Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#31

Post by Philadelphia » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 2:45 PM UTC

irishloop wrote: post #16

yoda_sl wrote: post #9

That particular topic about Yelp and their reviews have been discussed many times on HN. Yelp is a major scam company that absolutely do not care about the business owner. They are in it for the money -doh- and what matters for them is Page Views, and regular users posting more reviews, thus more page views. Their filtering system is a total mess but since it is a secret on how it works they can say whatever they wan…

Out of curiosity, what is the alternative? Just allow twenty five-star or one-star reviews to show up and say hey, if business owners want to scam the system by putting in fake reviews, then great? Or just open-source their algorithms? I guess to me it seems infinitely easier to criticize the way someone else does it than to present a more efficient way of doing it.

One possibility would be to allow users to manually flag reviews, instead of trying to do it algorithmically. They could also have some sort of confidence rating for reviews, or possibly a reputation system for reviewers. From looking at the hidden reviews for a couple of stores while I've been trying to find a place to get new glasses, they seem to be hiding a good number of legitimate reviews with their current system.

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#32

Post by yoda_sl » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 2:50 PM UTC

timtadh wrote: post #20

yoda_sl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you have not been running a small business. Some reviews are posted from time to time by people that are not even customers or stopped by the business; for some dumb reason they post a 1 star review.. And that review usually stick and doesn't get filtered out...but other reviews from true customers posting 4 to 5 stars reviews disappear usually in less than 24 hours after they were posted. What kind of explan…

Spam filtering is hard? You are a programmer, imagine trying to find a way to objectively and fairly filter reviews. Unlike with emails you don't know whose labels to trust. There are good business owners who will only report spam reviews as spam. Then there are bad business owners who will report negative ham as spam to try and boost their reviews. Finally, there are bad business owners who will use shell accounts t…

They are various ways to solve the problem but again it is not in Yelp's interest. Yelp's business is about selling Ad and they don't really care about the underlying issues. One simple thing that could be added to their system was a way to verify that a reviewer did really have a business relation for posting a reviews. They are various ways for solving that.

Even a simpler approach: why hide those reviews. Keep them here and introduce a way for other viewer to rate the reviews aka 'X people found that review helpful'. That way all reviews are visible and the random person reading the Yelp page can decide for themselves. Unfortunately Yelp and their filtering system have a different approach and instead usually end up filtering real customer reviews and leave the more 'spammy' visible. Then after a few weeks like that, you will receive a phone call from Yelp sales folks telling you that if you purchase 'ads' then your potential 5 stars review (if any are left visible) will be pushed to the top.

Sorry but for me I consider that a scam!

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#33

Post by yoda_sl » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 2:54 PM UTC

kip_ wrote: post #29

valuegram wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can vouch that this exact scenario has happened to one of my small businesses. Multiple reviews from actual customers are filtered out, but a negative review from someone who has never interacted with our organization is displayed normally.

Were your actual customers regular users of Yelp who have reviewed other businesses actively? We can pick apart Yelp's model and likely should, but it does appear to discount "drive-by" Yelpers who only sign up to give a good review to a single business.

Yes, in my experience I have seen reviews from regular Yelp folks (aka posting maybe a review once or twice a month) see their 5 stars review vanish in less than 48 hours... While at the same time a person posting a 1 star review without any other review posted prior and even after stick forever.

This is a classic 'Yelp' business practice and many business owners you can talk to will have many of such reports.

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#34

Post by valuegram » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 2:56 PM UTC

kip_ wrote: post #29

valuegram wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can vouch that this exact scenario has happened to one of my small businesses. Multiple reviews from actual customers are filtered out, but a negative review from someone who has never interacted with our organization is displayed normally.

Were your actual customers regular users of Yelp who have reviewed other businesses actively? We can pick apart Yelp's model and likely should, but it does appear to discount "drive-by" Yelpers who only sign up to give a good review to a single business.

No, I believe most of the reviews were from first (or second) time yelpers. I can understand where they're coming from on a macro scale, but at the individual business level, it can be irritating.

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#35

Post by moderation » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 2:59 PM UTC

718 Cyclery in Brooklyn, NY has had long running issues with Yelp. Some detail at http://brooklynian.com/bk/2012/01/25/digital-shakedown-is-71...

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#36

Post by eevilspock » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 3:03 PM UTC

neovive wrote: post #28

This does demonstrate the value of third-party "professional" reviews (e.g. Consumer Reports, Zagat) and a big reason why Google bought Zagat -- the trust factor. You never know if personal reviews on various sites were driven by ulterior motives. Although it's likely that the majority of personal reviews are genuine, you should try not to be swayed by just a few reviews without further research.

Are you saying professionals are not prone to bias or influence?

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#37

Post by chris_wot » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 3:10 PM UTC

aaronsw wrote: post #3

This is a pretty crummy article. If you read it carefully, you see: - a woman owns a shady company - she tries to get her friends to write five star reviews of her on Yelp - Yelp intentionally tries to filter out these reviews so the site isn't filled with spam opinions - the woman is upset The real question is why there's a news story taking her side in this.

The unfortunate thing for Yelp is that there is a cornucopia of stories of similar things - but often it's because folks say they didn't pay Yelp for further advertising.

I'd never use Yelp for reviews. Either they are glowing when they shouldn't be, or they are rubbish when they should be glowing. Who would want to use a site like that?!?

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#38

Post by chris_wot » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 3:13 PM UTC

timtadh wrote: post #20

yoda_sl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you have not been running a small business. Some reviews are posted from time to time by people that are not even customers or stopped by the business; for some dumb reason they post a 1 star review.. And that review usually stick and doesn't get filtered out...but other reviews from true customers posting 4 to 5 stars reviews disappear usually in less than 24 hours after they were posted. What kind of explan…

Spam filtering is hard? You are a programmer, imagine trying to find a way to objectively and fairly filter reviews. Unlike with emails you don't know whose labels to trust. There are good business owners who will only report spam reviews as spam. Then there are bad business owners who will report negative ham as spam to try and boost their reviews. Finally, there are bad business owners who will use shell accounts t…

Spam filtering is hard? You are a programmer, imagine trying to find a way to objectively and fairly filter reviews

and

So what is to be done?

From a consumer's point of view, don't use Yelp. Easy.

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#39

Post by yoda_sl » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 3:18 PM UTC

Philadelphia wrote: post #31

irishloop wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what is the alternative? Just allow twenty five-star or one-star reviews to show up and say hey, if business owners want to scam the system by putting in fake reviews, then great? Or just open-source their algorithms? I guess to me it seems infinitely easier to criticize the way someone else does it than to present a more efficient way of doing it.

One possibility would be to allow users to manually flag reviews, instead of trying to do it algorithmically. They could also have some sort of confidence rating for reviews, or possibly a reputation system for reviewers. From looking at the hidden reviews for a couple of stores while I've been trying to find a place to get new glasses, they seem to be hiding a good number of legitimate reviews with their current sys…

You are correct. Such simple change will be already going in the right direction. It is amazing to see all the reviews hidden that are legit: you can see if the reviewer use Yelp often by checking the number of reviews posted. The current filtering system seems to ignore that most of the times, but reviewers with no previous review prior giving 1 star will see that review stick.

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#40

Post by lallysingh » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 3:27 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #36

neovive wrote: post #28

This does demonstrate the value of third-party "professional" reviews (e.g. Consumer Reports, Zagat) and a big reason why Google bought Zagat -- the trust factor. You never know if personal reviews on various sites were driven by ulterior motives. Although it's likely that the majority of personal reviews are genuine, you should try not to be swayed by just a few reviews without further research.

Are you saying professionals are not prone to bias or influence?

Professionals have a reputation, which should reduce bias or influence. If Zagat was known to take bribes, they wouldn't be around for very long.

It may happen, but is less likely to happen than non-professionals. You have a much larger issue with selection bias for reviews, and a much easier way for vendors to bias them. I've been in shops that insist, rather persistently, that I write a good review for their store on their computer, at the shop.