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Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

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Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#121

Post by Gordonjcp »

RajT88 wrote: post #116
dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

I've heard the same stories from several local restaurants. With one added detail, which was consistent between the 3 restaurants: The sales pitch was always $300/mo. to ensure they have only high ratings. When they don't pay the fee, the negative reviews start showing up, and the positive reviews start disappearing. It's such a consistent story it beggars belief that there's nothing there.

[flagged]

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#122

Post by AlbertCory »

jstarfish wrote: post #86
111111IIIIIII wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years... I wouldn't think so. In a society so rife with obvious scams everywhere you look, at every level in public and private sector orgs, it would be patently idiotic to trash your own career on account of a dishonest restaurant review operation. I wish we lived in a world where such bravery were meaningfully valued, but we don't. For any might-be…

The thing about whistleblowers is that nobody actually likes them. "Whistleblower" is to white-collar crime as "snitching" is to anything street-level. We "appreciate" them when they call foul on others, but you appreciate them a hell of a lot less when you have such moral crusaders in your own ranks. They aren't loyal to anybody but their own sense of self-righteousness and can't be trusted to keep their mouth shut…

Very true. Whistleblowers' friends come and go, but their enemies accumulate.

(I repurposed that from an aphorism about being in politics.)

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#123

Post by 78124781 »

schnable wrote: post #40
whalesalad wrote: post #11

Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.

It surprisingly has up to date content where I live, and generally anything 4+ stars is good and below 3 stars is not too good. The individual reviews are usually not useful, but looking at patterns and trends of recent reviews can be useful if you know how to filter out the obvious BS and one-off overreactions. The problem is a real lack of reviews for smaller places, especially outside the downtown area. Google Map…

I agree, though the other issue for smaller places is that they are more susceptible to review-bombing by one disgruntled party (do we really need 6 reviews from 6 different people about how the same table had to wait an hour to get the check one time?) or "5 stars for 30% off" incentives (which I have unfortunately seen a number of, especially at small businesses trying to distinguish themselves).

Google Maps I still don't understand where they get a lot of reviews from in the first place. While some look like normal reviews, there's a lot that have no comments at all or comments completely unrelated to the place ostensibly being reviewed (or just cryptic things like "not good" or "good"). It's not a bad comparison to use alongside Yelp, but it's definitely led to more clunkers, especially for places with n<20 reviews.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#124

Post by RajT88 »

whalesalad wrote: post #11

Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.

I don't use Yelp to determine if a place is good or not.

I use yelp for personal entertainment, because the outraged, bombastic reviews are often hilarious in how just beneath the surface are classist, racist, xenophobic and jingoistic undertones. These are among the few reviews I believe 100% are actually real people!

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#125

Post by 78124781 »

arbuge wrote: post #33

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.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#126

Post by grumple »

nickstinemates wrote: post #26
dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

Could be individual salespeople doing it, and probably without Yelp truly "knowing". I worked at a nationwide gym once upon a time, and it was common for salespeople to trick people into signing long term contracts.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#127

Post by RajT88 »

Ichthypresbyter wrote: post #76
gnicholas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that if a restaurant has 4.5 or 5 stars (assuming a decent number of reviews), typically it is very good. However, plenty of the places I eat/enjoy have 3 stars (none have 2 or 1). So I use it as a rough filter for that purpose. It's also useful for seeing if particular menu items are good, since fake reviews don't typically get into that much detail (or at least there are other real reviews that would outweig…

There's the ongoing meme that the best Chinese restaurants have 3.5 stars on Yelp- from the combination of 5 star reviews from people who love the food, and 1 star from people who didn't like the brusque service or didn't get the American Chinese food they were expecting.

There's a Malaysian/Chinese resto near me like that. It's an absolute sleeper of a place to have eat. Barely visible from the road, and connected to a supermarket (and they wheel in and out shopping carts from next door as they run out of ingredients during the day). My Japanese roommate at the time was turned onto it by his Korean boss, and I took my Chinese/Filipino/Indian/American coworkers there and then they started going there all the time.

The 1 star reviews complain about the organ meat, which there were totally grossed out by. "Beef tendon pho" is super legit, and what you get in Asia. You're in the wrong place if you expect American-Chinese fare.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#128

Post by trabant00 »

ryandrake wrote: post #106

I hate to be dismissive, but this is kind of a "Water Is Wet" article. Does anyone really think online reviews are anything but totally gamed, bought, and paid for? It's kind of a Universal Law Of Spam: Any place on the Internet where users can add content and where content might be profitable to someone, will eventually end up full of spam and paid-for content.

Funny to find your post at the bottom of the thread.

I tried to use a few apps for finding restaurants, compared their rating with the experience I had and concluded it's a waste of time and money.

There's not even a need to know or understand anything about it. No insider info from Yelp, not experiencing it as a business owner. Just try and see for yourself.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#129

Post by gnicholas »

exabrial wrote: post #16

I don’t use the reviews, just the listings. One of my favorite local restaurants purposefully asks for one star reviews on yelp, as they were listed there without their consent.

Such a great idea. You won't get new customers via Yelp this way, but you will generate some word-of-mouth that could offset that impact.

However, this strategy only works if a very small number of businesses use it. Once the novelty wears off, the word-of-mouth benefit vanishes.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#130

Post by dfxm12 »

nickstinemates wrote: post #26
dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

Who will they blow the whistle to?

If they go to the media, even if they are 100% on the whistleblower's side, it'll be a week (at most) of slightly negative PR. People will forget, if they noticed in the first place.

Is there a government body that will act on this? What will they do? A small fine? Would this actually go to court?

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