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Yelp has faced two class action lawsuits already over the past two years from small business owners that claim that Yelp has been blackmailing them by blocking positive reviews if they don't do business with them.
Additionally, how is a business able to rebound if a few bad reviews drag down a rating due to insufficient sample sizes of reviews? People are going to stay away from restaurants that have 2-2.5 star total ratings, even though that rating may only be based off of 10 reviews. I've gone to places that had only 2 star or 3 star ratings and had some good meals. Some people just like to be negative or ultra snobbish when it comes to their food, and a few bad reviews can cripple a business even if the vast majority of people that went through a business and had a good meal simply don't take the time or spend the effort to review a place.
I almost never look at yelp anymore when figuring out if I should go to a restaurant or not. If I am walking by and the menu entices me, I'll try it without needing to look it up. Where's the sense of adventure?
I use Yelp often but take the ratings with a grain of salt. Some members seem to be negative, nasty people and rate accordingly.
If you take the time to read all the reviews for a restaurant it will usually help. Also, I use Yelp often enough that I recognize the members that give fair and accurately reviews and I value their opinions.
Sometimes a member will give a poor rating to a restaurant but when I read the review I see that the member has unfairly downgraded after making an unreasonable request.
If I read a poor review I check out other reviews by that member and often they are all negative. If a member always has such poor experiences I wonder why they bother dining out at all.
Yelp has faced two class action lawsuits already over the past two years from small business owners that claim that Yelp has been blackmailing them by blocking positive reviews if they don't do business with them.
Additionally, how is a business able to rebound if a few bad reviews drag down a rating due to insufficient sample sizes of reviews? People are going to stay away from restaurants that have 2-2.5 star total ratings, even though that rating may only be based off of 10 reviews. I've gone to places that had only 2 star or 3 star ratings and had some good meals. Some people just like to be negative or ultra snobbish when it comes to their food, and a few bad reviews can cripple a business even if the vast majority of people that went through a business and had a good meal simply don't take the time or spend the effort to review a place.
I almost never look at yelp anymore when figuring out if I should go to a restaurant or not. If I am walking by and the menu entices me, I'll try it without needing to look it up. Where's the sense of adventure?
I do like to read and hear reviews, but like anything, they need to be taken with a grain of salt: example, my favorite cruise line often gets bad reviews and I feel unjustly. I have cruised almost 30 times, so have a pretty good idea of what it all about. years ago I wanted to see "Summer of 42" My husband read some really bad reviews, didn't want to waste the money. One of his friends at work saw it, loved it, and hubby decided to go ahead and give it a try. To this day, it is one of our 4 or 5 favorite movies. I am especially not inclined to pay much attention to reviews that we see on the net.
Also, to get an accurate picture of a restaurant's review, check out how many reviews each of the members has posted. Sometimes a restaurant will have a large number of either positive or negative reviews, and you will see that many reviews are posted by members who haven't reviewed any other restaurants. Then you have to suspect that people are creating new member IDs just to post a review to drive up or drive down the rating of a restaurant.
I have noticed several times that brand new restaurants have several glowing reviews with the highest rating, and all posted by members with that single post. Then you have to wonder if those reviews belong to employees of the restaurant, or the owner, who create multiple member IDs in order to get a high average rating.
Many people are, just as missik999 said, made by negative people, or people who demand to be catered to and are not. I've also seen reviews by disgruntled ex-employees, etc who want to make a business 'suffer' for any slight, real or imagined. One woman I know who wanted to be a cook yet insisted that the only thing to do with beef was to boil it with a little salt, who couldn't read the freezer temp gauges (they were supposed to be written down every day) and who served stuff that was not even heated through, much less to legal temp, was infuriated when she was fired, and has bad-mouthed that place ever since. Anyone who knows her knows that she does this - but people who don't know her might take her 'reviews' as something factual.
Before renting a motel I read the reviews - and most of them are usually in the "we got in 5 hours late and the room we got was small, dirty, the front desk was rude, " etc category... most people don't realize that their perceptions change when they've had a bad day, the kids are tired/screaming, etc - and they take it out on the motel and its employees.
Sometimes the reviews have been downright fraudulent. Once a member was angry at a local sweet shop that baked their own cookies, brownies, etc. So the member emailed other members (I received an email) asking us to "Yelp-Bomb" the shop. I didn't really know what that meant, but soon found out.
Dozens of reviews popped up immediately for this little sweet shop, all extremely negative. Several were actually libelous, stating that the sweet shop didn't even bake their own cookies but they bought them in packages and put them in the bakery case to make them look home made. That was absolutely false, as I had been there many times myself and they were baking cookies while I was there.
I expected Yelp to remove the fradulent reviews but they never did.
I take yelp reviews just like I take word of mouth...just evidence of one person's experience, possibly made with an agenda. It's interesting, but if I want to check a place out, I'll check it out regardless of what's said, and I won't NOT check a place out based on user reviews. As a pretty active member of the yelp community in my city, I know that there are plenty of people who base their reviews on pretty, uh, "interesting" criteria, so it is what it is...grain of salt. One person's glowing experience could be subpar to another, depending on their criteria and personal taste.
Because it's free and publicly accessible, like much social media, there are abuses. There are faux "reviewers" on either side of the fence...people who target businesses with a personal axe to grind, and blatant shills planted by businesses. Yelp does review and crack down on both, as they are reported.
Of legitimate reviews, excluding these bombs and shills, it's important to remember that ALL REVIEWS ARE SUBJECTIVE. They are opinions. Customers will express their opinions, either verbally or in written format, will vote with their dollars, and will discuss their experiences with others, and others may or may not base their decisions to patronize businesses based on this. Businesses need to be realistic about this. Yeah, it might not be your fault if somebody had a bad day, and that affected their perception of your service or business. This, however, is life, and it's a fact of doing business. Businesses were badmouthed, both deservedly and undeservedly, before there was ever a social media netword devoted to critiquing businesses.
If you see a business with what you feel are undeserved negative reviews, feel free to do your part and weigh in with your positive experience. But bear in mind that opinions are just that...opinions, and that service can be inconsistent. I've reviewed businesses that performed wonderfully, and when I went back on other occasions, were lacking. Do I note this in updating my reviews? Sure. If my perspective is that service is hit and miss, that's valid. Yelp also has a ranking system for its reviewers, noting and differentiating between those who review a lot, and fairly, have a track record of posting useful reviews (which can be voted on by any user), etc. These "elite" reviewers may be more trustworthy sources when looking over reviews, versus one-hit wonders, who may be plants or shills. If a bunch of prolific and highly-ranked reviewers come to a consensus about the service at a particular place, I'm more likely to consider that more heavily than commentary by people with a handful of reviews under their belt, and no usefulness ranking. You can also see how many 1,2,3,4,5-star rankings a reviewer has given out, and to what types of establishments. If somebody gives everyplace a five, I know that their reviews may be inflated. If somebody gives every place a 1 or 2, I probably will consider them nitpicky or hard to please, and take their opinion at face value bearing that in mind. If they seem to only review a particular type of business, I may not give their reviews as much credence on other types of establishments, etc.
I like the idea of Yelp, but I'm losing enthusiasm for the reality of what Yelp has become. As a heavy business traveler I was an early user, and since I'm a foodie, and I like to write, and I liked the social aspects, I got into writing reviews on a regular basis fairly early. It helped that I was able to suss out the identities of a few of my real life friends, because I could rely on their opinions. And it helped that so many of us were foodies.
Then the problems started showing up... the brand-new posters with the glowing reviews of a single place. The jerk reviews with their nasty single star ratings in the midst of a flurry of four star reviews. The fairly obvious (in at least a few cases) attacks by a competitor, trying to drive down ratings of a hot new place. The rail-to-rail reviewers who gave everything either a 1 or a 5. Incoherent bashing about irrelevant pet peeves.
And the morons, always the morons! I remember one of those lowball reviews distinctly, because the reviewer slammed one of my favorite restaurants, even though her complaint was actually with a different place. It was not quite so evident at first reading, and wouldn't be obvious to a casual reader, but she was really upset about a long wait for a table, and the poor service at a restaurant which was actually upstairs from the restaurant she wrote the review for! While she was waiting to be seated at A, she had wandered downstairs and into the bar at B, the one I love, had a cocktail (or two) she really liked, had an appetizer that she really liked, then eventually went back upstairs to A for a dinner that did not please her at all. But she was so confused that she wrote a really bad review for B, apparently thinking it was all one restaurant. Crazy!
Then problems with details started turning me off. A brand new place opened in my neighborhood, and I discovered it the day it opened because they were just hanging the new sign as I was out for a walk. So I checked it out that night, and enjoyed it a lot, and the next day I wrote the first review of the place. Then somebody else wrote another review, but got the name wrong, and somebody else added to that, and somebody else, like a caravan of cars following a lost driver. I immediately tried to get the correction made, even sending the "editors" photos of the sign showing the correct name, but it took them a month to fix the problem, a lifetime in the history of a new small business trying to find an audience. I noticed the same lonnnnnggg delay in getting another listing marked "business closed" even though it had been gone a year and a different business had been open at that location for 6 months. Yelp has the same problem that I see plaguing a lot of internet companies... they think they can operate without devoting significant resources to customer service, and thus they become frustrating to users because they are unresponsive to problems.
So I've dialed back on using Yelp. I mostly use it as a simple directory now, to find addresses and telephone numbers and websites. I have not written a review for maybe a year and a half, and I rarely even read their reviews any more, going back to my old habit of reading only what a few trusted reviewers in magazines and papers and blogs have to say.
Mobsourced reviews, for me, are turning out to be not so useful in the long run.
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