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Two things surprised me about this article. First, I thought Yelp had an abysmal reputation. Threatening businesses with a poor review if they didn't buy an a

Two things surprised me about this article. First, I thought Yelp had an abysmal reputation. Threatening businesses with a poor review if they didn't buy an ad. Taking money for boosting a businesses rating. Was this all just FUD from its competitors? And second, I find Amazon's product search to be almost complete crap. I can't count how many times I've moved back to Google to do a product search because I know the product is out there I just can't remember the name, Amazon comes up with nothing and google has it on the first page. Again, is this only me?

kajecounterhack 7y ago
You're not alone. A friend rented out her place to a tenant who was a total nightmare and then he went and made a yelp page for her as a person, because she's a real estate agent, defaming her on yelp (not for real estate business, but for being his landlord). So there's now a yelp page with her face on it and angry "reviews" from this tenant and his partner, and she has no way to remove it. Yelp refuses to do anything. Amazon product search usually works for me but I often use google to make sure there isn't a better price somewhere else on the internet. So I end up repeating my search terms to Google anyway.
- ertemplin 7y ago
  Can't businesses opt-out of Yelp by sending a cease and desist letter or eventually suing Yelp? Restaurants can't opt-out because they would no longer be discoverable on the internet, but a real estate agent should be able to opt-out of Yelp and still be reasonably successful.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    What exactly would Yelp be ceasing and desisting here? Surely things like the name, location and contact info for a business are public information that can be freely reproduced. Everything else on Yelp (primarily user reviews/photos) aren't the property of the business in the first place. If anything I'd expect the example in GP's case to be a rare instance where even US defamation law might be helpful to the landlord. I don't see that extending to businesses in general though.
- jefftk 7y ago
  It doesn't sound to me like this is a problem? Someone had a poor experience with a landlord, and posted about it on Yelp. Perhaps this was all the tenant being unreasonable, but that's not the sort of thing Yelp is going to be able to judge. This is how reviews work: over time you build up a picture out of a lot of unreliable data points.
overkill28 7y ago
I agree, the downfall of Yelp was its hard push for people to install the app, e.g. requiring an account to see all the reviews, requiring the app to see the photos. Why do that when I can get better results directly in my browser?
- caust1c 7y ago
  On top of that, once you install the app you get constant push notifications and the reviews are shit anyway. There are plenty of places I love which have 3 stars and plenty I hate which are 5. Granted, Google and other crowdsourced review platforms have the same issues. Personally, I've fallen back to critics reviews of restaurants. At least they have a reputation to uphold if they give a good review to a bad restaurant.
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    > On top of that, once you install the app you get constant push notifications and the reviews are shit anyway. Their app is also probably continuously tracking your location. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/loca...
Mathnerd314 7y ago
Apparently Yelp has actually been used in extortion attempts: https://thetakeout.com/new-restaurant-faces-fake-yelp-reviews-extortion-by-ro-1827832284 https://thetakeout.com/new-restaurant-faces-fake-yelp-review... But the complaints are mostly that Yelp's policy is inconsistent. Its review filter removes good reviews and keep bad reviews, at times, and the customer service is terrible. And the ratings are subjective and mostly useless and still used everywhere on the site regardless. The same applies to Google/YouTube, Amazon, etc. though, so I'd say you're just seeing the availability bias; there been a fair number of positive success stories about YouTube, Amazon, etc. posted on HN whereas business owners on Yelp are too small audience-wise to get a lot of traction. The only real competitor to Yelp is Google; maybe Google boosted up negative news stories on Yelp but it could just as easily be the newspapers themselves fanning fake controversy.

kajecounterhack 7y ago

You're not alone. A friend rented out her place to a tenant who was a total nightmare and then he went and made a yelp page for her as a person, because she's a real estate agent, defaming her on yelp (not for real estate business, but for being his landlord). So there's now a yelp page with her face on it and angry "reviews" from this tenant and his partner, and she has no way to remove it. Yelp refuses to do anything. Amazon product search usually works for me but I often use google to make sure there isn't a better price somewhere else on the internet. So I end up repeating my search terms to Google anyway.

ertemplin 7y ago
Can't businesses opt-out of Yelp by sending a cease and desist letter or eventually suing Yelp? Restaurants can't opt-out because they would no longer be discoverable on the internet, but a real estate agent should be able to opt-out of Yelp and still be reasonably successful.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  What exactly would Yelp be ceasing and desisting here? Surely things like the name, location and contact info for a business are public information that can be freely reproduced. Everything else on Yelp (primarily user reviews/photos) aren't the property of the business in the first place. If anything I'd expect the example in GP's case to be a rare instance where even US defamation law might be helpful to the landlord. I don't see that extending to businesses in general though.
jefftk 7y ago
It doesn't sound to me like this is a problem? Someone had a poor experience with a landlord, and posted about it on Yelp. Perhaps this was all the tenant being unreasonable, but that's not the sort of thing Yelp is going to be able to judge. This is how reviews work: over time you build up a picture out of a lot of unreliable data points.

overkill28 7y ago

I agree, the downfall of Yelp was its hard push for people to install the app, e.g. requiring an account to see all the reviews, requiring the app to see the photos. Why do that when I can get better results directly in my browser?

caust1c 7y ago
On top of that, once you install the app you get constant push notifications and the reviews are shit anyway. There are plenty of places I love which have 3 stars and plenty I hate which are 5. Granted, Google and other crowdsourced review platforms have the same issues. Personally, I've fallen back to critics reviews of restaurants. At least they have a reputation to uphold if they give a good review to a bad restaurant.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > On top of that, once you install the app you get constant push notifications and the reviews are shit anyway. Their app is also probably continuously tracking your location. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/loca...

Mathnerd314 7y ago

Apparently Yelp has actually been used in extortion attempts: https://thetakeout.com/new-restaurant-faces-fake-yelp-reviews-extortion-by-ro-1827832284 https://thetakeout.com/new-restaurant-faces-fake-yelp-review... But the complaints are mostly that Yelp's policy is inconsistent. Its review filter removes good reviews and keep bad reviews, at times, and the customer service is terrible. And the ratings are subjective and mostly useless and still used everywhere on the site regardless. The same applies to Google/YouTube, Amazon, etc. though, so I'd say you're just seeing the availability bias; there been a fair number of positive success stories about YouTube, Amazon, etc. posted on HN whereas business owners on Yelp are too small audience-wise to get a lot of traction. The only real competitor to Yelp is Google; maybe Google boosted up negative news stories on Yelp but it could just as easily be the newspapers themselves fanning fake controversy.