3 ms·

Are there alternatives to Yelp? Are people using Foursquare or Google Maps?

• jillesvangurp 7y ago
  Pretty much. I've never used Yelp nuch. I guess they never focused much on the world outside the US. I just checked my area in Berlin (which has loads of really nice places) and they have almost nothing for this area which means their data for Berlin is 95% incomplete. For reference, several of the top places for Berlin on Foursquare are in the same area. Yelp seems to have none of those. From working on POI data in Nokia Maps back in the day, I remember that this is a tough market. A lot of sites from back in the day no longer exist. Yelp apparently bought qype at some point which used to have pretty decent coverage. I actually worked with their data at Nokia so I know. It seems all of that is missing in action in Berlin (where they used to have most restaurants covered). I guess that was more of an acquihire/competetitor eliminating move. Either way, their data was pretty bad as I recall but not this bad. Google Maps typically has most places, even the really obscure/shitty ones. Foursquare is a bit less predictable depending on how many users they have locally but it's typically great in popular areas. Both have invested in great user feedback mechanisms to improve the accuracy of their data. E.g. knowing when a new place opens and an old one disappears or changes name is key. Between those two, you get a decent impression what is good in an area. The reviews in Google Maps are usually pretty helpful and I see little evidence of cheating (though that obviously happens). I guess what happened is that Yelp used to be a cool hop user driven review website and then VC money took over and now the users are the product that they sell to their customers the restaurants.