3 ms·

Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.

heyheyhey 3y ago
No review site depending on users is perfect but I've found it's the best option for a quick "what's a good restaurant for x cuisine" in America. I've found Google Maps or Tripadvisor to be too hit-or-miss especially when traveling abroad where Yelp isn't as prevalent.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
At least in New York, it is. It’s less prone to the cost noise that infects the other rating services—where a 3 star could be due to bad food or someone being surprised by New York prices. (There is also a scourge of paid top ten articles that makes a simple search useless.)
angry_moose 3y ago
The Apple Maps integration seems to be most of what's propping them up these days. It's especially infuriating because you can only see about 2 reviews before you're prompted to download the Yelp app for "full access". I thought Apple was supposed to be working on their own review system or switching to a different service, but I haven't seen anything come of that.
- schnable 3y ago
  Sometimes they show TripAdvisor reviews instead of Yelp.
  - angry_moose 3y ago
    Huh. Wonder if it's a regional thing? I don't recall ever seeing that and I just checked about 25 places in my city and none of them had TripAdvisor.
    - schnable 3y ago
      Yes, I think so.
    - jeromegv 3y ago
      It's definitely regional. Here in Toronto, checking for few addresses around me I see a mix of -Apple Maps native reviews -Yelp -OpenTable And I'm definitely seeing a lot less Yelp than I used to. At least in Toronto, yelp is pretty much dead anyway. People mostly use Google Maps.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Apple Maps is the only place left where I see it, and I wish I wouldn't. It seems Apple Maps and Pay could result in good reviews, because they'd all be tied together.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  Why would you use Apple maps though? I havent used since I missed a turn. Why not use google maps?
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    I use Apple Maps and do have some complaints, but I like when it tells you which lane(s) to be in as you approach freeway interchanges. Sometimes it's obvious where you're supposed to be (far right), but sometimes when consecutive exits are close together, you actually need to be 1 or 2 lanes over.
    - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
      Google maps does that too? "Use the left two lines to take exit 12 towards Buemont Street" "Use the second from the right lane to continue on Sepulvada Drive"
      - gnicholas 3y ago
        On my iPhone, I either use Apple Maps or Waze. I'm pretty sure Waze doesn't offer this, though I haven't updated the app in a while.
gnicholas 3y ago
I find that if a restaurant has 4.5 or 5 stars (assuming a decent number of reviews), typically it is very good. However, plenty of the places I eat/enjoy have 3 stars (none have 2 or 1). So I use it as a rough filter for that purpose. It's also useful for seeing if particular menu items are good, since fake reviews don't typically get into that much detail (or at least there are other real reviews that would outweigh them in search results for that item). FWIW, I live in silicon valley.
- Ichthypresbyter 3y ago
  There's the ongoing meme that the best Chinese restaurants have 3.5 stars on Yelp- from the combination of 5 star reviews from people who love the food, and 1 star from people who didn't like the brusque service or didn't get the American Chinese food they were expecting.
  - RajT88 3y ago
    There's a Malaysian/Chinese resto near me like that. It's an absolute sleeper of a place to have eat. Barely visible from the road, and connected to a supermarket (and they wheel in and out shopping carts from next door as they run out of ingredients during the day). My Japanese roommate at the time was turned onto it by his Korean boss, and I took my Chinese/Filipino/Indian/American coworkers there and then they started going there all the time. The 1 star reviews complain about the organ meat, which there were totally grossed out by. "Beef tendon pho" is super legit, and what you get in Asia. You're in the wrong place if you expect American-Chinese fare.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      It's super weird to me that people will leave a bad review because there were things on the menu they didn't like. I like some types of organ meat, and dislike others, but it would never even enter my mind to be like "2 stars because 40% of the menu is stuff I don't like". People are weird.
      - 3y ago
jeffcouturier 3y ago
I was going to ask the same. I thought this was very common knowledge for a rather long time.
schnable 3y ago
It surprisingly has up to date content where I live, and generally anything 4+ stars is good and below 3 stars is not too good. The individual reviews are usually not useful, but looking at patterns and trends of recent reviews can be useful if you know how to filter out the obvious BS and one-off overreactions. The problem is a real lack of reviews for smaller places, especially outside the downtown area. Google Maps has more content there.
- 78124781 3y ago
  I agree, though the other issue for smaller places is that they are more susceptible to review-bombing by one disgruntled party (do we really need 6 reviews from 6 different people about how the same table had to wait an hour to get the check one time?) or "5 stars for 30% off" incentives (which I have unfortunately seen a number of, especially at small businesses trying to distinguish themselves). Google Maps I still don't understand where they get a lot of reviews from in the first place. While some look like normal reviews, there's a lot that have no comments at all or comments completely unrelated to the place ostensibly being reviewed (or just cryptic things like "not good" or "good"). It's not a bad comparison to use alongside Yelp, but it's definitely led to more clunkers, especially for places with n<20 reviews.
randomdata 3y ago
I forgot it exists. Looking at a bunch of local restaurants, there has been essentially no activity since 2017, and Google and Facebook have orders of magnitude more reviews in every case.
RajT88 3y ago
I don't use Yelp to determine if a place is good or not. I use yelp for personal entertainment, because the outraged, bombastic reviews are often hilarious in how just beneath the surface are classist, racist, xenophobic and jingoistic undertones. These are among the few reviews I believe 100% are actually real people!
janalsncm 3y ago
I personally prefer more objective signals like the menu, pictures of the food, and pictures of the interior. Maybe I’m a snob but foods that people describe as “delicious” and “amazing” to me look greasy, salty, or altogether not much better than I could cook myself with basic cooking skills.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  With the average palette you just need to sprinkle the right amount of salt and sugar to get "yummy" reviews. These people can't cook, barely know where food comes from, and have no way to judge food other than it being sweet (good) or not sweet (bad).

heyheyhey 3y ago

No review site depending on users is perfect but I've found it's the best option for a quick "what's a good restaurant for x cuisine" in America. I've found Google Maps or Tripadvisor to be too hit-or-miss especially when traveling abroad where Yelp isn't as prevalent.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

At least in New York, it is. It’s less prone to the cost noise that infects the other rating services—where a 3 star could be due to bad food or someone being surprised by New York prices. (There is also a scourge of paid top ten articles that makes a simple search useless.)

angry_moose 3y ago

The Apple Maps integration seems to be most of what's propping them up these days. It's especially infuriating because you can only see about 2 reviews before you're prompted to download the Yelp app for "full access". I thought Apple was supposed to be working on their own review system or switching to a different service, but I haven't seen anything come of that.

schnable 3y ago
Sometimes they show TripAdvisor reviews instead of Yelp.
- angry_moose 3y ago
  Huh. Wonder if it's a regional thing? I don't recall ever seeing that and I just checked about 25 places in my city and none of them had TripAdvisor.
  - schnable 3y ago
    Yes, I think so.
  - jeromegv 3y ago
    It's definitely regional. Here in Toronto, checking for few addresses around me I see a mix of -Apple Maps native reviews -Yelp -OpenTable And I'm definitely seeing a lot less Yelp than I used to. At least in Toronto, yelp is pretty much dead anyway. People mostly use Google Maps.
bombcar 3y ago
Apple Maps is the only place left where I see it, and I wish I wouldn't. It seems Apple Maps and Pay could result in good reviews, because they'd all be tied together.
hospitalJail 3y ago
Why would you use Apple maps though? I havent used since I missed a turn. Why not use google maps?
- gnicholas 3y ago
  I use Apple Maps and do have some complaints, but I like when it tells you which lane(s) to be in as you approach freeway interchanges. Sometimes it's obvious where you're supposed to be (far right), but sometimes when consecutive exits are close together, you actually need to be 1 or 2 lanes over.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    Google maps does that too? "Use the left two lines to take exit 12 towards Buemont Street" "Use the second from the right lane to continue on Sepulvada Drive"
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      On my iPhone, I either use Apple Maps or Waze. I'm pretty sure Waze doesn't offer this, though I haven't updated the app in a while.

gnicholas 3y ago

I find that if a restaurant has 4.5 or 5 stars (assuming a decent number of reviews), typically it is very good. However, plenty of the places I eat/enjoy have 3 stars (none have 2 or 1). So I use it as a rough filter for that purpose. It's also useful for seeing if particular menu items are good, since fake reviews don't typically get into that much detail (or at least there are other real reviews that would outweigh them in search results for that item). FWIW, I live in silicon valley.

Ichthypresbyter 3y ago
There's the ongoing meme that the best Chinese restaurants have 3.5 stars on Yelp- from the combination of 5 star reviews from people who love the food, and 1 star from people who didn't like the brusque service or didn't get the American Chinese food they were expecting.
- RajT88 3y ago
  There's a Malaysian/Chinese resto near me like that. It's an absolute sleeper of a place to have eat. Barely visible from the road, and connected to a supermarket (and they wheel in and out shopping carts from next door as they run out of ingredients during the day). My Japanese roommate at the time was turned onto it by his Korean boss, and I took my Chinese/Filipino/Indian/American coworkers there and then they started going there all the time. The 1 star reviews complain about the organ meat, which there were totally grossed out by. "Beef tendon pho" is super legit, and what you get in Asia. You're in the wrong place if you expect American-Chinese fare.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    It's super weird to me that people will leave a bad review because there were things on the menu they didn't like. I like some types of organ meat, and dislike others, but it would never even enter my mind to be like "2 stars because 40% of the menu is stuff I don't like". People are weird.
    - 3y ago

jeffcouturier 3y ago

I was going to ask the same. I thought this was very common knowledge for a rather long time.

schnable 3y ago

It surprisingly has up to date content where I live, and generally anything 4+ stars is good and below 3 stars is not too good. The individual reviews are usually not useful, but looking at patterns and trends of recent reviews can be useful if you know how to filter out the obvious BS and one-off overreactions. The problem is a real lack of reviews for smaller places, especially outside the downtown area. Google Maps has more content there.

78124781 3y ago
I agree, though the other issue for smaller places is that they are more susceptible to review-bombing by one disgruntled party (do we really need 6 reviews from 6 different people about how the same table had to wait an hour to get the check one time?) or "5 stars for 30% off" incentives (which I have unfortunately seen a number of, especially at small businesses trying to distinguish themselves). Google Maps I still don't understand where they get a lot of reviews from in the first place. While some look like normal reviews, there's a lot that have no comments at all or comments completely unrelated to the place ostensibly being reviewed (or just cryptic things like "not good" or "good"). It's not a bad comparison to use alongside Yelp, but it's definitely led to more clunkers, especially for places with n<20 reviews.

randomdata 3y ago

I forgot it exists. Looking at a bunch of local restaurants, there has been essentially no activity since 2017, and Google and Facebook have orders of magnitude more reviews in every case.

RajT88 3y ago

I don't use Yelp to determine if a place is good or not. I use yelp for personal entertainment, because the outraged, bombastic reviews are often hilarious in how just beneath the surface are classist, racist, xenophobic and jingoistic undertones. These are among the few reviews I believe 100% are actually real people!

janalsncm 3y ago

I personally prefer more objective signals like the menu, pictures of the food, and pictures of the interior. Maybe I’m a snob but foods that people describe as “delicious” and “amazing” to me look greasy, salty, or altogether not much better than I could cook myself with basic cooking skills.

datavirtue 3y ago
With the average palette you just need to sprinkle the right amount of salt and sugar to get "yummy" reviews. These people can't cook, barely know where food comes from, and have no way to judge food other than it being sweet (good) or not sweet (bad).