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A restaurant owner who asked for 1-star Yelp reviews
- kull 7y agoSo many business people I know have their own Yelp horror story. How is this company even still in business?
- smt88 7y agoYelp's practice of intentionally biasing their reviews (and search results) was protected in court a few years ago[1], so unfortunately businesses have no legal recourse. If we want to kill Yelp, we have to switch. My cousin works for Likewise[2] and recommends it. It solves the fake/biased reviews problem by letting you as a user select who influences your recommendations (including friends and family). I've never tried it, so I can't vouch for it myself. 1. https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Yelp-can-give-paying-clients-better-ratings-5731200.php https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Yelp-can-give-paying-cli... 2. https://likewise.com/what-is-likewise https://likewise.com/what-is-likewise
- timwis 7y agoDarn, it's not available in the UK :(
- boudin 7y agoIn term of restaurants, at least in London, quite a few are tested by michelin and can be seen on viamichelin website. It's not the same but at least it focuses only on positive reviews and there's no room for fake ones.
- twic 7y agoIn London, i used to rely on Harden's guide, because it uses reviews from diners, but a diner had to fill in an actual paper form to review a place, and the reviews were filtered and curated by editors who knew their stuff, and visited as many of the restaurants as possible themselves (what terribly hard work that must have been). Then the internet came along, and it was so much easier to google than to look in a little book. They have a website, but it never seems to work properly (completely broken in Firefox right now). The data is presumably still good, though.
- code_duck 7y agoThere's plenty of review action on Google Maps. My impression is that it's surpassed Yelp already, at least in the markets I'm active in (Denver). Oddly I see lots of hipster businesses with signs mocking yelp, but none of them seem to register that GM is similar.
- jjeaff 7y agoThat's not my impression. I seem to see very few reviews on Google maps compared to Yelp or even trip advisor. And when I do, they tend to be mostly negative. Presumably because the only ones leaving reviews are those that are mad enough to go out of their way to post there.
- code_duck 7y agoMy experience is that the “match” feature on Google Maps does a very good job of suggesting places that appeal to me.
- pmoriarty 7y agoThe last thing I'd want to do is give Google even more dominance.
- code_duck 7y agoIt’s not really up to me. In reality, the only restaurant review app that is useful for me is ‘find me gluten free’, which is based on yelp.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoGoogle maps reviews are of way lower quality compared to both Yelp and TripAdvisor. Lots of 3-word reviews or barely English reviews. I’m sure there are more of them but I don’t value them at all. I think there’s a weird culture around yelp reviews especially of people who openly label themselves as yelpers. I haven’t met them but it’s an easy group to mock. I’d bet a lot of those restaurants don’t realize how many visitors end up at their business because they saw something they liked about it on yelp despite not being some kind of power users of the site. Frankly I like the platform more for discovery than reviewing, but generally most restaurants at 4 stars or above are pretty consistently good, while those between 1 and 3 are pretty consistently trash. It’s also nice being able to search reviews for menu items and things like “happy hour” or “patio”. Lately I use Eater a lot more than any user-driven service though.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoThe first article you linked does not conclude what you’re implying: that they’re intentionally biasing ratings (for paying customers or otherwise).
- smt88 7y agoI didn't say that it did, only that it's completely legal for them to do it and for them to do it secretly. I have firsthand experience with them biasing ratings from helping friends manage Yelp listings. I don't know how widespread it is, but it does happen. While possible, it seems unlikely that thousands of people have reported the same pattern (good reviews buried after declining to become a Yelp customer). You can see this yourself on many listings. Click on the reviews that Yelp has hidden because of "quality issues". That's what they use for plausible deniability. My own positive reviews have been hidden from businesses (no personal connection to them, just places I liked) for being "suspicious".
- ilikehurdles 7y agoA lot of those folks that are hidden have 0 connections or linked accounts, few reviews, and/or all reviews being the same star rating. I’m not saying it’s a good system but I see a variety of ratings hidden in that section. All of my wife’s reviews were being hidden until she added established accounts as friends on yelp. Not sure why anyone treats it as a social network but so it goes.
- CamelCaseName 7y ago1. Incredibly aggressive salespeople 2. A constant stream of new small business owners 3. A good story (pay us and we'll make you more money)
- matz1 7y agoBecause many people use yelp (including me).
- duxup 7y ago>claiming he was exchanging reviews for “incentives” (a discount on pizza) — a clear violation of the platform’s Terms of Service That doesn't seem all that different than what yelp itself does.
- caymanjim 7y agoHow does Yelp's Terms of Service matter? Does the restaurant owner even have a Yelp account?
- duxup 7y agoAt this point I suspect that simply knowledge of a website means you agree to the ToS. Or just existing does the same.
- jjeaff 7y agoExactly. Terms of service don't mean a thing unless you explicitly agree to them. And checking a box upon sign up is not necessarily enough to constitute agreement either.
- true_tuna 7y agoYelp’s own practices violate its terms of service. Therefore under their own rules their service must be terminated. Wonder how that would play in court.
- aloukissas 7y agoIf only Yelp behaved a little like the late Jonathan Gold, who'd only give _favorable_ reviews to restaurants he really enjoyed, skipping negative/mediocre reviews for those that could improve.
- randycupertino 7y agoThe problem is then Yelp filters your reviews to be lower on the main page- their algorithm features reviewers who leave "balanced" reviews so more even % of 5-1 star reviews. People who have only positive or only negative reviews get pushed onto the non-featured reviews/reviews we don't recommend page. One thing that helps your reviews stay on the front page is having a lot of friends on yelp, as well as being on of the first to review for places. I always feel bad leaving a mediocre review for small businesses, so I generally will only do that for places that it doesn't really matter (random gas stations).
- stabbles 7y ago> Dan Neves, a waiter at a fine dining establishment in Austin, Texas, created YELP BULLIES EXPOSED, a private Facebook group that tracks down rude Yelpers and sends them a one-pound bag of animal feces procured from poopsenders.com. In a little over a month, the group has attracted 278 members. With this kind of publicity poopsenders might soon go public
- lacampbell 7y agoThis will backfire though - poopsender will get negative yelp reviews and people will no longer go there to eat.
- cc81 7y agoWhat a guy though: >Under the alias “Babghanoush I,” Cerretini posted 13 fake positive reviews for Botto Bistro, as well as fake critical reviews of neighboring restaurants — sometimes going so far as to disparage fellow owners. ...... >In the spring of 2014, after turning down another Yelp salesperson, Cerretini claims that four 5-star reviews were filtered from his page, and three 1-star reviews were suddenly catapulted to the top of the page. For the chef, this was the final straw. >“Those 1-star reviews were from people who never even set foot in my restaurant,” says Cerretini. “One complained about our waiters… we didn’t even have waiters!” Yeah, I wonder why you got fake negative reviews.
- spraak 7y agoNot a valid reason. Any business with integrity would not handle it that way.
- ViViDboarder 7y agoI believe that parent commenter is saying that this guy wrote fake negative reviews against neighboring businesses and those businesses likely wrote them back.
- avs733 7y agoNotably that information came from Yelp... "Documented records shared with The Hustle by a Yelp spokesperson tell a fuller story of Cerretini’s actions."
- xyzal 7y agoThis is genius tactic, and should become a coordinated movement.
- yoz-y 7y agoWhy? If all rating systems are driven to ground then what did we earn in exchange?
- FussyZeus 7y agoWhen did rating systems become essential? Have we as a society become so fragile we can't even take the occasional bad meal in stride?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago> When did rating systems become essential? Some time around the point when our society grew large and mobile enough that relying on personal experience and word of mouth wasn't enough, because a sufficient number of people ate in areas to which they wouldn't return any time soon.
- JimiofEden 7y agoOptimistically, critical thinking. More likely, something else useless to take its place.
- sonnyblarney 7y agoWe don't need such ratings systems for restaurants. We need a rough idea of what's there, some photos of the place and food tell a lot of the story. And prices. Maybe some 'editors choice' for the one's that stand out. A 'guide book' made by a small, decent team is as legit as any public review system, probably more so.
- yoz-y 7y agoWell, for example Paris has a few thousand restaurants. If you know the locals then it's of course best to ask them. But if you come for a day or two it's pretty nice to be able to check that you are not falling into some sort of tourist trap.
- NetBeck 7y agoThis reminds me of someone I used to play with on Starcraft Broodwar. When victory when inevitable, he would always quit the game to give himself a loss. He considered it better to have mostly losses on his record so other players cannot gauge his skill level.
- anbende 7y agoOr so he could constantly play below his skill level as the matching system would think he was worse than he is. If he was doing that on ladder, that’s generally considered to be bad form.
- nosuchthing 7y agoIt was also because in the Battle.net chat rooms, your icon would have a higher number if you were ranked lower. So if you wanted to be rank 9999, you just forfeit all your ladder matches.
- rectang 7y agoThere's a term for this: "sandbagging". It happens across lots of rated competitive platforms, from pool to chess to Scrabble to stocks...
- edmundsauto 7y agoHaha I remember my dad teaching me this term during sports teams tryouts, the kinds where you would be drafted onto a team at the start of the year. I was a decent player, but definitely did not try my hardest during tryouts -- if I had, I would have been the worst "first pick", making my team bad. Game theory to 9 year olds?
- human20190310 7y ago> ...a clear violation of the platform’s Terms of Service. What can Yelp do to you if you invite their worst punishment as a badge of honor? This is brilliant.
- csa 7y agoI know, right? What? Will Yelp remove me from Yelp’s listings and search results? Oh, darn!
- huac 7y agoThis was Yelp's business plan - get so big, aggregate so much demand, that you _had_ to play by their rules to get business.
- xwdv 7y agoCareful, Yelp can easily invent a new punishment from which there is no escape.
- hedora 7y agoSpecial offer! Free egg roll for yelper’s!
- muzani 7y agoA lot of startups focus solely on exponential growth. It's probably only a matter of time before they resort to extortionist tactics like this and somehow justify it as a l perfectly valid strategy.
- csa 7y agoI’ve started ignoring yelp reviews. The quality as a whole is about the same as Amazon reviews, which I find close to useless. That said, I still use the app. I use it for pictures, especially recent pictures of menus and food. I also use it for basic business info like hours, address, phone number, and (sometimes) map. If I were to own a business that would be a natural yelp candidate, I would definitely incentivize one-star reviews. First, I think that good yelp reviews attract some (perhaps many) pathological customers, many of whom are not from your natural customer base. These folks will put an effective service tax on the business, and they will make the place not what your regulars want it to be. Think a minor version of the Michelin Star hug of death. Second, I think that there are much better / more effective outreach methods than yelp and similar apps to target the audience you want. What I would do is keep an up-to-date collection of images of the menu and food on the site, and the business information would be accurate. I would be tempted to muck with the business information if yelp tried to go to war, but I imagine taking the high road would be the correct choice even if yelp didn’t. I would not create accounts to post to about any restaurant, including my own. I also would not advertise on the platform. I fully believe that a lot of these “social” sites seeking growth with questionable ethics practices will end up biting themselves in the ass. The tech isn’t that complex. I (naively?) believe that companies that make an effort to delight both sides of the marketplace (purveyors and potential customers) without trying to make VC-level returns will eventually marginalize predatory sites and apps. I hope this comes sooner rather than later.
- noir_lord 7y ago> The quality as a whole is about the same as Amazon reviews, which I find close to useless. Agreed, I think that any crowd source review of anything is so open to massive gaming that you can't trust it. That said you can't really trust (as an example) the general technology press reviewing most things either since they all have interests in one way or another (call out Foo vendor for something and suddenly find yourself no longer on the VIP list at Foo's future launch events). Not sure what the solution is though.
- batbomb 7y agoI wish we could boil restaurant reviews down to “did you like it?” I usually use some combination of TripAdvisor, Google Maps, Yelp, and OpenTable to get an idea of what’s going on. TripAdvisor tends to have less millennials which is nice. Actually, what would be ideal, is filtering out the prolific reviewers in any of these platforms. Other things to get good data would be more general questions, like “what are some places you like to eat in your neighborhood” or “what places stood out to you on your recent trip to _____” ... and then some incentive to respond or something.
- xyelperTTFs 7y agoI am a former Yelp engineer who worked on the review filter and had full access to Production. There is nothing in the code or infrastructure that allows sales to filter reviews. End of story. Any other position is for your own entertainment. Users can and will be creative on the site. Making fake accounts in order to mislead others is not a creative practice that aligns well with typical users of Yelp.
- smoknib 7y agoRight ...
- thrwway190609 7y agoby what mechanism are genuine and well-written 5-star reviews removed if owners refuse to pay Yelp, in your opinion?
- yoz-y 7y agoIs there any proof that they are actually removed? How many genuine and well-written 1-star reviews are removed alongside them? I enjoyed the story but policing user content is hard.
- fuzz4lyfe 7y agoIf I was Yelp and acting in good faith that data would already be public
- true_tuna 7y agoThere’s a thing called yelp sort. It’s on by default. They refuse to say how it works so it can work any way they like. The sales person marks the restaurant as ”owner didn’t pay” the top reviews get removed from yelp sort and the star calculation. The negative reviews get prioritized, the top positive reviews get ignored, hidden or just plain buried. The business goes from four and a half stars to three and a half stars. (I’m sure the actual name of the flag more deniable) Business drops noticeably. Sales person calls back a week later. This practice has been documented at least five times in the press. Yelp is a know extortionist company. I’d love to see a hactivist or disgruntled sales person publish the code or screen shots.
- exabrial 7y ago"We don't have ranch" Good Lord people, it's an actual Italian restaurant. You wanted the real deal? You got it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cheerlessbog 7y agoOn his blackboard the fourth line seems to say, "We have no god". Am I misreading? Seems a little incongruous for a restaurant to have a public position on such a historically controversial topic...
- eplanit 7y agoHe's in the Bay Area, where that is the sentiment.
- cheerlessbog 7y agoWhen I see an ad for a contractor that has the Christian fish on it, I avoid it. I'm not sure why but maybe that it's unattractively pious, it suggests they somehow have a conflict of interest.. Wonder whether anyone else does that.
- benjohnson 7y agoI've noticed that as soon as I start wearing my morality as a badge of honor, that I'm most likely covering up for some other sin. So as a Christian, I don't view the Christian fish as evidence of ethical business practices. Christ speaks the divergence between appearance and action in Matthew 7:22-23: "Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
- mikeash 7y agoHe compares Yelp to the Mafia and hands out discounts in exchange for one-star reviews. This seems rather mild by comparison.
- tyingq 7y agoIt's the last of 4 lines of various "we have no <whatever>". I'd read it like: "Yes, we are godless heathens for not having lemon, ice, ranch, butter, etc. Get over it."
- whack 7y agoI've noticed that any organization or process that serves as a "gatekeeper" inevitably has a lot of resentment directed at it. Business owners resent Yelp. Software developers resent the interview process. Aspiring entrepreneurs resent VCs. College applicants and their parents resent Ivy League admissions. In all of these cases, people love to complain about the injustices and imperfect heuristics being used by the gatekeepers. A lot of these complaints are very valid, but a lot of them also seem to miss the bigger picture entirely. These gatekeepers and their heuristics serve a very valid purpose in society, which is why they wield so much power to begin with. The only productive complaints are those that suggest viable alternatives or improvements - suggestions that don't simply trade-off one set of bad outcomes for an even worse set of bad outcomes. It's hard to take Grotto's "burn Yelp to the ground" ethos seriously, because I've lived through the pre-Yelp era of Yellow Pages and tourist traps, and I'd never want to return to that world again.
- FussyZeus 7y agoWe've heard again and again that Yelp harasses small businesses for ad buys. In itself, not a problem. But we've also heard that their mystery secret sauce "algorithm" then by sheer coincidence puts down 5 star reviews in favor of negative ones when they say no. If Yelp was really interested in clearing the air, they'd show how their algorithms are making the decisions they're making. It's not like they'd give away their entire platform or market space by doing so, there's such immense network effect at play with Yelp that they'd likely never be unseated. But they won't, and I suspect it's because they do manipulate it, even if slightly, because they have have every single solitary financial and business reason to do so.
- propter_hoc 7y agoHere's his Yelp page: https://yelp.to/qTKq/2I1Y0WkNnX https://yelp.to/qTKq/2I1Y0WkNnX All the wink wink 1-star reviews are gone - many 1-star reviews left, but only those that seem somewhat believable. There are also only a few hundred reviews, not the thousands mentioned by the article. I'd guess that Yelp watches his page pretty closely and deletes any reviews that are obviously fake. That said, I'd bet that the majority of the 1-star reviews, even the ones that appear believable, are still fictional.
- nathan-io 7y agoYelp has always been a thinly veiled extortion platform, overrun by spam, yet surprisingly quick to filter legitimate five-star reviews. I tried their paid advertising for a client in 2017, and have avoided it like the plague ever since. Not only did the trial yield no leads, but Yelp billed substantially more than the defined monthly campaign spend. It took repeated complaints and escalation to a sales manager to even get part of the overage credited. My experience was: * Near zero detail or transparency in campaign reports * Deceptive and confusing budget rules * Absurd cost per click (even compared to Google Ads) * Sudden filtering of all the legitimate 5-star reviews on one listing, after we declined further sales efforts
- sonnyblarney 7y agoThe truth is people don't want reviews! They just want a rough idea of what to expect. Frankly - you should be able to tell by the pictures of the place, and photos of the actual plates (if they're legit). That's 90% of right there. The odd bit of bad service or extra great service I don't think is a huge deal. I've never thought poorly or great of a place because of the service, I always just assumed that was the individual server. All we ever need is for 2 or 3 people with decent taste to walk in the place, have a taste, take a few photos and 'tell us what it is' - maybe point out what's good, what's bad a little bit. And then maybe some 'editors choice' for the one's that naturally stand out. That's it.
- TillE 7y agoCompletely agree. YouTube videos have basically replaced written videogame reviews for most people - nobody wants to read paragraphs about what someone thought and felt, they want to see what you actually do in the game. I'm interested in reading professional food critics, but well-organized food photos (plus objective caveats) would surpass anything that could come from Yelp randos.
- true_tuna 7y ago“People don’t want [this thing millions of people use, around which entire industries exist. And which is the only effective way of assessing a restaurant you’ve never been to personally.]” If I could reach through the internet right now I would.
- sonnyblarney 7y agoYour comment defeats itself. "is the only effective way of assessing a restaurant you’ve never been to personally" That's why they use it, not because it 'has reviews', but because it's a comprehensive directory, it has the address, phone number, photos, and the 'reviews' give a rought idea of what's up. If the reviews were replaced with a simple star rating, then people wouldn't care. There is also Google Search, which shows images, price. I haven't used Yelp in a few years, it's simply unecessary.
- stevenwliao 7y ago
- pmoriarty 7y agoI used to go a lot to a particular restaurant which I really liked which I remember had a bad review about a rude waiter. The review described that waiter in detail, and despite going there all the time I never saw him there. The review said that waiter was really rude, but I've never seen anyone be rude there. The staff was always quiet, professional, and polite. I couldn't imagine any of them being rude to anyone. Maybe that waiter had once worked there, but got fired or quit and was no longer there, but the review remained. After some years the restaurant closed for renovation, and when it reopened there were completely different people working there, and the food was way worse. It was probably sold or went under new management, though they kept the name. So all the reviews this place had gotten over the years were really no longer relevant, as it was effectively a new restaurant. Yet all the Yelp reviews remained.
- dontbenebby 7y ago> all the reviews this place had gotten over the years were really no longer relevant, as it was effectively a new restaurant. Yet all the Yelp reviews remained. The opposite is also a problem: a property management company I had issues with changed their name three times in the 24 months I was a customer. Each time they get a brand new slate, and can have reviews for the old company on the new page removed under the Yelp TOS, since if you say in your review you're not a customer, you're admitting to violating Yelp's review guidelines.
- randycupertino 7y agoThis is actually a pretty common strategy in Property Management. Multi-unit buildings owned by REITs are known to build this into their marketing plan. Sooner or later enough tenants will complain and the negative reviews will make it hard to fill empty units, so just "rebrand" and change your name. Common strategy by Essex Properties in the Bay Area.
- dontbenebby 7y agoInteresting. This wasn't a building though, it was a condo owned by a private landlord who contracted out management since they had a job that took them overseas. (So you can't type in the address of the building and see bad reviews under different name for same addy. To be fair, the condo board and neighbors were nice, but as a renter I can't do repairs or replace broken appliances.)
- ranprieur 7y agoThis is why Consumer Reports doesn't take ads. In any ad-funded review platform, corruption is inevitable. And we could solve it with a simple (but difficult) law: that review platforms may not receive any income from whoever they're reviewing.
- ww520 7y agoBad Yelp reviews can safely be ignored most of the times. Some of the best tasting restaurants I went to have 2 to 3 stars, and they are hugely popular. It seems they don't care about the rating and relying on providing the best food and best service.
- nashashmi 7y agoThis story an be copied on to the onion. And no one would know.
- drngdds 7y ago"We won't tell you how our filter works but we pinky promise we're not extorting you!" Not sketchy at all
- throwaway287391 7y agoSeemingly unpopular take on my experience with various review sites: 1) In the US, Yelp's reviews of restaurants have a significantly higher correlation with reality than any other review site. Google reviews are okay. 2) In Europe, Yelp reviews are mostly by American tourists and are sparser and higher variance quality-wise. Google reviews seem to be generally the best in Europe. (Canada might be a toss-up between Yelp and Google.) 3) In both continents TripAdvisor reviews are pretty much meaningless. I've been to multiple restaurants on TripAdvisor with ~4.5 that have absolutely sucked in terms of both food, service, and atmosphere. I don't have much experience with reviews for local businesses that aren't restaurants or outside of the US/Canada/Europe. But in the US, for all of Yelp's supposed manipulation, their reviews are noticeably better than other sites'.
- pugworthy 7y agoFor some pretty good satire on Yelp reviews, check out Yelping with Cormac - Yelp reviews in the style of Cormac McCarthy... https://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/ https://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/ Bitingly funny.
- dmd 7y agoIntentionally targeting someone like this (or yourself) with a flood of abuse in order to discredit/drown out real abuse is a plot point in the new Neal Stephenson book!
- herodotus 7y agoWhen it started, crowd-sourced ratings seemed like such a great idea. But I now think it has either failed or is doomed to fail. I have noticed, for example, that some movies rated on IMDB split into 9 or 10 star and 1 or 2 star. These are generally movies that, in my opinion, are bad: poor writing, wooden acting and so on. I get the impression that the 9/10 are all paid for. Well written, but somehow wrong. The 1/2 always ring truer to me. At least in the golden days of paid movie critics (or even restaurant reviewers) I could decide whether or not my tastes (in movies or restaurants) were similar to the critic. Crowd reviews make that impossible. Call me old-fashioned, .... please.
- justwalt 7y agoIMDb definitely seems to be on the take when it comes to new movie reviews. Almost any summer blockbuster will be in the top 10 for a number of weeks before eventually being edged out of the top 250. Friends and I have a tradition of picking movies from the top 250 list and we always skip these as a result.
- doesnt_know 7y agoIsn't it a ridiculous joke that yelp is threatening "a clear violation of the platform’s Terms of Service", when it seems he is no longer a user of the service? By his own admission, he is no longer paying yelp for any service so there is no contractual agreement between the two entities right? A punishment where they delist the business from their site is giving him and other businesses exactly what they want? So.....? From a conceptual level, an unrelated entity lists the details of you/your business on their own accord and then threatens you with "terms of service violation" when you do something or share information it doesn't like? Seems insane.
- mekane8 7y ago“I came from Italy, and know exactly what mafia extortion looks like,” he says. “Yelp was manipulating reviews and hoping I would pay a protection fee. I didn’t come to America and work for 25 years to be extorted by some idiot in Silicon Valley.” I love this paragraph so much!