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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

#251

Post by bombcar »

karaterobot wrote: post #202
telchior wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I despise Google Maps for this. I can know that a restaurant exists, zoom in on its block, search 'restaurants' -- nothing. It'll zoom out the map and show other stuff. Worse, I can max my zoom and hunt for it on the map and it will outright show a blank space. Only searching for the restaurant's actual name will bring it up. But there's not really any alternative. Apple Maps can't show me things because it's missing…

> I feel like we're going back in time because the best way to find local restaurants has become walking / driving around the neighborhood to see what's there, or getting word of mouth recommendations. Let's face it, that never stopped being the best way. There have always been problems with internet reviews, if only the ones inherent in the 1-5 star mechanism. But, it is very inconvenient to ask around for recommend…

I usually have decent results stopping at the gas station and asking the attendant: “if you had $X for a good lunch where would you go?”

Often it’s a place a bit off the road or harder to find, but I’ve had as good luck or better vs the mapping tools.

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

#252

Post by bombcar »

pests wrote: post #233
sjf wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, this is a huge problem with maps search results. It's showing too many results and the ranking is rubbish. Searching for coffee shows tons of low quality results including ones for Target and McDonald's.

I mean, McDonald's does have coffee. I wouldn't say that is incorrect.

Their coffee is decently good for a large chain.

And targets often have a Starbucks inside thier belly.

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

#253

Post by bombcar »

palidanx wrote: post #231
Guest9081239812 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps is terrible for hiding results. I'll use the filter to show restaurants with a 4.5+ star rating, and it hides dozens of places 4.5+ stars while instead showing results 4.0 - 4.4 stars and even some that have no reviews at all. I find the arrogance insulting. You want to see 4.5+ star Japanese food restaurants? Well, I don't think that's best for you, and I'm going to replace some of those results with 4.1…

Weird thing is I began comparing things like Uber Eats reviews and Google Maps reviews for local Asian restaurants, and I see things in Google Maps are reviewed substantially lower. For example some of my favorite Asian restaurants in the city are rated 3.5ish while Uber Eats is rated like 4.7. It leads me to believe a lot of people are rating Google Maps restaurants also based on service. One in particular https://w…

People also only rate 4-5 on Uber unless they really hate the driver.

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

#254

Post by runeb »

Guest9081239812 wrote: post #72
majormajor wrote: post #7

Good for her. Yelp's business model seems to work best if they can pick winners, which is unfortunate. If I search for "dinner" on Yelp for "current location" and look at the map, it leaves out an astonishing number of places that I can see within a mile if I drive down the street. And if your business model is centered around hiding all but the winners - who might pay for placement + reviews both - then you have to…

Google Maps is terrible for hiding results. I'll use the filter to show restaurants with a 4.5+ star rating, and it hides dozens of places 4.5+ stars while instead showing results 4.0 - 4.4 stars and even some that have no reviews at all. I find the arrogance insulting. You want to see 4.5+ star Japanese food restaurants? Well, I don't think that's best for you, and I'm going to replace some of those results with 4.1…

Google Maps ratings are so inflated that 4.1 is a one star, 4.5 is a five star and everything else is to be avoided in my experience

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

#255

Post by bombcar »

majormajor wrote: post #222
pessimizer wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yelp's business model seems to work best if they can pick winners, People must have read a different article than I did. This woman is finding tons of third-parties that are either posting fake positive reviews for money, or extorting businesses by writing bad reviews and offering to reverse them for money. She's looking for people who are trying to scam Yelp, or trying to scam businesses through Yelp. But HN seems…

"Picking winners" here doesn't mean Yelp is doing the faking themselves. I just mean that Yelp has chosen to filter and limit in addition to what I'm actually searching. It might be a conversion thing - if I have one really good match it's easier to decide than if they actually show me all 10. But it means it's really really important to the business now to be that 1 that doesn't get filtered. And THAT really increas…

You can have a system that acts like a conspiracy without any conspirators. Just everyone doing their own thing resulting in unwanted consequences.

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

#256

Post by wombat-man »

telchior wrote: post #178
Guest9081239812 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps is terrible for hiding results. I'll use the filter to show restaurants with a 4.5+ star rating, and it hides dozens of places 4.5+ stars while instead showing results 4.0 - 4.4 stars and even some that have no reviews at all. I find the arrogance insulting. You want to see 4.5+ star Japanese food restaurants? Well, I don't think that's best for you, and I'm going to replace some of those results with 4.1…

I despise Google Maps for this. I can know that a restaurant exists, zoom in on its block, search 'restaurants' -- nothing. It'll zoom out the map and show other stuff. Worse, I can max my zoom and hunt for it on the map and it will outright show a blank space. Only searching for the restaurant's actual name will bring it up. But there's not really any alternative. Apple Maps can't show me things because it's missing…

Yeah I've noticed this. It's pretty irritating.

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

#257

Post by bombcar »

Fogest wrote: post #226
chinchilla2020 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets worse. People have been 'following' the ratings when they rate foods. A popular local restaurant came under new management and their food is now atrocious. We actually threw their food in the garbage after getting takeout there a month ago. Meanwhile, tourists are still leaving thousands of rave reviews on their google maps page. Noticeably, you will see one or two bad reviews every 50 reviews or so, where a…

Yep, a local pub used to give large portion sizes on in person or takeout orders. Then one day we ordered and it was like half the size as normal but of course the same price. Thought it was maybe just a fluke so we gave them a second chance. Unfortunately the portions will still the same smaller size. I proceeded to update my review to indicate the change in portion sizes with the same price. However I noticed many…

An Apple Maps review system that tied in with Apple Pay and could weight based on visits, etc would be wonderful.

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

#258

Post by kaliqt »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #210
telchior wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I despise Google Maps for this. I can know that a restaurant exists, zoom in on its block, search 'restaurants' -- nothing. It'll zoom out the map and show other stuff. Worse, I can max my zoom and hunt for it on the map and it will outright show a blank space. Only searching for the restaurant's actual name will bring it up. But there's not really any alternative. Apple Maps can't show me things because it's missing…

Internet search in general has severely declined in 2023. I was trying to figure out the syntax for putting a URL in slack the other day and couldn't find a proper article anywhere in the top 10 results. I think they are trying to integrate their bard UI into search and it is killing the results. At this point, I use google to search reddit in order to find organic results. Unfortunately, that will probably be taken…

YouTube is also horrible these days. They made it so for any event or happening, only "official" sources show up so they can add "context" to the narrative. It's dystopian, but possibly worse: annoying. I can't find out what I nees to, when I need to. Thanks Google.

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

#259

Post by bombcar »

awiejrliawjer wrote: post #211
majormajor wrote: post #7

Good for her. Yelp's business model seems to work best if they can pick winners, which is unfortunate. If I search for "dinner" on Yelp for "current location" and look at the map, it leaves out an astonishing number of places that I can see within a mile if I drive down the street. And if your business model is centered around hiding all but the winners - who might pay for placement + reviews both - then you have to…

I'm always amazed when I search for any generic term on Google Maps at how many places I know about don't show up in search results. What a shame. They clearly ran out of new ideas years ago.

I swear they just return something from cache that’s remotely similar to what you asked.

And you better be happy with it.

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

#260

Post by bombcar »

hwayne wrote: post #138
1024core wrote: post #24

> Dean began documenting her findings, starting with serial offenders from the Facebook groups. In a list of 17 people who reviewed SavantCare on Yelp, she found what she called “a suspicious pattern”: 10 of them had reviewed the same dentist’s office in Los Angeles, nine had raved about the same California wedding DJ company and five claimed to have visited the same Mountain View tattoo parlor. Five of the accounts,…

IIRC Dan Luu had a post about this: sites do catch a lot of this but there's just so much out there that they can't catch it all, not without accidentally flagging genuine reviews and getting everyone mad at them.

They do flag tons of reviews (I think I’ve successfully had one “not five stars” review go across on ANY site, period, out of multiple tries. I don’t even bother anymore.)
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