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> Actually, Yelp doesn't remove legitimate reviews. They say that, but they decide which reviews are legitimate, and they're more likely to decide that positi
by nix0n 6y ago
> Actually, Yelp doesn't remove legitimate reviews.
They say that, but they decide which reviews are legitimate, and they're more likely to decide that positive reviews are legitimate, if a business is paying them.
On the other hand, my experience pre-pandemic was that Yelp had the only reliable database of local USA businesses' hours of operation (there is probably now no way to know other than phone calls).
- londons_explore 6y agoGoogle rings small businesses up every week asking what their hours of operation are... In fact, I know a business who complained he got more calls from Google trying to update their maps database than he got from real customers!
- oli-g 6y ago> Google rings small businesses up every week asking what their hours of operation are... So THAT'S what all the humans at Google are up to, while their bots are busy locking legitimate user and developer accounts!
- sandworm101 6y ago>>So THAT'S what all the humans at Google are up to How cute. You think that these are humans calling from google. No biological human has represented google by phone since the 90s. It is all androids and chatbots.
- tveita 6y agoSounds like exactly what they trained Duplex for, so I doubt that would be a human calling. https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-natural-conversation.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-natur...
- softawre 6y agoWow that is incredible.
- koheripbal 6y agoGoogle emails that - they don't call.
- ficklepickle 6y agoThat's nice they call. I'm aware of a variety of business listings they helpfully automatically update to be wrong. The only way to know is to check back often.
- istjohn 6y ago> They say that, but they decide which reviews are legitimate, and they're more likely to decide that positive reviews are legitimate, if a business is paying them. Do you have any evidence of that? I have several unsolicited 5-star reviews for my business that have been flagged as "not currently recommended." Yet despite fighting off their sales reps for years my business is the best rated business in my city in my category. Based on my experience, the Yelp hate is just sour grapes from businesses that are reluctant to bend over backwards to make every customer happy.
- dexterdog 6y ago> sour grapes from businesses that are reluctant to bend over backwards to make every customer happy. Not too many business that do that stay in business for long. "The customer is always right" if not taken with many grains of salt will bury you when you get just the right customer (who will directly reference the mantra).
- istjohn 6y agoIt's certainly a challenging way to run a business. I don't recommend anyone blindly pursue that strategy. One key to making it work is to invest in long term relationships with your clients. A transaction with a client you have an established relationship with is much less risky than a transaction with a stranger.
- totalZero 6y agoThis has been discussed previously on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149078 Not sure if the policies have changed since then, but I am inclined to believe him.
- dilyevsky 6y agoJust bc this one person didn’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. They’ve definitely taken my negative reviews down or made them invisible so I stopped using them