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Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site
- 27182818284 8y agoI've never met the owner of a bar/eatery/brewery that liked Yelp. All of them dealt with Yelp as a necessary evil.
- elsewhen 8y agoYelp positions their product primarily as a consumer service; the fact that the other side of the marketplace (service providers) is dissatisfied may affect Yelp's business but not necessarily the product they provide to consumers.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sharemywin 8y agoI don't understand why they don't offer delivery like grubhub?
- AznHisoka 8y agoThey actually have a partnership with them, I believe, where you can order thru them from the app.
- jonathankoren 8y agoThey used to. They called it Eat24, and then they sold it to Grubhub. https://qz.com/1045776/grubhubs-purchase-of-yelps-eat24-may-make-it-the-only-place-to-order-restaurant-delivery/ https://qz.com/1045776/grubhubs-purchase-of-yelps-eat24-may-...
- dominotw 8y agoYea they could have easily added reservations ( opentable) , deliveries ( grubhub) , group dining ( meetup).
- greglindahl 8y agoYelp purchased a reservations startup SeatMe, which worked out so well that they bought another reservations startup Nowait.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- satya71 8y agoThey do have reservations and deliveries
- ilikehurdles 8y agoThis is kind of funny because I've ordered deliveries and made reservations through yelp as late as this year. I see from the other comments now that apparently the delivery services was sold to grubhub.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tashoecraft 8y agoThe problem I have with yelp is really the central idea of it. Who said random people are good at reviewing restaurants? Everyone's meaning of good is different, everyone's expectation for everything is on different scales with different meanings. Consolidating it all into a simple interface doesn't work. I really want two different services, one for finding something I'll be very happy with and may return to (usually found through trusted reviewers) or I'm someplace random and want whatever I get to not be terrible. Yelp is only okay at the later of two.
- paulie_a 8y agoThere are people that are influential on yelp. I know people that get preferential treatment by the owners of higher end restaurants because their rating carries so much weight. It's pretty interesting. Tagging along with one guy we got to skip lines at special events, no wait times. The chef and owner would see him and greet him.
- sevensor 8y agoIt seems kind of like frequent flier miles for eating out. I know a dedicated yelper who gets all kinds of perks and special treatment, but she has to write a lot of reviews to maintain her status. Which I guess is OK if (like air travel) your meal is a business expense.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoThere's a fantastic South Park episode about this very thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsXZ5htogKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsXZ5htogKg (episode preview - safe for work) https://vimeo.com/209623455 https://vimeo.com/209623455 (short clip -- NSFW)
- walrus01 8y agoSouth park did a really good parody of this a few years ago. Cartman becomes a high ranked Yelp reviewer.
- bhj 8y agoI think they could have leveraged their friends system to weigh the reviews more based on "people like you". In other words, use all that data to show the rating they think you'll give (a la Netflix).
- closetohome 8y agoThey did - they bought Eat24 in 2015 and then sold it to GrubHub earlier this year.
- RandallBrown 8y agoYou can actually order delivery on Yelp through Grubhub.
- notyourday 8y agoIn my view Yelp's first real product is their credit card rebates. That's what they need to concentrate on. Speaking with owners of a few places that are using it, they are super happy. It actually gets customers in and they (owners) are in complete control of what kind of discounts they give to people without having those people use coupons or otherwise jeopardize full value sales to those who aren't using it.
- oh_hello 8y agoOne time I used the Eat24 service built into Yelp's app to avoid a difficult phone call with a nearby restaurant. I waited a while then drove to the restaurant. When I asked about my order the hostess told me the FAX had just arrived and they would get started on it. Terrible.
- duxup 8y agoI abandoned Yelp as a user pretty quick as it was just too much to filter through so many reviews by people who 1) Had some one off bad experience that is probably not representative of anything. 2) Wished that place they reviewed was like some other place that is kinda the same but ... it's twice the price so why are you comparing?
- village-idiot 8y agoThe number of people who clearly had no idea what they were signing up for was always amusing to me. Example, if you go to a hole in the wall taco joint, you're going to get greasy tacos served on plastic or paper plates. I mean, it's not fancy, but they're also $1 each. By complaining about that on yelp you're just showing off your silliness, not providing anything useful to other potential customers.
- duxup 8y agoI had a great neopolitan style pizza place open in my neighborhood. It was inundated by bad reviews by people who were upset that it was "just floppy thin crust pizza" and so forth. Over time word got out and its reviews stabilized as their pizza and ingredients are top quality. But man for a while it was all just some idiots who just wanted some dominoes like pizza.
- SaltyBackendGuy 8y agoI worked with an IOS guy from Argentina, before software, he was paid to write reviews for companies in the states.There's some plausible deniability, he worked for a contracting company that did this work. Since then, I stopped using Yelp.
- ghaff 8y agoIt's not great but TBH I still find it to be better than nothing. You've pretty much described every review site on the Internet. "My hotel room in Manhattan was small." You don't say. I still prefer Zagat (though it's not what it was when it was pretty much limited to foodies) where it's available. But if I'm in an area I don't know well I still will take Yelp over picking a restaurant on total whim or because it has a clever name.
- momentmaker 8y agoMaybe now local businesses are realizing they don't want deal with the mob-like business practice Yelp had been accustomed to over the years.
- lgleason 8y agoYeah, but Google reviews are essentially the same thing.
- nasalgoat 8y agoIf your business model is essentially extortion, you have to wonder about long-term viability.
- vinceguidry 8y agoThe actual mob still seems to be doing well.
- nosequel 8y agoIs it? The NY and Boston mobs are pretty well dead these days.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThey've just pivoted into "legitimate" government. The middle bunch of the org chart of some government departments in MA is sprinkled with these people. Edit: some vs most. I can't speak for all of the departments.
- nasalgoat 8y agoThey have a diverse portfolio of crimes to work with. Always something new!
- wnevets 8y agothey've just moved to legit businesses.
- afterburner 8y agoThey used to be MUCH bigger.
- jessaustin 8y agoAdWords seems to be set for the foreseeable future. Before the inevitable protests, here's how it works. AdWords is quite willing to take money from Business A's competitor Business B for the precise phrase "Business A", as well as numerous other phrases that obviously refer to Business A. As a result, searches by naive mobile users for "Business A" will instead yield on-screen directions to "Business B". Business A will only find out about a small fraction of this traffic redirection, but it will still hurt them. In order to fix it, they only need to pay more money to AdWords than their competitors. That may be legal, but it is certainly extortion. [EDIT:] To return to the topic of Yelp, it may be that extortion works when you've got the muscle to enforce it. Google have that, but a site like Yelp where most of the traffic is coming from a search engine probably doesn't.
- mlrtime 8y agoI don't have any sympathy for a site that purposely cripples the web mobile site to force you to install their app. They lock you out of pictures after around 20 so you have to go to desktop or install their crappy app. Yelp will not be missed.
- faitswulff 8y agoWhat do you use instead?
- meritt 8y agoRestaurants: Tripadvisor, Google, Zagat Service Providers: Homeadvisor, Angie's List
- njarboe 8y agoFYI, Zagat's parent company is Google/Alphabet.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> FYI, Zagat's parent company is Google/Alphabet. No, it's not. Google sold Zagat in March to The Infatuation.
- ghaff 8y agoI forgot about that! I've been using Zagat since back in the day when you filled out a form for some city you were familiar with and they sent you a free restaurant guidebook for that city in exchange. I still think they're the best guide (except possibly for the local newspaper site) for people who have a somewhat foodie orientation. But they only cover a relatively small number of US cities.
- njarboe 8y agoI stand corrected.
- artursapek 8y agoIt all comes back around in the end.
- SnowingXIV 8y agoYelp is incredibly annoying as a business owner. After signing up to setup basic NAP consistency, they will automatically flag it as some sort of tag often incorrectly and then continue to call and email you asking to spend advertising dollars on their site for months. Even after asking them to no longer do so. I'm glad google reviews and others have taken their place.
- mladenkovacevic 8y agoI already recognize their number at this point. They'll call at least twice per week.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoMy girlfriend is one of the main operators of a small chain of board game cafes here— her experience is pretty well the same as yours. They rely on Google reviews and Facebook reviews. Facebook has even been toxic enough with false stories pushed in attempts to defame the company for money. I haven't heard the same about Google reviews and Reddit has been strangely fair. I just never liked Yelp. It seems like it spoiled very early on. edit: Just told her the news. Her response: "Good. Yelp is evil."
- 3minus1 8y ago> Facebook has even been toxic enough with false stories pushed in attempts to defame the company for money. Could you explain what you mean here?
- 52-6F-62 8y agoIt was more that the environment (Facebook, in this case) has allowed toxic situations where less scrupulous patrons were taking advantage of the social network to spread falsehoods for an attempt at personal gain by viral traction. Basically tell the lie fast and hard enough that the targeted party was helpless to defend themselves. Thankfully it didn't play out that way. The company has a decent amount of respect in this town, and the situation was well documented in advance.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- minikites 8y agoLooks like enough people figured out Yelp was a computerized protection racket.
- notyourday 8y agoYelp in NYC is infuriating to use. Not only it does not know neighborhoods, it is incapable of identifying rivers that separate areas. Ask it for places in Greenpoint and it would happily include stuff in Manhattan, sometimes well before it runs out of the Greenpoint options which could be OK had Greenpoint not been separated from Manhattan by the East River. Yelp is also happy to manipulate reviews contrary to their denials. It is rather funny, of course, because it seems that no one in the tech leadership of the company understands how easy it is to take a screenshot of a review.
- smelendez 8y agoIt was honestly faster to do a lot of searches with the old paper Zagat books than modern Yelp, since they were compiled by people who understood the cities they were covering. I don't remember this being as much of an issue when Yelp launched? It seems like there are certain restaurants (advertisers? mathematically trending places?) that they're determined to shoehorn into any search result. Also, it's frustrating how every review site I've tried constantly turns off the "open now" filter. I get that people want to plan tomorrow's lunch at 10pm, but other people just want to quickly find a decent place to take their hungry friends.
- ilikehurdles 8y agoThe neighborhood identification is unreliable. I tend to just move the map to the area I want to search in.
- pnw_hazor 8y agoI found some nice causal places to eat in Hell's Kitchen. I wanted to get away from the tourist spots near our hotel. Yelp worked great.
- stanleydrew 8y agoI bet Apple will be snooping around for a cheap acquisition here. Apple already uses Yelp for their place data in Apple Maps and they are still way behind Google. Eventually Apple will probably need to have its own place data if it wants to continue to compete in maps. Yelp would give them a starting point.
- rchaud 8y agoDoesn't Apple tend to buy relatively unknown companies and fold their IP into their products? Beats Audio was the only major one I remember them absorbing, and was rebranded as Apple Music. But Beats had that upscale demographic and positive brand image that Apple covets so dearly, whereas Yelp feels very much like a bygone brand of the 2010s IPO rush (along with Groupon and Foursquare). Not sure Apple would be interested. They can just pay for the POI data. Why buy the cow when all you need is the milk?
- stanleydrew 8y agoI don't think Apple cares about any Yelp "IP". It's a local establishment discovery and review site. You suggest "they can just pay for the POI data." Which is basically what I'm suggesting. Yelp's actual underlying asset is its POI database. Apple might want that if they decide to own rather than rent (which is a transition Google made a while back). Not at any price, but if Yelp continues to struggle the valuation might make sense.
- falsedan 8y agoWow, I would have thought the revenue stream from advertisers, the returning users that make the ads worth buying, or the reviews that tie them together would be more valuable assets than then location data anyone could scrape out of the state business register.
- skinnymuch 8y agoWouldn’t Foursquare make more sense as a much much cheaper acquisiton if none of the things actually driving most of Yelp’s value don’t matter? Yelp is still valued at close to $3B. If it recovers half of what it lost, Apple would have to pay close to $4B for Yelp. If it doesn’t recover at all, still talking over $3B. While Foursquare wouldn’t even be for $1B. It was last valued at $300M 3 years ago and just raised money again. So at worst it’s 4x cheaper. At best, 5x or 6x cheaper. The business model probably fits better too with having an enterprise package with Apple Maps.
- skadamou 8y agoDoes anyone else find that their best restaurant experiences come from places that only show up on a yelp search several pages down (if at all)? A number of years ago I stopped using yelp to find places to eat in my hometown because I found that the app completely overlooked smaller, locally run places for big name places near tourist hot spots.
- notyourday 8y agoIf you actually run a good restaurant ( not subjectively good, but objectively good ) then you can tell Yelp to take a hike every time their sales person calls so it would never be surfaced more than some taco place which for some reason did decide to give Yelp money. I'm sure this affects placement, not to mention probably frequency of reviews/checkins plays into placement. It is not that Aska NYC gives two cents about it not showing up on every Yelp search - after all they are a place that gets away with charging your credit card when you make a reservation and offers no refunds!
- kjeetgill 8y agoThat's definitely true in SF ... Sorta. If a smaller place manages to attract hipster crowds that pour into it for a time, it can get to the top. But when you're a site raking based on activity, what're you going to do? If Yelp didn't see traffic it can hardly recommend it.
- Mikeb85 8y agoSmall, locally run places don't deal with Yelp's extortionate practices if they don't have to. If they've already got a regular clientele, they can tell Yelp where to go. IMO, the best ways to find restaurants are Google reviews or OpenTable/Bookenda/Resy/etc...
- crazygringo 8y agoNope, not if you sort by rating instead of default (which seems to include things like popularity). Yelp ratings (at least here in NYC) are the most reliable signal of a restaurant's quality I've ever found, particularly when you look at the histogram. If a place has significantly more 5-star ratings than 4-star, you're basically guaranteed it will be amazing. And it has more 4-star than 5-star (assuming it's also more 4-star than 3-star), it's probably fine but there's a reason it's not getting 5 stars, and it's unlikely to be amazing. Obviously this relies on having a large enough sample size (e.g. 30+).
- adwordsjedi 8y agoGreat news! I run a local service company and stopped advertising with Yelp several months ago. No transparency how clicks go to $12 when they used to be $5. That's not even a click to your site, just your Yelp profile still on their site! On top of it, my 5 star reviews keep getting filtered, even ones that have shown for months. Meanwhile two recent 1-star reviews we got with people from brand new accounts still show just fine. GOOD RIDDANCE, hope they go BK. They deserve it.
- gscott 8y agoI spoke to them for insurance clicks and it was around $25-30 a click. Might as well just buy Google PPC ads for the same amount and get more value.
- Upvoter33 8y agoIn contrast to many posters here, I really like Yelp (as a user, at least, never been a restaurant owner). I sort by number of reviews and find places that are highly rated (4 stars or so) and almost always this has worked well. Other services I've tried are not nearly as easy to use or reliable.
- notyourwork 8y agoWhat other services have you tried?
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoWhat other services have you tried. Where in the World are you.
- ilikehurdles 8y agoFor what it's worth, I've tried Google (absolute and total bottom of the barrel trash level reviews in my opinion -- cannot say enough bad things about that review quality) and Tripadvisor (not bad, better for lodging and sights than food). I do like Eater but it's a different service and not user-driven. I'm in the US. Have been all over the place, all over both coasts, texas, and colorado.
- kjeetgill 8y agoSeriously, and at the very least it's a good census of what's in the immediate area. I can't even search on Google without it recommending me places 4 miles apart from each other. I'm sure Google will get there but its immaturity is palpable. Maybe I just like it because I never read reviews. Like YouTube, comments are poison to otherwise good content. People suck.
- crooked-v 8y agoWhat's your thoughts on Foursquare?
- haloux 8y agoYelp is one of those YMMV apps. Absolutely terrible for smaller cities like Albuquerque, NM. I miss the days when their competitor, Urbanspoon, was really pushing the envelope on a great customer experience and review variety.
- Marsymars 8y agoOld Urbanspoon reviews are still available on Zomato, but recent reviews (in my area) seem few and far between. Activity seems to be mostly on fb and google maps now. To me, every time there's a migration of platform for restaurant reviews, the user experience gets worse. :(
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lalos 8y agoFor vegetarians and vegans be sure to try out HappyCow, it's a must have when traveling. Disclaimer: free website but the iOS app costs some money.
- Alex3917 8y agoFuck Yelp. They’ve been deleting my reviews of restaurants that haven’t paid them enough.
- allochthon 8y agoI can't relate to the negativity I see here. I like Yelp quite a lot. There have been a number occasions where I've found an excellent local restaurant that I wouldn't have otherwise found. Admittedly, you have to know what you're doing. If you're in a food desert, like some parts of the US, you'll need to take those 4 and 4.5 star restaurant profiles with a grain of salt. What I would really like: the ability to select other users whose tastes are similar to mine that Yelp would then use to influence the ratings I see. This might also protect against paid spam reviews and over-picky reviewers.
- dunpeal 8y agoYelp was involved in more than a few shady dealings over the years, and most people remember that. They manipulate their own rating for money, and for that reason many consider these ratings - their core product - to be unreliable and misleading. They will not be missed.
- DerfNet 8y agoI don't think "most people" are even aware of Yelp's previous issues. It's probably more just Google eating their lunch.
- dunpeal 8y agoI meant "most people on this thread", which is the context GP was invoking: > I can't relate to the negativity I see here. And yes, Yelp calculated that they could get away with their shady money-grabbing since they had no competition. Very clever, but like most dishonest behaviors - quite short sighted. As soon as a competitor emerged, Yelp was unceremoniously ditched. Also worth mentioning: you didn't have to be aware of their past misdeeds to be affected by the resulting rating distortions, which are still affecting users to this day.
- acdha 8y agoI don't know, I've heard an awful lot of people who aren't tech/privacy nerds joke about how Yelp allows you to pay to remove bad reviews or add fake ones. It seems to be a common belief in at least the food industry and that employs an awful lot of people who may hear and propagate it.
- forkandwait 8y agoAm I the only one who considers companies like Internet pollution and hopes they all die?
- segmondy 8y agoI use yelp as a yellow page, that's it. I never look at the reviews.
- HNLogInShit 8y agoGood. Yelp = assholes
- jordache 8y agoGood!
- gdsdfe 8y agothere was numerous accounts of extortion and bullying in regards to yelp in the past, I am so not suprised by this and it's just going to get worst
- yalogin 8y agoThe problem is even now Yelp is probably the best resource out there for finding new restaurants but I find Yelp poorly run. There is no innovation, the UI hasn’t been updated or changed since the first release. They have so much potential, for example, they should have been the leaders in delivery and should have provided the api for Uber eats. They just don’t do anything outside of maintaining the servers for their basic service, at least that’s what it feels like.
- rchaud 8y agoWhat you are describing sounds like a lot of work for not much payoff, and that's not what you pursue once you IPO. Yelp just became yet another "we sell ads" company, and that's not surprising considering that it was basically an online directory with reviews.
- sxp62000 8y agoYelp is full of wannabe food critics/influencer types who complain about the ambience or quality of service. I always get the impression that these people only go to places that are already popular. For things not related to food/drinks, Yelp is no better than Google. Also, they focus too much on search/ratings, so finding a place is harder when you aren't quite sure what you're in the mood for. I hope Yelp focuses more on the discovery aspect, because right now that's happening on Instagram and blogs like Eater.
- thebigspacefuck 8y agoTons of places have low Yelp reviews but decent Google reviews and in my experience, the Google reviews are more accurate. I think it's because you get more off the cuff honest opinions from Google users instead of someone that went out of their way to get on Yelp.
- Mikeb85 8y agoThey've tried to hold restaurants and other small businesses hostage for years and never expected that, given how despised they are, someone would displace them? The way they run their business is comical as well. In my city Yelp is basically a non-factor. Businesses that have 500 Google or OpenTable reviews will often have a dozen Yelp reviews at most, yet Yelp will constantly phone you trying to get you to sign up for their services... Usually very aggressively and during peak business hours.
- zachruss92 8y agoYelp ads were completely ineffective for me as a business. I was paying about $900/mo for 3 months (they force a contract) and literally got 0 leads (calls, clicks, messages, etc...). If I was even able to get a project from Yelp ads it would have been worth it. I can't imagine if you're a restaurant (where the average sale is a _lot_ less than web design/development services) that you can make any money advertising on Yelp. No surprise that ad sales are going down/staying stagnant.
- sys_64738 8y agoShareholders let out a yelp when they saw the numbers!
- radium3d 8y agoThese large corporations need to knock off the bullshit and make their websites well developed and designed in-browser apps. Something so simple could save Yelp and many others. There is no need to have a native app unless you require certain hardware features that are unavailable on the browser to meet your apps purpose.
- pbreit 8y agoWow, $YELP has almost $1b in revenues, $800m in cash and trading at a $2.5b market cap. Yelp took far too long to go big into self-service advertising.
- vikingcaffiene 8y agoGood. Yelp is utter trash. They've shaken down several friends of mine who own and run restaurants. Either you pay for their premium services or a bunch of 1 star reviews start magically appearing on your business Its a well known racket and they should be run out of town on a rail for it. On a more personal note, they also refused to adequately protect my wife when we encountered and reported an unscrupulous vendor who threatened my wife and exposed her personal information on the site. There is a very real need for this kind of thing but Yelp has proven time and time again that they can't be trusted to deliver it.
- zelon88 8y agoThis. After I received my first positive review on the site they called me and tried selling me all kinds of advertising. Hundreds of dollars per month worth. I declined, and around the same time my review went from being on my business page to being buried behind a "View Reviews that are not recommended" link. It's a total scam and they should be dragged into court and their internal memos and procedures turned inside out for the world to see.
- istjohn 8y agoAs long as we're sharing anecdata, I too was agressively pursued by their sales department after my first couple reviews. I declined, and nothing happened. My business became one of the highest-rated in its category locally. I even sucessfully requested the removal of a fake 3-star review (I know all my customers, and the reviewer was never one). And all along, I never paid Yelp a cent. I have since spent money on Yelp, but it was not necessary to reach the top of my local Yelp listings.
- tomglynch 8y agoPlaying devil's advocate here but maybe they had already targeted many similar businesses in the area and were giving them all bad reviews. For these bad reviews to make a difference, there needs to be one with good reviews.
- 8y ago
- Opossum 8y agoI have a question: Would it be possible to do something like Fakespot for Yelp reviews or just restaurant reviews in general? I can appreciate that the problem is harder than say spotting fake Amazon reviews, but it seems plausible. Given that there is really no good verification for restaurant reviews, there must be a ton of fake reviews out there. In theory, it would not be too hard to periodically crawl reviews and figure out when/if they got deleted and use that dataset to find patterns.
- cletus 8y agoGood. The Yelp app/site is basically the same it was 5 years ago. Rather than innovate they chose to: - Opt for the shakedown/extortion method of ranking sites (those that advertised with Yelp rank higher, negative reviews can mysteriously disappear for advertisers) - Whine to regulators about Google is stealing content from them (by, you know, serving a snippet of content that Yelp allows to be scraped). - Harass users to install their (shitty) app. This is just bad management/leadership to the core and such a waste opportunity. A telltale sign of this is the demonization of some nefarious third-party and blaming all your woes on them, which they've clearly done with Google. Don't think that's effective? Look at the current state of US politics. I really have no time for these shenanigans.
- amelius 8y ago> The Yelp app/site is basically the same it was 5 years ago. Out of context, that would be a good thing. I hate it when a company changes user interface every week, just to stay in fashion.
- codezero 8y agoKind of an aside to your points, but I opened Yelp on my iPod Touch (first gen) and was flabbergasted to see that despite being un-updated and on an ancient version of iOS, the app still worked! This is pretty amazing, given that most companies' API endpoints from ten years ago don't still work today :)
- eof 8y agoActually, I would say Yelp is far worse than it was 5 years ago. Not sure how much fault it is of Yelp's, but reviews aren't really worth as much today as they were in Yelp's early days.
- kadendogthing 8y ago>Opt for the shakedown/extortion method of ranking sites Do you have any proof of this?
- deelowe 8y ago
- xfitm3 8y agoYelp is an unscrupulous business, however, I do find it useful. I don't read the reviews but I enjoy looking at pictures of food before choosing a restaurant.
- xd1936 8y agoMan. They just bought NoWait too, which was an awesome service. I hope they don't drag it down with them into the abyss.
- oh-kumudo 8y agoWell, you don't really have to have distinguished insights to tell that Yelp is doing a horrible job as an advertising company. Their ads are unattractive and annoying. What is fundamentally wrong with their business model is that, good restaurants don't need ads to wow customers: they are already oversubscribed, only troubled ones do.
- Circumnavigate 8y agoGood riddance, that is one of the most unethical corporations won the internet.
- robodale 8y agoAs Yelp finishes flushing itself down the toilet, I wonder what opportunities can open up for similar services that actually provide value?
- myth_buster 8y agoThe only redeemable feature on Yelp that I come to often (from Google Maps) is Open Now, where I can fill in a time and it filters for that time. If its close to closing time, its rare that I want to know what's open right now given I've to drive to that location. Other than that, I get the same value prop else where.
- tyingq 8y agoDon't forget to give Yelp a rating: https://yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco https://yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco
- 1024core 8y agoYelp is tanking because it is putting profits before customers. Case in point: let's say you're looking for a restaurant in a certain area, maybe in San Francisco? So you zoom into that area and do a search: find "x" in the map. So what do they do? They zoom out (sometimes, far out) to include some advertisers. Rule #1 if you have a customer-facing product: if you give the users choice, then respect that choice! Always respect the user. Always.
- jessaustin 8y agoWow people have passionate opinions about Yelp. If I need a quick meal while on the road, I just pick out some fast place. If I want a nice meal, I cook it. Spending a lot of my own money at a restaurant is only very rarely a satisfying experience.
- advertising 8y agoYou should be able to decide if you want to be listed on yelp or not.
- dawhizkid 8y agoa Yelp-like Token Curated Registry (TCRs) would be very interesting
- _cs2017_ 8y agoThis has probably nothing to do with them losing advertisers, but I really dislike the app UX. Examples: 1. Videos auto play in the app, stopping my music or whatever else I'm listening to. And I can't disable that feature. 2. Frequent crashes and other glitches (eg, the Recent category doesn't actually show many of the places I visited today). 3. No way to save default settings, like sort by rating. So with every search I have to manually set those preferences. Similarly, no way to save searches or even to go back to a previous search I just ran.
- antichronology 8y agogoogle maps has a lot of ratings and I find is good at suggesting a list of places from which I can select one. Look into the explore around me feature
- fipple 8y agoNo sympathy for them but Google completely trust-fucked them and the DOJ is too incompetent to care.
- crkhms 8y agoI don't get the negativity here, Yelp is an incredibly useful service; especially living in NYC. With such a dense amount of restaurants in the city, you need some way to cut out the cruft. I'm yet to eat at a Yelp 4-star restaurant in NYC that I didn't think was good. Besides Foursquare as an alternative, the reviews on Google, TripAdvisor, etc. are all way too inflated.
- _august 8y agoFoursquare! I've been using it pretty regularly and it always seems to give me cool neighborhood gems compared to over-advertised entires that Yelp gives you. You can kinda even feel that the app was built with some heart. Also, I love the filters on there compared to Google (Google maps always seems to hide a lot of places)
- eruci 8y agoWelp!
- Misdicorl 8y agoHere's to hoping the replacement will implement an old school Netflix style recommendation engine. Some people rate taco bell 5 stars, some 1 star. These people should not influence ratings for eachother.
- PHGamer 8y agoI think the bigger issue simply is no one goes to yelp, they go to deliver sites now because no one ones to leave their house
- exabrial 8y agoGood. Being an asshole to both consumers and small businesses should end in this outcome.
- vco1 8y agoI've always enjoyed Louis Rossmann yelp rants. A week ago he posted a great interview with some people who made a documentary about yelp practices of bullying businneses to join their service Link: https://youtu.be/BHEbVh3Yhrw https://youtu.be/BHEbVh3Yhrw
- phendrenad2 8y agoNow Apple will have to build their own rating tool for their maps app. Can't say that's a bad thing.
- osdiab 8y agoI wonder if there’s a way to get the quality of reviews and rankings from Tabelog in the USA - for those who don’t know its the Japanese equivalent service and diners are so critical that most restaurants have 3 stars, 3.5 is an exceptionally good one and 4 and up generally have Michelin stars; I’ve never been disappointed by a decently rated restaurant on it. The magic sauce for them might be cultural; though there’s definitely room for a better (probably nonlinear) type of reviewing system in the market given how bad quality Yelp reviews are in comparison.
- dreamcompiler 8y agoGood. https://thetechnoskeptic.com/yelp-extortion-starring-role/ https://thetechnoskeptic.com/yelp-extortion-starring-role/
- JetSpiegel 8y ago"Adds zero net new advertising customers" means advertisers are abandoning the site? Money 'abandoned' my wallet when I payed for my friend's dinner and she payed me back.
- timeseries2018 8y ago>> I payed for my friend's dinner and she payed me back. I paid for my friend's dinner and she paid me back.