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I 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

I 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 ago
Yelp 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 ago
  I don't think "most people" are even aware of Yelp's previous issues. It's probably more just Google eating their lunch.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    I 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 ago
    I 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.
    - rossdavidh 8y ago
      Same here; I know people who are tech-averse (willing to use smartphones, Facebook, etc. but not interested in knowing anything about how it works) refer to Yelp's unreliability, without bothering to explain it. In other words, it's a known fact not needing to be explained, because they assume everyone in the conversation already knows it. I think their reputation is probably a net negative, by now, and their technology certainly cannot help them with that.
    - istjohn 8y ago
      And yet no one can produce any evidence. It's just an easy excuse for a manager or owner whose location is getting poor ratings. My personal experience is that Yelp has an agressive sales force, their fraud detection system seems to fairly frequently raise false positives, but a business can do great on Yelp without paying a penny if they have happy customers.
      - acdha 8y ago
        My point was that it was widespread. There are so many small businesses that you don’t need that high a percentage to have bad experiences with sales critters or be conspiracy minded for a lot of people to hear the claim.
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    The thing Yelp has never understood is that when they hide, deprecate, or remove a review for no good reason, the person who posted that review gripes about it to a half-dozen of their friends.
- timr 8y ago
  None of this is true. Stop repeating rumors. Source: I worked there, on the systems in question, and know for a fact that the things you're asserting are not true.
  - cblades 8y ago
    Working on the systems in a technical capacity doesn't necessarily inform you of how those systems were used.
    - timr 8y ago
      I worked directly on the code that would have done the things you're asserting to be true. There's no code to support it, and in fact, there are tools in place to prevent what you're claiming. If there were some top-secret internal conspiracy to use the other tools on the site to do what you're claiming, you have to be especially credulous to believe that I -- or people just like me -- wouldn't have noticed it. Unless you have some evidence to bring to the table other than "I read it on the internet", my word is worth more than your theories. If you don't believe that what I'm telling you is true, then feel free to provide some proof.
      - dunpeal 8y ago
        The typical criticism of Yelp was that you could get negative reviews of your business removed if you paid them. I'm not sure how as a coder you'd be able to guarantee that's never been done, except if your code guaranteed that no review could ever be removed by a human moderator, which I'm sure is not the case.
        ilikehurdles 8y ago
        There. is. no. evidence. of. this. I'm not sure how otherwise skeptical techy people imagine a conspiracy into reality with nothing to back it up. Don't you think that of the thousands of people who have worked at yelp, that one of them would have spread news about it with their peers? The "shakedowns", floods of negative reviews, sudden filtering, etc. Every single instance is some anecdotal story online, and has never been backed up in court, by investigative journalism, a scientific study, any kind of material evidence. The barrier to entry to create a business listing, get reviews, get a sales call from yelp, and study the change in review is really, really low -- and yet you'd think we'd have more proof to go on than comments on hackernews and reddit if yelp were as shady as is claimed. There are third party services that are effectively shakedowns -- similar to what shady SEO people do to spam whois contacts -- they threaten you with worse rankings if you don't pay up. These things have no connection to yelp itself.
diminoten 8y ago
Yeah, they'll bounce back -- for whatever reason, their brand is strong despite all of the issues they continually have. I hope they go down in flames for their shady practices, and prove that being evil isn't a viable way to do business, but I'm not holding my breath. They have eyeballs, and eyeballs pay bills, so they're not done for.
jressey 8y ago
This sounds like one of the false reviews that people complain about.
- allochthon 8y ago
  In this instance, this observation is equivalent to saying that some of the false reviews that people complain about sound like someone's genuinely expressed opinion.
Eridrus 8y ago
I was a pretty heavy Yelp user when I lived in SF, but I found the ratings not really that helpful elsewhere, even in NYC. I mostly use Google Maps these days, and while I don't necessarily trust the user ratings or it's personalized score that much more, the fact that it will link you to, e.g. Eater listicles that mention a place is a super strong signal that a place is good in an area you don't know.
this2shallPass 8y ago
I mostly like and use Yelp, and I get the negativity. What your saying about knowing how to use Yelp is right on, but it leads to some dissatisfaction, because a 4 star restaurant should be a 4 star restaurant. More importantly, they manipulate ratings. They pressure businesses to pay them to fix ratings Yelp broke. They let businesses improve ratings when they shouldn't, analogous to Glassdoor and Amazon users getting ratings they don't like kicked off or hidden. There are plenty of fake and misleading reviews. And they have lots of dark patterns e.g. pushing you to their mobile app from the web, requiring you to create an account, etc. Some of these are observable by everyone, others there are many anecdotes. They're not going away. They provide value to people, me included. But some negativity directed their way makes sense to me.
apl002 8y ago
I certainly like a world with yelp vs one without it. I dont get the hate in here either. They've done some shady stuff in the past but i think every single reviews platform has issues with fraud
analyst74 8y ago
> the ability to select other users whose tastes are similar to mine that Yelp would then use to influence the ratings I see. Google maps started doing this a while ago, I don't think their algo is perfect yet, but the personal match % has been more accurate than the general rating of the restaurants.
adrr 8y ago
Yelp suffers the same issues that Amazon reviews has. General public is easily influenced to give high scores to mediocre food/products. I'd rather have reviews from trusted reviewers or a Netflix type scoring system that matches my picks with other people who have the same taste.
- rorykoehler 8y ago
  We're aiming to solve this problem at bibimapp.com. We're in private beta now but will be going public soon.

dunpeal 8y ago

Yelp 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 ago
I don't think "most people" are even aware of Yelp's previous issues. It's probably more just Google eating their lunch.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  I 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 ago
  I 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.
  - rossdavidh 8y ago
    Same here; I know people who are tech-averse (willing to use smartphones, Facebook, etc. but not interested in knowing anything about how it works) refer to Yelp's unreliability, without bothering to explain it. In other words, it's a known fact not needing to be explained, because they assume everyone in the conversation already knows it. I think their reputation is probably a net negative, by now, and their technology certainly cannot help them with that.
  - istjohn 8y ago
    And yet no one can produce any evidence. It's just an easy excuse for a manager or owner whose location is getting poor ratings. My personal experience is that Yelp has an agressive sales force, their fraud detection system seems to fairly frequently raise false positives, but a business can do great on Yelp without paying a penny if they have happy customers.
    - acdha 8y ago
      My point was that it was widespread. There are so many small businesses that you don’t need that high a percentage to have bad experiences with sales critters or be conspiracy minded for a lot of people to hear the claim.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  The thing Yelp has never understood is that when they hide, deprecate, or remove a review for no good reason, the person who posted that review gripes about it to a half-dozen of their friends.
timr 8y ago
None of this is true. Stop repeating rumors. Source: I worked there, on the systems in question, and know for a fact that the things you're asserting are not true.
- cblades 8y ago
  Working on the systems in a technical capacity doesn't necessarily inform you of how those systems were used.
  - timr 8y ago
    I worked directly on the code that would have done the things you're asserting to be true. There's no code to support it, and in fact, there are tools in place to prevent what you're claiming. If there were some top-secret internal conspiracy to use the other tools on the site to do what you're claiming, you have to be especially credulous to believe that I -- or people just like me -- wouldn't have noticed it. Unless you have some evidence to bring to the table other than "I read it on the internet", my word is worth more than your theories. If you don't believe that what I'm telling you is true, then feel free to provide some proof.
    - dunpeal 8y ago
      The typical criticism of Yelp was that you could get negative reviews of your business removed if you paid them. I'm not sure how as a coder you'd be able to guarantee that's never been done, except if your code guaranteed that no review could ever be removed by a human moderator, which I'm sure is not the case.
      - ilikehurdles 8y ago
        There. is. no. evidence. of. this. I'm not sure how otherwise skeptical techy people imagine a conspiracy into reality with nothing to back it up. Don't you think that of the thousands of people who have worked at yelp, that one of them would have spread news about it with their peers? The "shakedowns", floods of negative reviews, sudden filtering, etc. Every single instance is some anecdotal story online, and has never been backed up in court, by investigative journalism, a scientific study, any kind of material evidence. The barrier to entry to create a business listing, get reviews, get a sales call from yelp, and study the change in review is really, really low -- and yet you'd think we'd have more proof to go on than comments on hackernews and reddit if yelp were as shady as is claimed. There are third party services that are effectively shakedowns -- similar to what shady SEO people do to spam whois contacts -- they threaten you with worse rankings if you don't pay up. These things have no connection to yelp itself.

diminoten 8y ago

Yeah, they'll bounce back -- for whatever reason, their brand is strong despite all of the issues they continually have. I hope they go down in flames for their shady practices, and prove that being evil isn't a viable way to do business, but I'm not holding my breath. They have eyeballs, and eyeballs pay bills, so they're not done for.

jressey 8y ago

This sounds like one of the false reviews that people complain about.

allochthon 8y ago
In this instance, this observation is equivalent to saying that some of the false reviews that people complain about sound like someone's genuinely expressed opinion.

Eridrus 8y ago

I was a pretty heavy Yelp user when I lived in SF, but I found the ratings not really that helpful elsewhere, even in NYC. I mostly use Google Maps these days, and while I don't necessarily trust the user ratings or it's personalized score that much more, the fact that it will link you to, e.g. Eater listicles that mention a place is a super strong signal that a place is good in an area you don't know.

this2shallPass 8y ago

I mostly like and use Yelp, and I get the negativity. What your saying about knowing how to use Yelp is right on, but it leads to some dissatisfaction, because a 4 star restaurant should be a 4 star restaurant. More importantly, they manipulate ratings. They pressure businesses to pay them to fix ratings Yelp broke. They let businesses improve ratings when they shouldn't, analogous to Glassdoor and Amazon users getting ratings they don't like kicked off or hidden. There are plenty of fake and misleading reviews. And they have lots of dark patterns e.g. pushing you to their mobile app from the web, requiring you to create an account, etc. Some of these are observable by everyone, others there are many anecdotes. They're not going away. They provide value to people, me included. But some negativity directed their way makes sense to me.

apl002 8y ago

I certainly like a world with yelp vs one without it. I dont get the hate in here either. They've done some shady stuff in the past but i think every single reviews platform has issues with fraud

analyst74 8y ago

> the ability to select other users whose tastes are similar to mine that Yelp would then use to influence the ratings I see. Google maps started doing this a while ago, I don't think their algo is perfect yet, but the personal match % has been more accurate than the general rating of the restaurants.

adrr 8y ago

Yelp suffers the same issues that Amazon reviews has. General public is easily influenced to give high scores to mediocre food/products. I'd rather have reviews from trusted reviewers or a Netflix type scoring system that matches my picks with other people who have the same taste.

rorykoehler 8y ago
We're aiming to solve this problem at bibimapp.com. We're in private beta now but will be going public soon.