4 ms·

I keep seeing articles like this. I read the article, then I find the company on Yelp and read through the reviews. Every single time it's been very clear tha

by crikli 14y ago

I keep seeing articles like this. I read the article, then I find the company on Yelp and read through the reviews. Every single time it's been very clear that Yelp is telling these businesses that they have a problem. But rather than acting on this extraordinarily valuable feedback the owners/managers react by blaming Yelp for the bad reviews or accusing Yelp of hiding the good reviews. This behavior frequently exposes the characteristics about which customers are complaining: there's a problem, the owners have been told about it, and they're killing the messenger. EDIT: I have no connection to Yelp whatsoever. I'm communicating the scope of my experience and the conclusions I've drawn. These conclusions may be grossly flawed. It wouldn't be the first time today. :)

yoda_sl 14y ago
Clearly you have not been running a small business. Some reviews are posted from time to time by people that are not even customers or stopped by the business; for some dumb reason they post a 1 star review.. And that review usually stick and doesn't get filtered out...but other reviews from true customers posting 4 to 5 stars reviews disappear usually in less than 24 hours after they were posted. What kind of explanation do you have?
- valuegram 14y ago
  I can vouch that this exact scenario has happened to one of my small businesses. Multiple reviews from actual customers are filtered out, but a negative review from someone who has never interacted with our organization is displayed normally.
  - kip_ 14y ago
    Were your actual customers regular users of Yelp who have reviewed other businesses actively? We can pick apart Yelp's model and likely should, but it does appear to discount "drive-by" Yelpers who only sign up to give a good review to a single business.
    - yoda_sl 14y ago
      Yes, in my experience I have seen reviews from regular Yelp folks (aka posting maybe a review once or twice a month) see their 5 stars review vanish in less than 48 hours... While at the same time a person posting a 1 star review without any other review posted prior and even after stick forever. This is a classic 'Yelp' business practice and many business owners you can talk to will have many of such reports.
    - valuegram 14y ago
      No, I believe most of the reviews were from first (or second) time yelpers. I can understand where they're coming from on a macro scale, but at the individual business level, it can be irritating.
- crikli 14y ago
  Regarding your ad hominem statement, I've been running small businesses since my first in 1996. I've not witnessed this scenario you present and I have no relationship to Yelp that might give me some greater insight than anyone else. I have no idea why this might happen; I'm limited to communicating based on my own observations.
- timtadh 14y ago
  Spam filtering is hard? You are a programmer, imagine trying to find a way to objectively and fairly filter reviews. Unlike with emails you don't know whose labels to trust. There are good business owners who will only report spam reviews as spam. Then there are bad business owners who will report negative ham as spam to try and boost their reviews. Finally, there are bad business owners who will use shell accounts to submit positive spam and then mark it as ham. In general the labels from business owners are not trust worthy which gets them into these situations. Thus they try and create other ways of identifying spam: like user engagement on the site. However, engagement doesn't always work as a metric as spammers can cultivate spam accounts by posting lots of "legitimate" reviews on unrelated businesses and then sell reviews from the accounts to attack (boost) specific businesses. Finally, users who have a tremendous experience at a business and go on Yelp to give them 5 star reviews may have no history with yelp except as a passive browser. The engagement metric will weight poorly for their review. So what is to be done? I don't have a good answer for that. This seems more like a human problem than a technical one. The best course seems to be: act ethically, serve your customers with compassion, write responses offering assistance to negative reviewers, and if you feel Yelp (and similar review system are a bad idea) put your advertising dollars elsewhere.
  - yoda_sl 14y ago
    They are various ways to solve the problem but again it is not in Yelp's interest. Yelp's business is about selling Ad and they don't really care about the underlying issues. One simple thing that could be added to their system was a way to verify that a reviewer did really have a business relation for posting a reviews. They are various ways for solving that. Even a simpler approach: why hide those reviews. Keep them here and introduce a way for other viewer to rate the reviews aka 'X people found that review helpful'. That way all reviews are visible and the random person reading the Yelp page can decide for themselves. Unfortunately Yelp and their filtering system have a different approach and instead usually end up filtering real customer reviews and leave the more 'spammy' visible. Then after a few weeks like that, you will receive a phone call from Yelp sales folks telling you that if you purchase 'ads' then your potential 5 stars review (if any are left visible) will be pushed to the top. Sorry but for me I consider that a scam!
- dcotter 14y ago
  If their ranking algorithm is pushing reviews with high page-views to the top, then perhaps it's as simple as negative reviews getting more attention, either because negativity draws people in or because people are more interested in trying not to have an awful experience than in having a great one. On the other hand, if the algorithm is optimized around other values (credibility, for instance), then it wouldn't make sense for reviewers with no history to get their reviews pushed to the top. Hard to say, given that it's a trade secret.
periferral 14y ago
You presumably work at Yelp? This isn't a case of killing the messenger. This is a case where the company wants business owners to conform to its way to dealing with spam rather than have its engineers come up with a better solution to the problem Read this very well written article on the problem and possible solution and maybe you'll have a better idea of the problem at hand. http://justinvincent.com/page/1874/yelp-you-cost-me-2000-by-suppressing-genuine-reviews-heres-how-you-fix-it http://justinvincent.com/page/1874/yelp-you-cost-me-2000-by-...
- crikli 14y ago
  No, I don't work at Yelp. I don't think I even know anyone who knows anyone who works there or works for their VC investors. And I'm not saying that a problem doesn't exists: I'm saying that *within the scope of my experience( the complaints about Yelp have been more about owners/managers not wanting to deal with something that sucks about their business.

by crikli 14y ago

yoda_sl 14y ago

Clearly you have not been running a small business. Some reviews are posted from time to time by people that are not even customers or stopped by the business; for some dumb reason they post a 1 star review.. And that review usually stick and doesn't get filtered out...but other reviews from true customers posting 4 to 5 stars reviews disappear usually in less than 24 hours after they were posted. What kind of explanation do you have?

valuegram 14y ago
I can vouch that this exact scenario has happened to one of my small businesses. Multiple reviews from actual customers are filtered out, but a negative review from someone who has never interacted with our organization is displayed normally.
- kip_ 14y ago
  Were your actual customers regular users of Yelp who have reviewed other businesses actively? We can pick apart Yelp's model and likely should, but it does appear to discount "drive-by" Yelpers who only sign up to give a good review to a single business.
  - yoda_sl 14y ago
    Yes, in my experience I have seen reviews from regular Yelp folks (aka posting maybe a review once or twice a month) see their 5 stars review vanish in less than 48 hours... While at the same time a person posting a 1 star review without any other review posted prior and even after stick forever. This is a classic 'Yelp' business practice and many business owners you can talk to will have many of such reports.
  - valuegram 14y ago
    No, I believe most of the reviews were from first (or second) time yelpers. I can understand where they're coming from on a macro scale, but at the individual business level, it can be irritating.
crikli 14y ago
Regarding your ad hominem statement, I've been running small businesses since my first in 1996. I've not witnessed this scenario you present and I have no relationship to Yelp that might give me some greater insight than anyone else. I have no idea why this might happen; I'm limited to communicating based on my own observations.
timtadh 14y ago
Spam filtering is hard? You are a programmer, imagine trying to find a way to objectively and fairly filter reviews. Unlike with emails you don't know whose labels to trust. There are good business owners who will only report spam reviews as spam. Then there are bad business owners who will report negative ham as spam to try and boost their reviews. Finally, there are bad business owners who will use shell accounts to submit positive spam and then mark it as ham. In general the labels from business owners are not trust worthy which gets them into these situations. Thus they try and create other ways of identifying spam: like user engagement on the site. However, engagement doesn't always work as a metric as spammers can cultivate spam accounts by posting lots of "legitimate" reviews on unrelated businesses and then sell reviews from the accounts to attack (boost) specific businesses. Finally, users who have a tremendous experience at a business and go on Yelp to give them 5 star reviews may have no history with yelp except as a passive browser. The engagement metric will weight poorly for their review. So what is to be done? I don't have a good answer for that. This seems more like a human problem than a technical one. The best course seems to be: act ethically, serve your customers with compassion, write responses offering assistance to negative reviewers, and if you feel Yelp (and similar review system are a bad idea) put your advertising dollars elsewhere.
- yoda_sl 14y ago
  They are various ways to solve the problem but again it is not in Yelp's interest. Yelp's business is about selling Ad and they don't really care about the underlying issues. One simple thing that could be added to their system was a way to verify that a reviewer did really have a business relation for posting a reviews. They are various ways for solving that. Even a simpler approach: why hide those reviews. Keep them here and introduce a way for other viewer to rate the reviews aka 'X people found that review helpful'. That way all reviews are visible and the random person reading the Yelp page can decide for themselves. Unfortunately Yelp and their filtering system have a different approach and instead usually end up filtering real customer reviews and leave the more 'spammy' visible. Then after a few weeks like that, you will receive a phone call from Yelp sales folks telling you that if you purchase 'ads' then your potential 5 stars review (if any are left visible) will be pushed to the top. Sorry but for me I consider that a scam!
dcotter 14y ago
If their ranking algorithm is pushing reviews with high page-views to the top, then perhaps it's as simple as negative reviews getting more attention, either because negativity draws people in or because people are more interested in trying not to have an awful experience than in having a great one. On the other hand, if the algorithm is optimized around other values (credibility, for instance), then it wouldn't make sense for reviewers with no history to get their reviews pushed to the top. Hard to say, given that it's a trade secret.

periferral 14y ago

You presumably work at Yelp? This isn't a case of killing the messenger. This is a case where the company wants business owners to conform to its way to dealing with spam rather than have its engineers come up with a better solution to the problem Read this very well written article on the problem and possible solution and maybe you'll have a better idea of the problem at hand. http://justinvincent.com/page/1874/yelp-you-cost-me-2000-by-suppressing-genuine-reviews-heres-how-you-fix-it http://justinvincent.com/page/1874/yelp-you-cost-me-2000-by-...

crikli 14y ago
No, I don't work at Yelp. I don't think I even know anyone who knows anyone who works there or works for their VC investors. And I'm not saying that a problem doesn't exists: I'm saying that *within the scope of my experience( the complaints about Yelp have been more about owners/managers not wanting to deal with something that sucks about their business.