Yelp tried to strong-arm us • Hacker News Board

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#11

Post by GCA10 » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #2

Interestingly, the Reddit comments seem to mention Google as a better alternative.

So this is where it gets frustrating. When I'm heading to a new city for business meetings (which happens often) Google is great about auto-magically surfacing restaurant names close to where I will be. It's much faster and easier to use than Yelp.

But Google's "reviews" aren't really reviews at all. They're one-liners that people type into their phones, without telling me anything about local specialties or WHY some particular dish was good or bad. (What's "too spicy" for someone might be just what I want, etc.)

The best Yelp reviews are really informative. They're quirky and opinionated, but that's part of the fun of reading them. I routinely collect a couple Google-generated names and then look up the places on Yelp to get the real deal.

I understand that Yelp's sales team plays dodgy games with merchants to "fix" negative reviews, or to shake down merchants who don't buy ads. Wish they didn't.

But from a consumer standpoint, a seriously flawed Yelp is still more useful than a deluge of momentary burps from a Google system that is practically insight-free.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#12

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #5

It's a sad but predictable pattern you see from everyone from the Better Business Bureau to more recent companies. Being established isn't enough, eventually they have to push on those whose information / access they provide. Personally I gave up on Yelp as years ago I could see so many reviews for places by people who clearly had no clue what that place even was. Such as if you go to a Neapolitan pizza place... you…

[deleted]

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#13

Post by kadendogthing » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

Why should I believe a self post? There's a weird anti-Yelp cult but never can the people who claim Yelp is involved with nefarious business practices provide any actual proof.

Yelp employees don't know about these practices.

Yelp says it doesn't have these practices.

And these people can't ever offer substantive evidence for the outrage porn they're writing.

I'm thoroughly convinced after reading countless of these types of posts that the anti-Yelp sentiment is purely born out of salty business owners who don't like the fact that they get terrible reviews from an experienced audience.

This post does not belong on HN. There is nothing worth discussing about this story except to fulfill someone's outrage porn fetish.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#14

Post by throwaway2048 » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #5

It's a sad but predictable pattern you see from everyone from the Better Business Bureau to more recent companies. Being established isn't enough, eventually they have to push on those whose information / access they provide. Personally I gave up on Yelp as years ago I could see so many reviews for places by people who clearly had no clue what that place even was. Such as if you go to a Neapolitan pizza place... you…

Its not just enough to make money, you have to make increasingly more money every year.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#15

Post by argonaut » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

This sounds like a misleading / high-pressure sales call, but if you read into it carefully there's nothing that indicates to me anything illegal, scammy, or even anything that would back up the claim that Yelp penalizes businesses that don't advertise.

A charitable interpretation is that the salesperson is basically claiming there were 21,000 searches the business showed up in, where they could have been shown at the top if they advertised.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#16

Post by omershapira » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

Good time as ever to mention that Foursquare is still great in every big city I try it in.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#17

Post by nosuchthing » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 10:18 PM UTC

argonaut wrote: post #15

This sounds like a misleading / high-pressure sales call, but if you read into it carefully there's nothing that indicates to me anything illegal, scammy, or even anything that would back up the claim that Yelp penalizes businesses that don't advertise. A charitable interpretation is that the salesperson is basically claiming there were 21,000 searches the business showed up in, where they could have been shown at th…

I've directly noticed Yelp penalizing a local restaurant down in their search results for a key term and when I asked them about it, they told a nearly identical story to what this Reddit poster describes.

They had paid for Yelp advertising, and after deciding to stop suddenly their search result priority dropped, bad reviews were prioritized in their profile, and good reviews started being removed.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#18

Post by judge2020 » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC

argonaut wrote: post #15

This sounds like a misleading / high-pressure sales call, but if you read into it carefully there's nothing that indicates to me anything illegal, scammy, or even anything that would back up the claim that Yelp penalizes businesses that don't advertise. A charitable interpretation is that the salesperson is basically claiming there were 21,000 searches the business showed up in, where they could have been shown at th…

There are many cases of yelp doing these actions (we obviously don't have the source code as hard proof):

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/01/09/yelp-accused-hiding-posi...

https://raymondfong.net/a-candid-yelp-advertising-review-is-...

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/yelp-filter-positive-rev...

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#19

Post by ilikehurdles » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

jordache wrote: post #10

ilikehurdles wrote: post #6

This sounds like a scam call. Did the user verify that the agent was in fact in any way associated with yelp, and not just someone trying to blackmail a business owner? As a domain owner, you get these scammy SEO agents pretending to be affiliated with google all the time.

really? Based on otherwise pristine reputation for Yelp?

No, of course not. But over the years I’ve heard tons of anecdotal and second-hand stories about yelp doing variations of this but nothing concrete or well-documented. That, and knowing that these kinds of scammers exist.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#20

Post by gotocake » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

Nicksil wrote: post #9

gotocake wrote: post #7

Nothing about this seems credible or interesting enough to be posted here. These stories emerge every so often, and they rarely seem to exist beyond Reddit. I’d be interested in this if it could be verified, but as it is this is internet rumor momgering.

What would you require for verification?

I’d trust a reputable news outlet to do the vetting of the story, but that never seems to happen with these Reddit posts. They just become cultural artifacts and get repeated ad nauseum.