Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yelp tried to strong-arm us

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 45 posts

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#21

Post by gotocake »

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?

I ask this every time a Yelp story emerges: where is the evidence commensurate to the claim about Yelp’s reputation? It would make a fantastic news story, any reporter would leap at it, so where is it? Every time I ask this people “cite” Reddit and a bunch of blog posts, so I’m still waiting for evidence.

Now I don’t like Yelp. Fakespot often finds loads of fake reviews and that’s a problem, but one unrelated to Yelp’s social media “reputation.”

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#22

Post by pvg »

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?

Even if it is perfectly true and exhaustively verified, 'one business had an interaction with Yelp they are unhappy with' is not a that story belongs on HN because it's not interesting.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#23

Post by dredmorbius »

GCA10 wrote: post #11
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…

Depth vs. breadth paradox.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#24

Post by usrusr »

reaperducer wrote: post #3
saagarjha wrote: post #2

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

Is Google automated in this space, like most everything else Google does, or does it have actual people to make the same threats that Yelp reportedly does?

Google has automated fear on the client side: some of their most important products are "not for sale", but ad-spend might be used a signal in ranking. And because the ranking works in mysterious ways, nobody can do an informed cost/benefit decision, nobody dares to reject the Google what the Google is due. Advertisers faithfully put their money in the sacrifice box, afraid of finding out what would happen if they did not. Google has effectively deified itself.

Follow-up question: was it all a cunning plan or was it discovered by chance? My guess is the chance discovery.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#25

Post by ardy42 »

omershapira wrote: post #16

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

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

Isn't their new business model basically track your location and sell the data to anyone with money? The title to their website it literally "Foursquare - The Trusted Location Data & Intelligence Company" (https://foursquare.com/).

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#27

Post by daxterspeed »

GCA10 wrote: post #11
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…

Google has the annoying tendency to ask people to rate and review places they've been near. When they get it wrong you get reviews like "never been to this place 1/5 stars".

I wish Google would incentivise helpful reviews and better verify that a user has actually been to a place before prompting them to review it. Something as simple as creating a guide on how to write a meaningful review could probably go a long way.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#28

Post by sdinsn »

kadendogthing wrote: post #13

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…

I agree, an unsubstantiated self post shouldn't be spread on HN.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#29

Post by paleogizmo »

kadendogthing wrote: post #13

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…

AFAIK, it's more than just yelp employees that don't admit knowing about such practices, ex-yelp employees also don't admit knowing either. So far evidence points to yelp extortion being the work of independent scammers.

However, hasn't Google reviews pretty well made Yelp irrelevant at this point? And while there's lots to be concerned about Google's business model, I'm not aware of any potential for conflict-of-interest in Google reviews as with Yelp.

Re: Yelp tried to strong-arm us

#30

Post by daxterspeed »

pcurve wrote: post #8
saagarjha wrote: post #2

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

I found Google restaurant reviews in NYC to be generally very inflated. You'd think couple hundred reviews averaging out to be 4.6+ would mean pretty good experience, but I've learned to dial back my expectation.

Ratings are cultural as well. Compare to the traditional French scoring system where 19/20 was traditionally considered the highest attainable score as 20/20 was reserved for perfection (eg. something unattainable).[1]

I couldn't find a source for this but I once heard of an North American company which had opened some offices in northern Europe and used the same satisfaction survey across all offices. They were astonished to see satisfaction scores being so low in northern Europe so they launched an investigation into the matter. The result of the investigation was that satisfaction in the European offices was actually comparable if not higher than the North American offices, but culturally they would use a score like 3/5 to indicate that they had no complaints, reserving higher scores for when things were above and beyond great.

Someone with better Google-fu might be able to find a source because I probably got something wrong but I think that was the gist of the event.

[1] https://astoldbydana.com/2014/11/11/grading-on-the-french-sy...

Post reply on HN