good review and a bad review: you can translate a good review into your own viewpoint and decide for yourself.

When I think of noisy one star reviews, I mostly think of the one star review for a microprocessor where the guy didn't use a heatsink and the motherboard melted. There are plenty of folk who come across well in writing but are monstrous in person, I'd never expect to trust their restaurant reviews, and I might not be able to identify them either.

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

#146

Post by fusiongyro »

rogerbinns wrote: post #73
gdilla wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a shamless plug, but I work on mobile apps at Fodor's Travel. We've been doing print travel guides for 75 years. We now have apps, in addition to books. We're professional curators. That means every restaurant review (and shops, hotels, etc) has been written by an actual human professional who's opinion we hope you trust (we're a little more upscale than Lonely Planet, but we have our hip moments). So in a way,…

Places have good days and bad days (or even hours). Your reviewers could get made. While the reviews may be spot on, they are a one point in time random sample. The other problem is that not everyone is the same. For example I absolutely hate "attentive" staff in a restaurant (let me eat in peace and if I want something I'll ask for it), but want the check as quickly as possible on finishing while others like to slow…

The question is, are you going to find that one reviewer who is like you in the sea of 4-star-giving morons?

I love reading Ebert's movie reviews. I often disagree with him, but he is a mostly fixed point. I can tell if I'm going to like something because, over time, I have developed an understanding of where his tastes and mine align and where they differ. This kind of thing is a lot harder to do online—it requires real work and attention.

In a way, we're disagreeing about where we want to have our statistical anomalies. Do we want the reliable reviewer caught on a bad day, or perhaps recognized by the staff? Or do we want the sea of one-time reviewers, a few of whom had a statistically unlikely bad or amazing experience?

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

#147

Post by jabo »

alanfalcon wrote: post #94
patricklynch wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there goes my ability to trust Yelp reviews as impartial. But if I don't trust the reviews, Yelp effectively degrades into a complicated remix of Google Maps.

Especially complicated when you realize that their mapping system is completely broken for numerous addresses. I used Yelp to try to find a good local cafe to eat at in Irvine. Drove right to the spot indicated on the map and found an industrial complex. Had to look up the business name on Google Maps to find that it was about five miles South of where Yelp told me the cafe was. Same thing happened again in Vegas, lo…

I've had the same problem multiple times with business addresses being wrong on Yelp.

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

#148

Post by zem »

mortenjorck wrote: post #56
patricklynch wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there goes my ability to trust Yelp reviews as impartial. But if I don't trust the reviews, Yelp effectively degrades into a complicated remix of Google Maps.

I use Yelp mostly for its metadata, such as restaurants' '$/$$/$$$' price categories, or a quick, easy-to-read menu sampling. I give the reviews approximately zero weight at this point in Yelp's evolution.

search by "near me", sort by "open now" is an invaluable feature

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

#149

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

vbl wrote: post #104
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I swear by AngiesList for services like moving companies. They just called us up a couple weeks ago and sat on the phone for over a half hour (because we were willing) taking reviews from us on a bunch of companies that we had used. This is why it costs money; they actually provide a service. If they don't have enough reviews, they hire people to call you up and write up the reviews for you.

Yea, but they were the first ones to restart advertising with Rush Limbaugh. And their system is just as game-able, albeit at a slight cost.

I don't defend their decision to advertise with Rush Limbaugh. He said some pretty unforgivable things, and frankly I was surprised when they returned to advertising for him.

But they provide a good service, and they also support NPR. I am under no illusion that every company I do business with will agree with me politically in all ways.

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

#150

Post by Kesty »

bloggergirl wrote: post #50
bobbydavid wrote: post #24

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…

"people are most motivated to write reviews when they are outraged. ...your site runs the risk of becoming a soap box for ranting." There's a great big gap between letting all your angry customers (which hopefully you don't have a lot of) leave rants and creating sockpuppets so you have nothing but great reviews. The space between is the basics of word-of-mouth marketing: ask your happiest customers to talk about you…

People are way more willing to take the time to write a bad review if they feel that something wrong was done to them than take the same time to leave a positive review, even if you ask them to.

The only one that will leave a good review will be Yelp users that rates everything.

And maybe people that you did them a big favor and they feel they have to repay you someway.

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