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And just to clarify, only the business owners get contacted, not the individual posters. The owners are told they can have their negative reviews removed if they sign up to a fee based service with Yelp.
I use when traveling, but I hate it for all the reasons mentioned. I'm surprised, however, that nobody commented on the appallingly poor quality of so many of the reviews themselves.
The quality of many/most reviews is appallingly poor! FAR too many are written by people who apparently feel that it's reasonable to ding restaurants for simply serving food they don't like, as in a 1-star rating because "there were no vegan options at the so-and-so steak house." Duh. Then why are you going to a steak house?
Or slamming a sushi restaurant cause they don't like raw fish?
I saw a 1-star review of a very highly acclaimed restaurant because the person's request for a table "out of view of the bar" wasn't honored. It just happens that the bar is visible from the entire restaurant. W_T_F?? They should have stayed in Utah.
There are also plenty of 5-star reviews for objectively terrible restaurants serving up what the locals like, such as mushy spaghetti. OK, so they're catering to local tastes, but you'd have no way of knowing that from Yelp.
Sure, you can ignore this stuff, but it impacts the rating and forces you to filter through it all to try to get as some semblance of objectivity. It would also be great if they allowed comments on individual reviews. Some counterpoint would allow a much more valid (and interesting!) assessment.
Review sites (yelp, rotton tomatoes, etc.) are really not reveiwing anything - though some posters do take the time to submit an actual review, these are a minority and the majority are up or down votes and a comment or two. So what you are getting, for free, is a consensus as a substitute for assessment. You just got what you paid for.
1. they contact companies with poor reviews and agree to remove them
2. Most negative reviews I post are filtered.
3. The searching in Yelp is laughable.
1. If you can prove this, then you can become rich. Many people claim this, but it never turns into a real legal case. I call BS on this.
2. You don't write enough reviews. Yelp wants active reviewers. That means writing a review every week. I have 1-star reviews that are 6 years old still visible (and not in the filter bucket).
It means not writing 15 reviews in one day. It means writing 15 reviews over 3 months.
3. Some of the failure of search is how people enter the names of the businesses when they add one.
4. I find Yelp very valuable when in a new area. A huge improvement over the old days when you only had the Yellow Pages.
5. Yelp Sort is helpful. For me, it shows recent and those from my "friends" first. I trust the friend reviews a lot as their average number of reviews is over 400.
09-02-2014, 10:12 PM
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n/a posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by davebarnes
1. If you can prove this, then you can become rich. Many people claim this, but it never turns into a real legal case. I call BS on this.
2. You don't write enough reviews. Yelp wants active reviewers. That means writing a review every week. I have 1-star reviews that are 6 years old still visible (and not in the filter bucket).
It means not writing 15 reviews in one day. It means writing 15 reviews over 3 months.
3. Some of the failure of search is how people enter the names of the businesses when they add one.
4. I find Yelp very valuable when in a new area. A huge improvement over the old days when you only had the Yellow Pages.
5. Yelp Sort is helpful. For me, it shows recent and those from my "friends" first. I trust the friend reviews a lot as their average number of reviews is over 400.
This. My reviews stay up and don't get buried. I write reviews on a fairly regular basis and have an approximately normal distribution of ratings. When I first started sometimes reviews would be hidden, but that just makes sense.
And yeah, the bit about companies paying to have bad reviews removed is BS. Advertiser FAQ | Yelp It's been studied by academia and even gone to court.
I just noticed a previously approved negative review of mine was deleted from the page for the business. I had to go to my page; edit my review; and then re-post it. Not sure if I trust Yelp at this point.
I try to use common sense when reading any reviews. Look for the number of reviews, then eliminate those extremely great and extremely bad. If this is about food, many times it's about a personal taste.
That's what I do. A lot of the reviews are over the top & not in a funny way.
I do like Yelp for the reviews of the local Wal-Mart, grocery stores etc. They're pretty funny if you need a laugh.
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I like Yelp
