Seeing some of my favorite hole in the wall restaurants get bad reviews and seeing some bland and uninteresting (but good) places get great reviews on Yelp has made me remember Malcolm Gladwell's commentary on people's preferences for three distinct flavors of spaghetti sauce.<p><i>"If you sifted carefully through the data, though, you could find patterns, and Moskowitz learned that most people's preferences fell into one of three broad groups: plain, spicy, and extra-chunky"</i>[1]<p>Which tells me that since Yelp tries to aggregate everyone's taste into one unified rating metric, the tastes from which Yelp ratings are derived are quite likely to be different from those of my own.<p>Thus I really can't trust Yelp ratings, even if there were no 'gaming' or 'extortion' going on in their reviews.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html</a>
A company that is constantly being sued for extorting businesses into subscribing so that those businesses can suppress bad reviews is now calling out businesses who purchase good reviews.<p>Yelp is just a shitty company.
So let me understand this. You have a great small business where your customers are really happy. They decide to give you a positive review on Yelp. Boom, you get calls from Yelp to pay for advertising. You refuse to do so and boom, all your positive reviews are removed. And they add/fake negative reviews OR leave the negative reviews on from customers ?<p>Wow, that is scary if true.
Interesting point from the original nytimes article, that opens up a whole can of worms:<p><i>"What’s to stop someone from going and soliciting fake positive reviews for a competitor’s restaurant, in order for them to be publicly shamed?"</i>
Original article on nytimes.com:
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/technology/yelp-tries-to-halt-deceptive-reviews.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/technology/yelp-tries-to-h...</a>
Yelp needs negative reviews. This is not a site comprised of people with impeccable taste that can rival any restaurant critic or ones's own sense for restaurant choices, based on experience, or word-of-mouth (spoken word). This is yet another way to use the negativity of the web (XYZcompanysucks.com) as a form of blackmail. What a joke. The company that needs to be "outed" is Yelp. If all the accounts are true, these guys are crooks.<p>Anyone who bases all their dining decisions on what people post to sites like Yelp is not going to have as rich an experience as people who mastered the "old ways" (i.e. personal knowledge not acquired online). Why? Because Yelp is _primarily_ for people who want to complain. And _primarily_ for people who have no taste or worldly experience but who want to post things to the web (tech savvy). There are exceptions, but c'mon, let's be real. The web is the ultimate gripe channel.<p>Don't believe me? Try basing all your decisions on Yelp. You will not eat as well the the guy who has a sincere interest in restaurants and understands how to use the "old ways". There's certainly potential for such knowledgeable people to come together at a site and produce something amazing: balanced, informative, _informed_ reviews. The web is an amazing instrument for information excehange. But Yelp is not such a site. Their "business" relies lots of complainers who usually (have tech savvy but) have no taste, and on the restaurateur's fear of a fool with a megaphone.
Yelp's strategy could backfire. Now all a competitor has to do is put ads on Craigslist or Mturk begging for reviews for all of its competitors, knowing Yelp will see them and penalize them.<p>Yelp is going to find themselves boxed in on this. Google has already been down this road with links, and they've taken the stand that "no link can hurt you" because it's too easy for competitors to manipulate that.
PLEASE WRITE A POSITIVE REVIEW FOR YELP.<p>PLEASE WRITE A POSITIVE REVIEW FOR YELP.<p>They are a great company and their recommendations are consistently amazing.<p>Anyone who says that Yelp tried to extort money from them to remove negative reviews is whining and the negative reviews are all accurate.<p>PLEASE WRITE A POSITIVE REVIEW FOR YELP.<p>PLEASE WRITE A POSITIVE REVIEW FOR YELP.