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The problem with Restaurant owners hating yelp, is they are yelp's customers. They need to figure out a better way to monetize their business, because selling

The problem with Restaurant owners hating yelp, is they are yelp's customers. They need to figure out a better way to monetize their business, because selling ads to the people who loathe them probably won't work for long. I have a local business, and while we have great overall reviews, we have had MANY reviews filtered out by yelp's super-secret algorithms that are from actual customers. We also have a bad review that is by someone that has never visited our business, but is not filtered - despite our contacting yelp several times. All this is fine, overall we have great reviews - the problem is yelp has been contacting us weekly to run ads with them. Why would we run ads to bring people to a page that doesn't represent our business accurately? Furthermore, the cost per impression/clicks is ridiculously high compared with the industry standards. That being said, from the consumer perspective, I appreciate and frequently use yelp. ...I think they provide a valuable service, they just need to implement a better monetization method before I would consider investing.

sedev 15y ago
That right there: bingo - that's why I think that Yelp is coming out on top of this. They're delivering value to the website visitors/app users. Not that either company is a paragon of virtue, but compare Yelp to Apple and yourself to an iOS app developer and I suspect you'll have an accurate picture of who's where on the totem pole (cf Gruber: http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/nack_control http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/nack_control ). If Yelp were dedicated to making its advertisers happy, it would quickly become useless for its users.
- valuegram 15y ago
  I'm not saying they don't provide a valuable service. I'm saying they won't be able to exist without making a profit, and angering the people you're trying to get to write checks is a poor way to go about growing your business. There definitely has to be separation between the advertising and reviews - because validity of reviews is top priority, but their system, from my first hand experience, and discussions with many other businesses owners is skewed too far in one direction at the present time. They are bleeding money, and they're forecast to do so for the near future. Bottom line is they need to figure out a better way to make money off what they do, or improve their value proposition for those customers who are generating the revenue.

sedev 15y ago

That right there: bingo - that's why I think that Yelp is coming out on top of this. They're delivering value to the website visitors/app users. Not that either company is a paragon of virtue, but compare Yelp to Apple and yourself to an iOS app developer and I suspect you'll have an accurate picture of who's where on the totem pole (cf Gruber: http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/nack_control http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/nack_control ). If Yelp were dedicated to making its advertisers happy, it would quickly become useless for its users.

valuegram 15y ago
I'm not saying they don't provide a valuable service. I'm saying they won't be able to exist without making a profit, and angering the people you're trying to get to write checks is a poor way to go about growing your business. There definitely has to be separation between the advertising and reviews - because validity of reviews is top priority, but their system, from my first hand experience, and discussions with many other businesses owners is skewed too far in one direction at the present time. They are bleeding money, and they're forecast to do so for the near future. Bottom line is they need to figure out a better way to make money off what they do, or improve their value proposition for those customers who are generating the revenue.