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I have personally never seen much value in Yelp. Most people use Google as a starting point when searching anything, and the Yelp page that is returned is not v

I have personally never seen much value in Yelp. Most people use Google as a starting point when searching anything, and the Yelp page that is returned is not very helpful to me. At best, it contains menus, pictures, hours, phone number, and reviews. At worst, it has none of those and is effectively an ad for the Yelp app. Either way, Google shows me all of that before I click anything else. Google absolutely tries to keep me on Google, but at least they have a "Website" button that takes me to a different domain that was set up by the restaurant itself.

fairity 6y ago
> The Yelp page that is returned is not very helpful to me. At best, it contains menus, pictures, hours, phone number, and reviews. Menus, pictures of food, and honest reviews aren't helpful to you? I think most people get a lot of value out of Yelp. Yelp's review system is among the hardest to game, so it has the most trustworthy reviews for service-based businesses. That said, that's largely besides the point of this article.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  "$10 off your next service if you give us a review on Yelp" is just the tip of an iceberg of complaints people have about online review systems, including Yelp. I was once traveling and some friends found a highly reviewed place on Yelp. When we got there it turned out the glowing reviews were all written by the owner's son. At least he felt bad enough about it to give us free dessert.
  - retsibsi 6y ago
    > When we got there it turned out the glowing reviews were all written by the owner's son. How/why was this revealed to you?
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Apparently they didn't normally get many tourists, and the owner's son was who served us.
- _jal 6y ago
  I typically search for things "-yelp". They're an annoying and mostly useless. I haven't bothered to look in a long time, but the reviews I've seen are obviously bad. I can find menus on the restaurant's real page. The locality views are worse than, say, Apple maps. There's just no reason to use them. Add in that they harm the livelihood of restaurants owned by people I like, and yeah, they're another crap site that continues to be annoying by trying to get in between me and someone who wants to feed me.
- kjs3 6y ago
  Completely disagree. Reviews generated by "give a good review and we'll give you a prize" and "I'd hate to see you hit with a bunch of bad reviews because you didn't pay us more money" are completely worthless and are the core of Yelps business model. It's the definition of easy-to-game and untrustworthy.
- ddingus 6y ago
  Two things: Hardest to game is like lesser evils. Lesser evils remain evil, as hard games remain played. I personally value direct interactions with people I do business with more than ever in my life. Too many middle companies all working some angle to make more than the value they may actually deliver. Well, a few things: Trust in all this kind of service is reaching a low ebb. We keep finding incidents where the behavior is not as represented. Frankly, the money might be too good. And that's fine. Is what it is, people do what they do I am stepping back, reevaluating these kinds of value propositions, and recommending peers do the same.
- tfehring 6y ago
  > Yelp's review system is among the hardest to game I assume you mean it's among the hardest to game except by paying Yelp to remove negative reviews - that's a pretty important caveat when it comes to trustworthiness. I'm almost entirely de-Googled at this point, but I make an exception specifically to avoid Yelp, which somehow manages to be even worse than Google within its niche.
cosmie 6y ago
As far as I recall, Yelp predates Google having any of those features at all. So in one sense, the "value in Yelp" was in being successful enough to get Google to emulate their feature-set directly within the search results. Which doesn't really speak well to Yelp's continuing value, though.
- 60secz 6y ago
  ding ding ding Value propositions without a moat (durable competitive advantage) will be swallowed by vertical integration of their feature set.
pydry 6y ago
>Either way, Google shows me all of that before I click anything else. All seeded from Yelp. When Yelp complained google shrugged their shoulders and said they could remove them from their search index entirely if they liked. Being the world's no. 1 search destination gave them carte blanche to rip off IP all over. Google was a parasite on Yelp. It's not really surprising that Yelp is now like "fuck it, parasitic business models are the future" and leant in. I'd have done the same. Where parasitic business models thrive the economy itself will suffer. This is a problem that only gets solved by bringing the regulatory hammer down on big tech.
- tartoran 6y ago
  If users would hit yelp.com and searched for a restaurant and somehow google intercepted that then they'd be a parasite. The way I see it it is a symbiotic somewhat relationship, at least in theory. Yelp is a parasite on businesses though, they attempt to extort money and give no value in exchange, often times unsuccessfully. Here's an older anecdote I posted about yelp [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24790918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24790918
  - milesskorpen 6y ago
    While there are definitely anecdotes about this kind of behavior, I have yet to see evidence of systemic or corporate-sponsored effort to do this. I believe this is more a question of possibly poorly-incentivized sales people rather than an intentional strategy on behalf of Yelp. I think this is backed up by a number of lawsuits that haven't gone anywhere. I might be mistaken; if there is a source showing this is really systemic, I'd be very interested. Either way, Google now does many of the same things that Yelp does (reviews, photos, metadata management) - but it doesn't really care about the space, apart from being good enough to beat its competition. While today maybe they're motivated to build better products to compete with Yelp for eyeballs, overtime I think this means the reviews space will stagnate. That's unfortunate. I think this is the core Google problem: They have so much top-of-funnel traffic that they just have to do things "good enough" to crush entire industries of competition. The bar to be sufficiently better enough than "good enough" to build a meaningful competitor to G in any vertical is so high it stops many potential competitors from even trying. The only companies that manage it are ones that have entirely different & massive profitable business models like Apple. Everywhere Google is, the sector stagnates: Search! RSS readers (with a bit of a renaissance since Google Reader died). Email. Calendars. News lists. Increasingly, reviews. Fortunately MSFT pushes them in docs and hopefully Apple continues to do so in Maps and browsers.
gumby 6y ago
We drove up the Oregon coast and my GF used Yelp to find good places for us to stop and eat. I was frankly astonished as, like you, I've found Yelp pretty useless at best.
- muststopmyths 6y ago
  There was an xkcd about this, but i've found anything below 4.5 stars is mediocre. Above that you find a better probability of a good meal, but it's still just a probability. I find it servers as a good filter for the awful stuff, which is what I really care about when travelling.
  - gumby 6y ago
    I have a friend who has run a restaurant for decades with a customer base that is almost entirely regulars. She has encouraged us to leave bad yelp reviews as she has found "yelpers" (different from people who simply consult yelp) to be a pain in the neck...plus wants space to be available for the regulars.
werber 6y ago
Yelp as a social network is actually pretty cool, if you get their elite status for the year you get invited to some pretty fun free events, and I know they've done socially distanced ones since the pandemic, I heard about a murder mystery somewhere. Now that I don't participate in that I don't really use the platform often.

fairity 6y ago

> The Yelp page that is returned is not very helpful to me. At best, it contains menus, pictures, hours, phone number, and reviews. Menus, pictures of food, and honest reviews aren't helpful to you? I think most people get a lot of value out of Yelp. Yelp's review system is among the hardest to game, so it has the most trustworthy reviews for service-based businesses. That said, that's largely besides the point of this article.

nitrogen 6y ago
"$10 off your next service if you give us a review on Yelp" is just the tip of an iceberg of complaints people have about online review systems, including Yelp. I was once traveling and some friends found a highly reviewed place on Yelp. When we got there it turned out the glowing reviews were all written by the owner's son. At least he felt bad enough about it to give us free dessert.
- retsibsi 6y ago
  > When we got there it turned out the glowing reviews were all written by the owner's son. How/why was this revealed to you?
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Apparently they didn't normally get many tourists, and the owner's son was who served us.
_jal 6y ago
I typically search for things "-yelp". They're an annoying and mostly useless. I haven't bothered to look in a long time, but the reviews I've seen are obviously bad. I can find menus on the restaurant's real page. The locality views are worse than, say, Apple maps. There's just no reason to use them. Add in that they harm the livelihood of restaurants owned by people I like, and yeah, they're another crap site that continues to be annoying by trying to get in between me and someone who wants to feed me.
kjs3 6y ago
Completely disagree. Reviews generated by "give a good review and we'll give you a prize" and "I'd hate to see you hit with a bunch of bad reviews because you didn't pay us more money" are completely worthless and are the core of Yelps business model. It's the definition of easy-to-game and untrustworthy.
ddingus 6y ago
Two things: Hardest to game is like lesser evils. Lesser evils remain evil, as hard games remain played. I personally value direct interactions with people I do business with more than ever in my life. Too many middle companies all working some angle to make more than the value they may actually deliver. Well, a few things: Trust in all this kind of service is reaching a low ebb. We keep finding incidents where the behavior is not as represented. Frankly, the money might be too good. And that's fine. Is what it is, people do what they do I am stepping back, reevaluating these kinds of value propositions, and recommending peers do the same.
tfehring 6y ago
> Yelp's review system is among the hardest to game I assume you mean it's among the hardest to game except by paying Yelp to remove negative reviews - that's a pretty important caveat when it comes to trustworthiness. I'm almost entirely de-Googled at this point, but I make an exception specifically to avoid Yelp, which somehow manages to be even worse than Google within its niche.

cosmie 6y ago

As far as I recall, Yelp predates Google having any of those features at all. So in one sense, the "value in Yelp" was in being successful enough to get Google to emulate their feature-set directly within the search results. Which doesn't really speak well to Yelp's continuing value, though.

60secz 6y ago
ding ding ding Value propositions without a moat (durable competitive advantage) will be swallowed by vertical integration of their feature set.

pydry 6y ago

>Either way, Google shows me all of that before I click anything else. All seeded from Yelp. When Yelp complained google shrugged their shoulders and said they could remove them from their search index entirely if they liked. Being the world's no. 1 search destination gave them carte blanche to rip off IP all over. Google was a parasite on Yelp. It's not really surprising that Yelp is now like "fuck it, parasitic business models are the future" and leant in. I'd have done the same. Where parasitic business models thrive the economy itself will suffer. This is a problem that only gets solved by bringing the regulatory hammer down on big tech.

tartoran 6y ago
If users would hit yelp.com and searched for a restaurant and somehow google intercepted that then they'd be a parasite. The way I see it it is a symbiotic somewhat relationship, at least in theory. Yelp is a parasite on businesses though, they attempt to extort money and give no value in exchange, often times unsuccessfully. Here's an older anecdote I posted about yelp [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24790918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24790918
- milesskorpen 6y ago
  While there are definitely anecdotes about this kind of behavior, I have yet to see evidence of systemic or corporate-sponsored effort to do this. I believe this is more a question of possibly poorly-incentivized sales people rather than an intentional strategy on behalf of Yelp. I think this is backed up by a number of lawsuits that haven't gone anywhere. I might be mistaken; if there is a source showing this is really systemic, I'd be very interested. Either way, Google now does many of the same things that Yelp does (reviews, photos, metadata management) - but it doesn't really care about the space, apart from being good enough to beat its competition. While today maybe they're motivated to build better products to compete with Yelp for eyeballs, overtime I think this means the reviews space will stagnate. That's unfortunate. I think this is the core Google problem: They have so much top-of-funnel traffic that they just have to do things "good enough" to crush entire industries of competition. The bar to be sufficiently better enough than "good enough" to build a meaningful competitor to G in any vertical is so high it stops many potential competitors from even trying. The only companies that manage it are ones that have entirely different & massive profitable business models like Apple. Everywhere Google is, the sector stagnates: Search! RSS readers (with a bit of a renaissance since Google Reader died). Email. Calendars. News lists. Increasingly, reviews. Fortunately MSFT pushes them in docs and hopefully Apple continues to do so in Maps and browsers.

gumby 6y ago

We drove up the Oregon coast and my GF used Yelp to find good places for us to stop and eat. I was frankly astonished as, like you, I've found Yelp pretty useless at best.

muststopmyths 6y ago
There was an xkcd about this, but i've found anything below 4.5 stars is mediocre. Above that you find a better probability of a good meal, but it's still just a probability. I find it servers as a good filter for the awful stuff, which is what I really care about when travelling.
- gumby 6y ago
  I have a friend who has run a restaurant for decades with a customer base that is almost entirely regulars. She has encouraged us to leave bad yelp reviews as she has found "yelpers" (different from people who simply consult yelp) to be a pain in the neck...plus wants space to be available for the regulars.

werber 6y ago

Yelp as a social network is actually pretty cool, if you get their elite status for the year you get invited to some pretty fun free events, and I know they've done socially distanced ones since the pandemic, I heard about a murder mystery somewhere. Now that I don't participate in that I don't really use the platform often.