13 ms·

Not specifically apropos of the buyout, but my experience with Angie's List has been similar to that of Yelp, that is, businesses that paid to advertise on AL w

by dhd415 9y ago

Not specifically apropos of the buyout, but my experience with Angie's List has been similar to that of Yelp, that is, businesses that paid to advertise on AL were better able to maintain high rankings. The top-rated companies were not the best from either a quality or price perspective. While it's a great idea to crowd-source referrals for contractors like that, it's unfortunate that that model falls prey to the same impulse to increase revenue by soliciting advertising contracts with the firms that it purports to rank impartially.

narrator 9y ago
I think this is why TripAdvisor is better, in my experience, for restaurants than Yelp. If I'm not mistaken, TripAdvisor makes most of its money off of hotel booking referrals.
- covercash 9y ago
  Foursquare is my secret weapon whenever I need to impress with restaurant selection.
  - rexf 9y ago
    I use 4sq & Swarm a bunch. 4sq's venue ratings is hit or miss. I've definitely found some good places to eat at (that I would've otherwise not found), but I've also eaten at a ton of places that are highly rated but nothing special. For the latter, perhaps they are good relative to the immediate area, but not really that good.
    - tedmiston 9y ago
      Big fan of their SMS bot Marsbot as well if you haven't tried it yet. For some reason it's very low key and they don't promote it at all, but it's a pretty sweet product. https://marsbotapp.com/ https://marsbotapp.com/
  - laverick 9y ago
    Same. Has worked well all over the world for me, small towns notwithstanding.
  - jrnichols 9y ago
    Foursquare was my favorite app ever, until they split it up into 4sq and swarm. then it became totally useless to me, and all of my friends slowly stopped using it. :/
  - tmaly 9y ago
    I am just working on my own solution for myself, I gave up on foursquare and yelp.
- throwawaylalala 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure TA does the same...
  - exta 9y ago
    It does not! At least it did not 8 years ago when I worked there. Obviously a lot can change, but they realized the one competitive advantage they had that kept others out of the market was the huge catalog of user reviews. While other things may be fudged for profitability, there was a clear line between content and advertising we didn't cross. There are quite a few TA people on HN. Maybe one will chime in?
    - briandear 9y ago
      I don't work at TA, but I do own a tiny hotel in France so I deal with Booking.com and TA rather frequently -- TA does have a paid product for hotels, however other than not having my website URL and the ability for people to book directly with me on my TA profile, there has been absolutely zero difference in our visibility on TA. So far, TA has been really nice to work with despite me not paying them anything (yet.) TA is definitely my go-to app when I go places; it is pretty good both as a consumer and as a listee.
      - js2 9y ago
        I found TA invaluable for researching trips to Italy, Israel, and Costa Rica. You definitely have to use it carefully, and I verified with other sources, but there's a lot of good information there.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      Citysearch has/had a huge database of reviews, too. Didn't keep anybody out of the market, thankfully.
  - cschmidt 9y ago
    Ranking on TripAdvisor is based only on review data, with more recent reviews carrying more weight as you'd expect. I work on this personally. Money has no influence whatsoever. https://www.tripadvisor.com/TripAdvisorInsights/n684/tripadvisor-popularity-ranking-key-factors-and-how-improve https://www.tripadvisor.com/TripAdvisorInsights/n684/tripadv...
- crazypyro 9y ago
  TripAdvisor does the same thing, businesses can even pay to "favorite" reviews which makes them appear at the top.
  - sanj 9y ago
    Those reviews are clearly labelled as such.
- nunez 9y ago
  ANYTHING is better than Yelp. It literally does everything in the book to get you to download the app (to collect your user data, presumably) and is literally designed from the ground up to promote businesses that pay them to be higher on the index. Their sales tactics are borderline abusive, too. They will hunt you down forever until you sign a package with them, and they give you zero time to think about whether their ad package (which only works on their site and has a super high CPC compared to AdWords) is right for your business. They need to go away
  - timr 9y ago
    "and is literally designed from the ground up to promote businesses that pay them to be higher on the index." This is false. Source: I worked there, on search. You cannot pay to rank higher in search.
    - iscrewyou 9y ago
      Would I be in the wrong to call this a "canary"? As in you cannot pay to rank higher in search. But you can pay to have more exposure, better reviews, hidden bad reviews, etc.
      - raspasov 9y ago
        Isn't that like... Google? (more exposure part)
    - amarghose 9y ago
      This might be true technically but it's common knowledge that not paying will negatively affect perfectly good reviews. To the point that reviews that were ok while we paid aren't the instant we stop. You can argue whatever you want about your former employers but convincing SBOs that Yelp aren't extortionist scumbags based on this detail is not going to fly. Source: I work directly with maid services and trust in Yelp is at an all time low. Literally the first comment when they are mentioned in our private group is something along the lines of "Die in a grease fire" or "F*ck Yelp". And this is from some of the nicest ladies (mostly) that you'll meet.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  The audiences are a little different. TripAdvisor is easier to game, I find it a good guide, but there are definitely false positives. TA is very accurate for shitty restaurants. Yelp is weird because when it's good, the reviews are great and super insightful. But you don't necessarily get a great picture of the area. (My typical use case I showing up in randomtown, USA for 24-48 hours.)
- tedmiston 9y ago
  TripAdvisor recommendations get dated fast and are only for a niche audience. In my experience they tend to stick to the most popular places rather than the best places, and they miss a lot of local spots / dive-y spots / places that families wouldn't go etc. In cities like SF, NYC, etc, I've had much better luck with recommendations from Foursquare and Yelp. Especially with new places.
- tedmiston 9y ago
  > TripAdvisor makes most of its money off of hotel booking referrals Somewhat surprisingly this is the case for a lot of travel POI type sites (hotel referral commission rates are so high). Even a site like Kayak gets a significant portion of its revenue from hotel bookings.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
This will always be true for any subjective rating system, i.e. stars, upvotes, etc. The solution is classification instead of ranking. I am more interested in a Mediterranean place that cooks falafel to order and has tahini sauce than I am in a 4-star Mediterranean restaurant. Conveniently those are all verifiable facts, so there's no need to wrestle with subjectivity.
- exolymph 9y ago
  > I am more interested in a Mediterranean place that cooks falafel to order and has tahini sauce than I am in a 4-star Mediterranean restaurant. You preferences aren't the mean or the median, I suspect.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    So? The point is everyone can filter according to their preferences, not according to some point system which in the end signifies nothing at all.
- tedmiston 9y ago
  I'm definitely with you on having better categorization and classification and filtering options. Kevin Rose did a short-lived app called Oink [1] a few years ago with the idea of ranking individual dishes at each restaurant. I really thought (and still think) there's a huge potential for this concept. Every day I have some query like "show me all of the places that serve falafel within 15 minutes of me" or "what are all of the shops with sandwiches in my neighborhood?" Running those kinds of queries on the traditional POI sites like Yelp or Google Maps is pretty ineffective. [1]: http://mashable.com/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-oink-folds/ http://mashable.com/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-oink-folds/
  - bayonetz 9y ago
    Anybody use here use Oink? How as it? Very interested in this level of granularity for restaurants. Nobody really doing this well.
albeebe1 9y ago
I've found my towns local facebook group to be the go to place for recommendations.
- js2 9y ago
  Interesting. I haven't even thought to look for reviews on Facebook. I have found nextdoor.com useful for finding service professionals. For local restaurants, eh, I just visit them once. What I'm looking for in a restaurant seems to vary too much from what folks who leave reviews are looking for. e.g, some folks really care about how long it takes their meal to arrive or the quality of the service. To me, the quality and consistency of the meal is most important, so I'll forgive a slow kitchen or an occasional bad server or server having a bad day. Also, as they say, there's no accounting for some people's taste. :-)

by dhd415 9y ago

narrator 9y ago

I think this is why TripAdvisor is better, in my experience, for restaurants than Yelp. If I'm not mistaken, TripAdvisor makes most of its money off of hotel booking referrals.

covercash 9y ago
Foursquare is my secret weapon whenever I need to impress with restaurant selection.
- rexf 9y ago
  I use 4sq & Swarm a bunch. 4sq's venue ratings is hit or miss. I've definitely found some good places to eat at (that I would've otherwise not found), but I've also eaten at a ton of places that are highly rated but nothing special. For the latter, perhaps they are good relative to the immediate area, but not really that good.
  - tedmiston 9y ago
    Big fan of their SMS bot Marsbot as well if you haven't tried it yet. For some reason it's very low key and they don't promote it at all, but it's a pretty sweet product. https://marsbotapp.com/ https://marsbotapp.com/
- laverick 9y ago
  Same. Has worked well all over the world for me, small towns notwithstanding.
- jrnichols 9y ago
  Foursquare was my favorite app ever, until they split it up into 4sq and swarm. then it became totally useless to me, and all of my friends slowly stopped using it. :/
- tmaly 9y ago
  I am just working on my own solution for myself, I gave up on foursquare and yelp.
throwawaylalala 9y ago
I'm pretty sure TA does the same...
- exta 9y ago
  It does not! At least it did not 8 years ago when I worked there. Obviously a lot can change, but they realized the one competitive advantage they had that kept others out of the market was the huge catalog of user reviews. While other things may be fudged for profitability, there was a clear line between content and advertising we didn't cross. There are quite a few TA people on HN. Maybe one will chime in?
  - briandear 9y ago
    I don't work at TA, but I do own a tiny hotel in France so I deal with Booking.com and TA rather frequently -- TA does have a paid product for hotels, however other than not having my website URL and the ability for people to book directly with me on my TA profile, there has been absolutely zero difference in our visibility on TA. So far, TA has been really nice to work with despite me not paying them anything (yet.) TA is definitely my go-to app when I go places; it is pretty good both as a consumer and as a listee.
    - js2 9y ago
      I found TA invaluable for researching trips to Italy, Israel, and Costa Rica. You definitely have to use it carefully, and I verified with other sources, but there's a lot of good information there.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    Citysearch has/had a huge database of reviews, too. Didn't keep anybody out of the market, thankfully.
- cschmidt 9y ago
  Ranking on TripAdvisor is based only on review data, with more recent reviews carrying more weight as you'd expect. I work on this personally. Money has no influence whatsoever. https://www.tripadvisor.com/TripAdvisorInsights/n684/tripadvisor-popularity-ranking-key-factors-and-how-improve https://www.tripadvisor.com/TripAdvisorInsights/n684/tripadv...
crazypyro 9y ago
TripAdvisor does the same thing, businesses can even pay to "favorite" reviews which makes them appear at the top.
- sanj 9y ago
  Those reviews are clearly labelled as such.
nunez 9y ago
ANYTHING is better than Yelp. It literally does everything in the book to get you to download the app (to collect your user data, presumably) and is literally designed from the ground up to promote businesses that pay them to be higher on the index. Their sales tactics are borderline abusive, too. They will hunt you down forever until you sign a package with them, and they give you zero time to think about whether their ad package (which only works on their site and has a super high CPC compared to AdWords) is right for your business. They need to go away
- timr 9y ago
  "and is literally designed from the ground up to promote businesses that pay them to be higher on the index." This is false. Source: I worked there, on search. You cannot pay to rank higher in search.
  - iscrewyou 9y ago
    Would I be in the wrong to call this a "canary"? As in you cannot pay to rank higher in search. But you can pay to have more exposure, better reviews, hidden bad reviews, etc.
    - raspasov 9y ago
      Isn't that like... Google? (more exposure part)
  - amarghose 9y ago
    This might be true technically but it's common knowledge that not paying will negatively affect perfectly good reviews. To the point that reviews that were ok while we paid aren't the instant we stop. You can argue whatever you want about your former employers but convincing SBOs that Yelp aren't extortionist scumbags based on this detail is not going to fly. Source: I work directly with maid services and trust in Yelp is at an all time low. Literally the first comment when they are mentioned in our private group is something along the lines of "Die in a grease fire" or "F*ck Yelp". And this is from some of the nicest ladies (mostly) that you'll meet.
Spooky23 9y ago
The audiences are a little different. TripAdvisor is easier to game, I find it a good guide, but there are definitely false positives. TA is very accurate for shitty restaurants. Yelp is weird because when it's good, the reviews are great and super insightful. But you don't necessarily get a great picture of the area. (My typical use case I showing up in randomtown, USA for 24-48 hours.)
tedmiston 9y ago
TripAdvisor recommendations get dated fast and are only for a niche audience. In my experience they tend to stick to the most popular places rather than the best places, and they miss a lot of local spots / dive-y spots / places that families wouldn't go etc. In cities like SF, NYC, etc, I've had much better luck with recommendations from Foursquare and Yelp. Especially with new places.
tedmiston 9y ago
> TripAdvisor makes most of its money off of hotel booking referrals Somewhat surprisingly this is the case for a lot of travel POI type sites (hotel referral commission rates are so high). Even a site like Kayak gets a significant portion of its revenue from hotel bookings.

erikpukinskis 9y ago

This will always be true for any subjective rating system, i.e. stars, upvotes, etc. The solution is classification instead of ranking. I am more interested in a Mediterranean place that cooks falafel to order and has tahini sauce than I am in a 4-star Mediterranean restaurant. Conveniently those are all verifiable facts, so there's no need to wrestle with subjectivity.

exolymph 9y ago
> I am more interested in a Mediterranean place that cooks falafel to order and has tahini sauce than I am in a 4-star Mediterranean restaurant. You preferences aren't the mean or the median, I suspect.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  So? The point is everyone can filter according to their preferences, not according to some point system which in the end signifies nothing at all.
tedmiston 9y ago
I'm definitely with you on having better categorization and classification and filtering options. Kevin Rose did a short-lived app called Oink [1] a few years ago with the idea of ranking individual dishes at each restaurant. I really thought (and still think) there's a huge potential for this concept. Every day I have some query like "show me all of the places that serve falafel within 15 minutes of me" or "what are all of the shops with sandwiches in my neighborhood?" Running those kinds of queries on the traditional POI sites like Yelp or Google Maps is pretty ineffective. [1]: http://mashable.com/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-oink-folds/ http://mashable.com/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-oink-folds/
- bayonetz 9y ago
  Anybody use here use Oink? How as it? Very interested in this level of granularity for restaurants. Nobody really doing this well.

albeebe1 9y ago

I've found my towns local facebook group to be the go to place for recommendations.

js2 9y ago
Interesting. I haven't even thought to look for reviews on Facebook. I have found nextdoor.com useful for finding service professionals. For local restaurants, eh, I just visit them once. What I'm looking for in a restaurant seems to vary too much from what folks who leave reviews are looking for. e.g, some folks really care about how long it takes their meal to arrive or the quality of the service. To me, the quality and consistency of the meal is most important, so I'll forgive a slow kitchen or an occasional bad server or server having a bad day. Also, as they say, there's no accounting for some people's taste. :-)