7 ms·

Everybody gets a star: Yelp's effect on restaurants and reviews

36 points by jseliger 2y ago

tayo42 2y ago
somehow tabelog seems pretty legit compared to yelp. maybe there are issues in the japanese bubbles idk about and cant participate in. but on a trip to japan following that site led me to some amazing meals. Some of these problems seems like the cause is because its hard to complain in person. I guess we all get labeled "karens" now for showing any kind of negative feedback in person, so we just suck it up and never go back and maybe leave a negative review. i dont really rely on yelp, there's to many people with poor to average taste. google maps is ok, but same issue with taste. like the complaints people leave on some top tier restaurants are crazy. eater has led me to some great restaurants locally and abroad. when traveling ill look at travel and food shows, or look and see whats busy, get local recommendations. one of my most memorable meals in bali was a rec from a kid working a cash register.
- usui 2y ago
  You're correct on this. Tabelog users center hard around 3 stars which is considered the real average. Users on sites like Yelp and Google Maps skew toward an average of 4.5 or 5 for what is considered a standard experience. This makes it extremely difficult to sort for places that are extraordinary because everyone keeps rating the max amount of stars by default. Same problem on Amazon. It doesn't really help to only filter for 1-3 star reviews for each place and read them all because my time is finite and I don't have all day.
  - ramraj07 2y ago
    I would disagree that the issue in Yelp and Google is that folks skewed to the right in their ratings - my experience has been that if a restaurant has 4.5+, it’s a safe bet. There’s literally no more information you can glean from google. Perhaps the number of votes but even that is not absolute. You have to depend on other sources for any more indication that it’s a good place. My go to source is Reddit. If I go to that city’s subreddit and I can’t find that restaurant mentioned it’s likely not mind blowing.
    - usui 2y ago
      My point is we're different types of users, or our expectations are different. "A safe bet" is not 4.5 stars to me, it's 3 stars because average restaurants should be safe bets. I believe anything 4.5+ should be home runs because I'm putting faith in the score of the restaurant actually having more meaningful information embedded in it. Unfortunately this is not the case because American sites think anything 3.5 and below is automatically shit or something will go horribly wrong. I keep going to 4.4+ restaurants on Google Maps which are actually ~3.2 on Tabelog, but when I go to a 4.2+ on Tabelog I know for sure this is a top-tier restaurant and this has never failed.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - bowsamic 2y ago
    For google maps I honestly have better experiences with 4 out of 5s than ones closer to 5 out of 5. No idea why
    - Jochim 2y ago
      4/5 might mean they're being more adventurous with their food. This won't necessarily suit everybody.
- bruce511 2y ago
  >> I guess we all get labeled "karens" now for showing any kind of negative feedback in person Being a Karen is more about "how" you complain rather than "what" you complain about. (With exceptions, complaining about race etc makes you a Karen too.) But in the context of a restaurant, well mannered complaints are often well received and encouraged. If the food arrives cold, let the server know. Politely. Calmly. The restaurant wants to know, they want to fix the problem. Leaping to your feet, throwing the food on the floor, and making a scene out of proportion to the offense is what turns you into a Karen.
  - ninju 2y ago
    > making a scene out of proportion to the offense is what turns you into a Karen. +1
- buf 2y ago
  I'm also impressed with tabelog. Japanese reviewers seem to understand that 3 is an average meal, and anything higher should be above average. I wonder how tipping culture of the western world impacts star averages. Americans tip on just about everything. Do we inflate our star rating because it's in our mindset to 'be nice'? Whereas Japanese are courteous on the outside, but uphold strict scrutiny on the inside. So when they rate something as 3 stars, it truly was a satisfactory meal, nothing more or less.
  - bleakenthusiasm 2y ago
    It's the same in Europe with the 5-stars-is-normal scale. In my personal experience it's the app that fosters it. Many companies who ask for reviews follow up anything below 5 stars or 10/10 with "how can we improve?" Or some similar questions. This is friction they generate for me as a user if I rate anything below top tier. Personally for me 5 stars or 10/10 would be service that is so good I couldn't even tell you how to do it. I couldn't tell you how to improve to that state unless the business in question is something I'm very familiar with. Still I sometimes find myself handing out 5 stars because otherwise I have to find something to complain about and I just can't think of anything. So that is what has made 5 stars for me go from "mind blowingly outstanding" to "nothing to complain".
    - buf 2y ago
      Agreed. I live in Europe and have the same experience. Europeans tend to use the same review apps as Americans, so it could lead to the same problems (expectations at least). We do the same things with other review systems like Airbnb. I've only been a user of tabelog as a person looking for a meal, not a reviewer. So I'm not sure the experience they have.
    - hgomersall 2y ago
      The problem really is that one single metric is insufficient to grade all restaurants. 5* at a fine dining place at £150/cover is quite different to 5* at gastropub, is quite different at a chain restaurant. You can't expect to grade or interpret all restaurants on the same scale. I just interpret the star rating as overall subjective experience, which is mostly a delta from expectations.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > Some of these problems seems like the cause is because its hard to complain in person. I was recently in an airport in Japan looking to use the meal voucher I'd been given due to a delayed flight. What was available locally was a coffee shop with a very long line (well, not a long line, maybe ten feet, but keep reading), which operated like this: - The person at the head of the line would advance and speak to the cashier, who would take their coffee order. - The cashier would then leave the cash register and busy herself making the order. - There were two other people on staff, who stayed away from the register. I'm not sure what they were supposed to be doing. They didn't take or prepare orders. As you might imagine, this made for a very slow-moving line. I wanted to use my voucher to buy some sodas from a refrigerated display in front of the counter. I had no trouble picking the sodas up myself and learning that the shop accepted meal vouchers. The voucher was exact change for the four sodas I was holding, so I hoped that that would be the end of things. Instead, on learning that I wanted to use the voucher I was asking about, to pay for the sodas I was already holding, the cashier asked me to please line up with everybody else. Since that would have taken at least 40 minutes, I went to see whether a separate wing of the airport might have something. That didn't work out, but I did run into my family (taking a separate flight), and after some socializing I went back to try and get sodas for everybody, since the competing store we'd found didn't take meal vouchers. This time, after several minutes standing in line, I realized that there was no possibility of reaching the head of the line before I had to board my flight. So I hailed one of the idle behind-the-counter staff, specifically avoiding the cashier, and asked about my meal voucher. They were still happy to take it. When I tried to make the purchase, the cashier butted in and asked me to please line up behind everybody else. And I shouted in frustration, "That takes so long!" At which point, they took my voucher and let me walk off with the sodas. The voucher was still exact change. I'm not sure what the solution was supposed to be. I find it hard to believe that you're supposed to handle deeply dysfunctional shop staff by yelling at them. But I have to note that this 'solution' saved me a huge chunk of time - and made it possible for me to make a purchase, and the shop to make a sale, that otherwise couldn't have happened at all - while not costing anyone else anything, except perhaps for wounding the cashier's heartfelt sense of propriety. One lesson seems to be that in some cases, complying with the rules serves no purpose other than to enable actively harmful rules to remain in place.
- teractiveodular 2y ago
  Tabelog has its share of crazies who dish out one-star ratings for the stupidest things ("the cashier's smile didn't seem sincere"), and the top listings are usually paid ads. But at least the ads are marked, and if there's enough reviews the outliers get averaged out.
jader201 2y ago
I guess I’m in the minority, but I can’t remember the last time I used Yelp to find restaurants. It’s been obvious for years (it feels like at least 10, maybe more) that they can’t be trusted. I’m actually surprised they still get enough traffic to be sustainable.
- malfist 2y ago
  I stopped using them because they became unreliable. They turned pay to play into an art. Can't trust them at all
  - theolivenbaum 2y ago
    They turned into an online version of the mob. Pay them and they'll take care that your bad reviews are gone. Don't pay and risk getting a few extra bad reviews
- viccis 2y ago
  Same. Yelp is for finding pics of menus and food. Googling "<name of city> restaurants reddit" is for finding good places to go.
  - w-ll 2y ago
    side not, wtf did google do to their menu photos, its like a canvas u can zoom in or get the any type of img?
  - newzisforsukas 2y ago
    reddit is gamed as well, depending on the subreddit
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    Reddit is better than Yelp (what isn't?), but I haven't found Reddit to be particularly useful for this sort of thing.
- aimor 2y ago
  Yelp is bad (really bad) but so is everyone else. I still use them on road trips alongside Google Maps and Apple Maps simply because none of them show all the restaurants in an area. It's kind of unbelievable how frustrating it is to try to get a complete look at all the restaurants nearby some location. Then again, it's a good trip if Google Maps doesn't ask me to turn left across three lanes onto a private alley and right through a brick wall (true story).
inlined 2y ago
Can we either remove the subtitle that’s not in the article or s/affect/effect?
- defrost 2y ago
  s/Eeverybody/Everybody/ agrees.
fire_lake 2y ago
The only way to find places is word of mouth from people who have no stake in the venue. This is the only signal not being gamed.
crngefest 2y ago
I have never used Yelp before and it has never played any role in my life. Must be an North American thing
- cdrini 2y ago
  Yeah; I believe Yelp is more north America centric. I've heard trip advisor is common in Europe for restaurant reviews.
nunez 2y ago
The reviewer that removed star ratings in their reviews is onto something. The most "real" reviews for restaurants right now is from city subreddits, of all places. Many of these suggestions are from people who live in the city instead of tourists who don't typically eat out (and have unrealistic expectations) or chronic reviewers who must be seen (I was one of them). Adding stars or grades opens the door for gamification and petty tyrants who want to see businesses burn.
gamblor956 2y ago
I know its popular to rag on Yelp in tech circles, but Yelp is still immensely popular amongst everyone else. It's the same reason that Meta is still raking in billions a year despite nobody in the tech community using it.
hoerman 2y ago
I would recommend a recovery firm elitestechhack to anyone that needs this service. I decided to get into crypto investment and I ended up getting my crypto lost to an investor late last year. The guy who was supposed to be managing my account turned out to be a scammer all along. I invested 56,000 USD and at first, my reading and profit margins were looking good. I started getting worried when I couldn’t make withdrawals and realized that I’ve been scammed. I came across some of the testimonials that people said about elitestechhack and how helpful he has been in recovering their funds. I immediately contacted him in his mail at elitestechhack AT GMAIL COM so I can get his assistance. One week into the recovery process the funds were traced and recovered back from the scammer. I can't appreciate him enough for his professionalism.

36 points by jseliger 2y ago

somehow tabelog seems pretty legit compared to yelp. maybe there are issues in the japanese bubbles idk about and cant participate in. but on a trip to japan following that site led me to some amazing meals. Some of these problems seems like the cause is because its hard to complain in person. I guess we all get labeled "karens" now for showing any kind of negative feedback in person, so we just suck it up and never go back and maybe leave a negative review. i dont really rely on yelp, there's to many people with poor to average taste. google maps is ok, but same issue with taste. like the complaints people leave on some top tier restaurants are crazy. eater has led me to some great restaurants locally and abroad. when traveling ill look at travel and food shows, or look and see whats busy, get local recommendations. one of my most memorable meals in bali was a rec from a kid working a cash register.

usui 2y ago
You're correct on this. Tabelog users center hard around 3 stars which is considered the real average. Users on sites like Yelp and Google Maps skew toward an average of 4.5 or 5 for what is considered a standard experience. This makes it extremely difficult to sort for places that are extraordinary because everyone keeps rating the max amount of stars by default. Same problem on Amazon. It doesn't really help to only filter for 1-3 star reviews for each place and read them all because my time is finite and I don't have all day.
- ramraj07 2y ago
  I would disagree that the issue in Yelp and Google is that folks skewed to the right in their ratings - my experience has been that if a restaurant has 4.5+, it’s a safe bet. There’s literally no more information you can glean from google. Perhaps the number of votes but even that is not absolute. You have to depend on other sources for any more indication that it’s a good place. My go to source is Reddit. If I go to that city’s subreddit and I can’t find that restaurant mentioned it’s likely not mind blowing.
  - usui 2y ago
    My point is we're different types of users, or our expectations are different. "A safe bet" is not 4.5 stars to me, it's 3 stars because average restaurants should be safe bets. I believe anything 4.5+ should be home runs because I'm putting faith in the score of the restaurant actually having more meaningful information embedded in it. Unfortunately this is not the case because American sites think anything 3.5 and below is automatically shit or something will go horribly wrong. I keep going to 4.4+ restaurants on Google Maps which are actually ~3.2 on Tabelog, but when I go to a 4.2+ on Tabelog I know for sure this is a top-tier restaurant and this has never failed.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- bowsamic 2y ago
  For google maps I honestly have better experiences with 4 out of 5s than ones closer to 5 out of 5. No idea why
  - Jochim 2y ago
    4/5 might mean they're being more adventurous with their food. This won't necessarily suit everybody.
bruce511 2y ago
>> I guess we all get labeled "karens" now for showing any kind of negative feedback in person Being a Karen is more about "how" you complain rather than "what" you complain about. (With exceptions, complaining about race etc makes you a Karen too.) But in the context of a restaurant, well mannered complaints are often well received and encouraged. If the food arrives cold, let the server know. Politely. Calmly. The restaurant wants to know, they want to fix the problem. Leaping to your feet, throwing the food on the floor, and making a scene out of proportion to the offense is what turns you into a Karen.
- ninju 2y ago
  > making a scene out of proportion to the offense is what turns you into a Karen. +1
buf 2y ago
I'm also impressed with tabelog. Japanese reviewers seem to understand that 3 is an average meal, and anything higher should be above average. I wonder how tipping culture of the western world impacts star averages. Americans tip on just about everything. Do we inflate our star rating because it's in our mindset to 'be nice'? Whereas Japanese are courteous on the outside, but uphold strict scrutiny on the inside. So when they rate something as 3 stars, it truly was a satisfactory meal, nothing more or less.
- bleakenthusiasm 2y ago
  It's the same in Europe with the 5-stars-is-normal scale. In my personal experience it's the app that fosters it. Many companies who ask for reviews follow up anything below 5 stars or 10/10 with "how can we improve?" Or some similar questions. This is friction they generate for me as a user if I rate anything below top tier. Personally for me 5 stars or 10/10 would be service that is so good I couldn't even tell you how to do it. I couldn't tell you how to improve to that state unless the business in question is something I'm very familiar with. Still I sometimes find myself handing out 5 stars because otherwise I have to find something to complain about and I just can't think of anything. So that is what has made 5 stars for me go from "mind blowingly outstanding" to "nothing to complain".
  - buf 2y ago
    Agreed. I live in Europe and have the same experience. Europeans tend to use the same review apps as Americans, so it could lead to the same problems (expectations at least). We do the same things with other review systems like Airbnb. I've only been a user of tabelog as a person looking for a meal, not a reviewer. So I'm not sure the experience they have.
  - hgomersall 2y ago
    The problem really is that one single metric is insufficient to grade all restaurants. 5* at a fine dining place at £150/cover is quite different to 5* at gastropub, is quite different at a chain restaurant. You can't expect to grade or interpret all restaurants on the same scale. I just interpret the star rating as overall subjective experience, which is mostly a delta from expectations.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> Some of these problems seems like the cause is because its hard to complain in person. I was recently in an airport in Japan looking to use the meal voucher I'd been given due to a delayed flight. What was available locally was a coffee shop with a very long line (well, not a long line, maybe ten feet, but keep reading), which operated like this: - The person at the head of the line would advance and speak to the cashier, who would take their coffee order. - The cashier would then leave the cash register and busy herself making the order. - There were two other people on staff, who stayed away from the register. I'm not sure what they were supposed to be doing. They didn't take or prepare orders. As you might imagine, this made for a very slow-moving line. I wanted to use my voucher to buy some sodas from a refrigerated display in front of the counter. I had no trouble picking the sodas up myself and learning that the shop accepted meal vouchers. The voucher was exact change for the four sodas I was holding, so I hoped that that would be the end of things. Instead, on learning that I wanted to use the voucher I was asking about, to pay for the sodas I was already holding, the cashier asked me to please line up with everybody else. Since that would have taken at least 40 minutes, I went to see whether a separate wing of the airport might have something. That didn't work out, but I did run into my family (taking a separate flight), and after some socializing I went back to try and get sodas for everybody, since the competing store we'd found didn't take meal vouchers. This time, after several minutes standing in line, I realized that there was no possibility of reaching the head of the line before I had to board my flight. So I hailed one of the idle behind-the-counter staff, specifically avoiding the cashier, and asked about my meal voucher. They were still happy to take it. When I tried to make the purchase, the cashier butted in and asked me to please line up behind everybody else. And I shouted in frustration, "That takes so long!" At which point, they took my voucher and let me walk off with the sodas. The voucher was still exact change. I'm not sure what the solution was supposed to be. I find it hard to believe that you're supposed to handle deeply dysfunctional shop staff by yelling at them. But I have to note that this 'solution' saved me a huge chunk of time - and made it possible for me to make a purchase, and the shop to make a sale, that otherwise couldn't have happened at all - while not costing anyone else anything, except perhaps for wounding the cashier's heartfelt sense of propriety. One lesson seems to be that in some cases, complying with the rules serves no purpose other than to enable actively harmful rules to remain in place.
teractiveodular 2y ago
Tabelog has its share of crazies who dish out one-star ratings for the stupidest things ("the cashier's smile didn't seem sincere"), and the top listings are usually paid ads. But at least the ads are marked, and if there's enough reviews the outliers get averaged out.

jader201 2y ago

I guess I’m in the minority, but I can’t remember the last time I used Yelp to find restaurants. It’s been obvious for years (it feels like at least 10, maybe more) that they can’t be trusted. I’m actually surprised they still get enough traffic to be sustainable.

malfist 2y ago
I stopped using them because they became unreliable. They turned pay to play into an art. Can't trust them at all
- theolivenbaum 2y ago
  They turned into an online version of the mob. Pay them and they'll take care that your bad reviews are gone. Don't pay and risk getting a few extra bad reviews
viccis 2y ago
Same. Yelp is for finding pics of menus and food. Googling "<name of city> restaurants reddit" is for finding good places to go.
- w-ll 2y ago
  side not, wtf did google do to their menu photos, its like a canvas u can zoom in or get the any type of img?
- newzisforsukas 2y ago
  reddit is gamed as well, depending on the subreddit
- JohnFen 2y ago
  Reddit is better than Yelp (what isn't?), but I haven't found Reddit to be particularly useful for this sort of thing.
aimor 2y ago
Yelp is bad (really bad) but so is everyone else. I still use them on road trips alongside Google Maps and Apple Maps simply because none of them show all the restaurants in an area. It's kind of unbelievable how frustrating it is to try to get a complete look at all the restaurants nearby some location. Then again, it's a good trip if Google Maps doesn't ask me to turn left across three lanes onto a private alley and right through a brick wall (true story).

inlined 2y ago

Can we either remove the subtitle that’s not in the article or s/affect/effect?

defrost 2y ago
s/Eeverybody/Everybody/ agrees.

fire_lake 2y ago

The only way to find places is word of mouth from people who have no stake in the venue. This is the only signal not being gamed.

crngefest 2y ago

I have never used Yelp before and it has never played any role in my life. Must be an North American thing

cdrini 2y ago
Yeah; I believe Yelp is more north America centric. I've heard trip advisor is common in Europe for restaurant reviews.

nunez 2y ago

The reviewer that removed star ratings in their reviews is onto something. The most "real" reviews for restaurants right now is from city subreddits, of all places. Many of these suggestions are from people who live in the city instead of tourists who don't typically eat out (and have unrealistic expectations) or chronic reviewers who must be seen (I was one of them). Adding stars or grades opens the door for gamification and petty tyrants who want to see businesses burn.

gamblor956 2y ago

I know its popular to rag on Yelp in tech circles, but Yelp is still immensely popular amongst everyone else. It's the same reason that Meta is still raking in billions a year despite nobody in the tech community using it.

hoerman 2y ago

I would recommend a recovery firm elitestechhack to anyone that needs this service. I decided to get into crypto investment and I ended up getting my crypto lost to an investor late last year. The guy who was supposed to be managing my account turned out to be a scammer all along. I invested 56,000 USD and at first, my reading and profit margins were looking good. I started getting worried when I couldn’t make withdrawals and realized that I’ve been scammed. I came across some of the testimonials that people said about elitestechhack and how helpful he has been in recovering their funds. I immediately contacted him in his mail at elitestechhack AT GMAIL COM so I can get his assistance. One week into the recovery process the funds were traced and recovered back from the scammer. I can't appreciate him enough for his professionalism.