
SF Restaurant Sign Calls Yelp ‘Bully,’ Integrity of Reviews Questioned - cobrausn
http://foodbeast.com/content/2013/04/22/sf-restaurant-calls-out-yelp-for/
======
timr
The problem with these claims is that they all confuse ignorance with malice.
These rumors are persistent because they make a sexy story, but they aren't
true -- Yelp doesn't manipulate reviews based on advertising.

Citing what a Yelp sales rep is alleged to have said to a business owner
_sounds_ like compelling evidence, but it's really just garbage: Yelp sales
reps have no ability to influence anything, anywhere, no matter what they say
or don't say. They're part of a huge team doing a low-pay cold-calling gig --
they make a sale, ring a little bell, and hand in a piece of paper documenting
the sale for the bean-counters. That's the extent of their influence with
anyone.

What's really going on here is some combination of business owners mis-
interpreting what a sales rep says, businesses trying to transparently game
the system (and whining when it doesn't work -- business owners are _amazingly
stupid_ about this!), sales reps saying dumb things (I'm sure this happens
occasionally, despite best efforts to control what they say), and the somewhat
random nature of an automated review filter. There are tens of thousands of
businesses being called by Yelp sales reps every day. Even if 1% of those
businesses have reviews _randomly_ filtered on the same day, that's a lot of
opportunities for people to see patterns where they don't exist.

~~~
robrenaud
So sales reps say that your good reviews will stay and your bad reviews will
disappear, but what they say is untrue?

I don't know about the Thai restaurant owner, but I certainly trust JWZ.
<http://www.jwz.org/blog/2009/02/yelp-shakedown/>

~~~
timr
OK, you trust JWZ, but did you read what he wrote, or did you just glance at
it and make a snap judgment because you think he's cool? Here's what he says
in easy-to-consume bullet points for the TL;DR set:

1) The linked post is four years old. Yelp used to sell a "featured review",
but hasn't done that for years because it was controversial (duh). So that
part is true, but no longer relevant [1].

2) Stupid people with bad taste write Yelp reviews. This is definitely true
(hello, internet), but again, irrelevant [2].

3) He links to the tired old East Bay Express article that started the whole
"Yelp extortion" meme, and which has been definitively debunked. Repeatedly
[3].

So, fine. Trust JWZ. He's a good, smart guy. But in this case, you're
"trusting" a mix of his opinion (which is valid), and out-dated, second-hand
information (which is not).

[1] [http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/yelp-kills-featured-
reviews/...](http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/yelp-kills-featured-
reviews/3073/)

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEdXhH97Z7E>

[3]
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020450530457700...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204505304577002170423750412.html)

~~~
aristus
So.... you're saying that it's a bad idea to trust what people say about
businesses on the internet, because it's often outdated and lacking detail?

What does Yelp do again? I forget.

~~~
aiiane
It's bad to indiscriminately trust what completely random people say. That's
different from not trusting at all. There's a reason why Yelp displays
friends' reviews before other random reviews, and why Yelp goes to significant
effort to get people to write textual reviews rather than just leaving a star
rating.

------
impendia
A conversation I had with Friend 1, a successful business owner, and Friend 2,
a less successful business owner:

Friend 1: Have you tried getting some positive reviews on the internet? People
really trust them, it really helps to drive business.

Friend 2: Oh, really? How many reviews do you have?

Friend 1: About twenty.

Friend 2: How many of them did you write yourself?

Friend 1: (Laughs) About nineteen of them.

~~~
frakkingcylons
I'm not surprised by this. Writing reviews or mentions yourself or getting
others to astroturf for your product is essential to getting started nowadays.

~~~
andrewljohnson
False, and it's opinions like these that let people justify their own
dishonesty.

------
tptacek
If you build a business model that knowingly showcases the worst ignorance of
an anonymous Internet public, and ask for money to help mitigate the
inevitable damage, how is that any different from a protection racket?

~~~
illuminate
The algorithm also exists to protect a business from the worst ignorance of an
anonymous internet public, it requires participation to avoid being filtered.

------
hawkharris
If the claims are true, it's a big deal. Losing half a star on Yelp can
translate into 20 percent fewer people coming to your restaurant on a busy
Friday night, according to a study by two UC Berkeley economists:
[http://www.dailycal.org/2012/09/06/online-customer-
reviews-a...](http://www.dailycal.org/2012/09/06/online-customer-reviews-
affect-restaurant-business/)

~~~
d0mine
The article says that _probability_ of a restaurant being sold out at peak
hours changes by 20 percent, not number of people.

------
johnnygoods
This is not the first, second, or third time such allegations have been
raised, but they always devolve into he-said/she-said.

Restauranteurs, when you're calling Yelp to ask about missing reviews, RECORD
THE CONVERSATION! One recording of a Yelp rep saying something like that is
game over.

~~~
evan_
Just remember that California is a two-party consent state when it comes to
wiretapping- if the other party does not know and understand that you are
recording the conversation, it will not be admissible in court proceedings.

~~~
mnicole
Chiming in to remind people that Oregon is a one-party consent state -- which
means so long as you say the conversation is being recorded at the beginning,
everything is good. This does not go across state lines, however.

~~~
derwiki
Yelp doesn't have sales offices in Oregon. They do in California and Arizona.

------
raverbashing
"Yelp’s reviewing process, noting that the company favors consistent reviewers
over first timers, in part, to avoid “fake” reviews"

Well, this is how it works more or less

I've never had a comment on Yelp taken down

Well, as other comment says, the problem is the 'idiots'.

There's always someone that thinks McD is the epitome of gourmet food and
thinks anything that's not overspiced/overMSGd is "bland"

There's always someone that thinks that a place with tacky decoration and a
queue in front and rude bouncers is "the place to be"

So it's really like herding cats.

~~~
astrodust
Cats that love writing reviews that trash a place they don't like, regardless
of how quirky their preferences are.

~~~
rdl
I write bad reviews sometimes, but usually include concrete reasons why the
place sucks in my review. I find the bad reviews generally are more specific
than the good reviews.

~~~
raverbashing
And that's totally ok, after all, not all places are great.

But it's one thing to write "OMG this place sux", another is to be specific as
you say, like "we waited for 10 minutes until the server appeared and he was
rude and the food was chewy"

------
smackfu
Looking at their yelp page, they do have 5 star reviews, and they also have 1
star reviews. There are few filtered reviews, but they aren't universally high
ratings or anything, and I think Yelp does filter out users with a single
review that is 5 stars because they are usually fake.

I'm also sure that a restaurant feels that recent reviews should be weighted
heavily, almost exclusively, and that those two star reviews from last year
should be ignored.

~~~
nnnnni
> I'm also sure that a restaurant feels that recent reviews should be weighted
> heavily, almost exclusively, and that those two star reviews from last year
> should be ignored.

I agree 100% with that. It's very possible for a restaurant to get better or
go downhill in a year.

If a restaurant has a rough opening but drastically improves after a few
months, the early 1-star reviews can do some serious long-term damage even if
they're a year old.

~~~
crosbytho
I agree -- recency is more important IMO. Particularly reflecting change in
management, change in processes, etc.

For restaurants that aren't chains, processes may not be tried and tested --
first week jitters, hell, first month/quarter jitters should be accounted for.

------
error54
Link to referenced article: [http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks-
yelp-20130420,...](http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks-
yelp-20130420,0,7824145,full.column)

------
mdesq
It seems that Yelp is turning into something like the BBB, ultimately holding
the good name of organizations hostage, whether or not that was the original
intent.

~~~
rgbrenner
I think that's a little unfair. Yes, there have been some instances of that
happening with the BBB... but when one of their sales people contacted me to
sign up to become a BBB accredited business, I asked if it would affect my
rating negatively if I refused, and the sales person was very adamant that it
would not. So I declined, but she updated my profile with how long I was in
business (adding an extra 3 years), and that improved my rating from A- to A+.
Which is my company's current rating, even though I have never given them a
dime.. all I do is respond to customers who file complaints with them.

------
josh2600
Technically speaking, there's nothing to stop Yelp from manipulating results
within their search engine, just like there's nothing to stop Google.

I mean we all think Google doesn't mess with search rankings but we all know
they do (see the google blog post about catching Microsoft by inserting fake
long-tail search results).

In short, does Yelp do this? I don't see why not; there's basically no way for
anyone to verify whether Yelp does this unless they get to dive into emails
for discovery in a big trial. Then again, I have to think Yelp has enough
integrity not to mess with results; but my point is you would never know
except through hearsay and gossip.

There's no ChillingEffects for Yelp Reviews.

~~~
seekup
For the record - I used to be a an Engineering Manager at Yelp, and I've had
my Yelp work emails searched in discovery during big lawsuits about the review
filter. So did all of my colleagues. The result of all that should speak for
itself.

------
bickfordb
How is this any different than Google selling ads and deranking spam?

~~~
Millennium
The ads Google sells are marked as advertising. Spam isn't; it's usually not
too hard to tell, but it mucks up the search result space.

"Featured reviews" for paying customers essentially become a form of paid
advertising, but they are not clearly marked as such. That puts them closer to
the spam side than the ad side.

~~~
aiiane
Yelp killed off featured reviews a while ago, specifically because they were
controversial. It'd be useful if people didn't keep harping on things that
aren't even valid anymore.

------
babesh
Don't know if the accusations are true but I would take Yelp reviews with many
grains of salt. Its not the truth I question rather its the extreme
subjectivity.

Some people care about service, some don't; some care about decor, some don't.
Different people have different tastes as well as different price sensitivity.

Yelp reviewers are also self selecting both in who is more prone to write
reviews and under which circumstances that will drive someone to write
reviews.

So if you really want to figure out how good a place is for you, by all means
use Yelp as a resource. But you need to review the reviewers to see what their
leanings and expertise are and then read their reviews with that understanding
in mind.

~~~
illuminate
"Its not the truth I question rather its the extreme subjectivity."

How do you solve this problem? It's endemic to user-generated content. Of
course reviews of everything aren't objective fact. They're inherently skewed
by opinion by even the most professional paid reviewer.

------
pyre
Down for me now, but the Coral Cache works:

[http://foodbeast.com.nyud.net/content/2013/04/22/sf-
restaura...](http://foodbeast.com.nyud.net/content/2013/04/22/sf-restaurant-
calls-out-yelp-for/)

------
slashedzero
While I've seen the filtered reviews issue and think the claims are somewhat
true, my bigger problem is that yelp does nothing for reviewer quality.

So many times, I've seen blatantly false and misleading information tacked on
to someone's reviews. The site allows both the microcomments "Food, okay.
Waitresses, hot." and the long, trailing rants about how the steak tasted
rotten. This is a problem, and not one easily fixed. Being an "Elite Reviewer"
just means you give out more idiotic reviews than the rest.

Yelp is a joke to anyone who really cares about food.

~~~
illuminate
"my bigger problem is that yelp does nothing for reviewer quality"

What do you expect from user-generated content?

"Yelp is a joke to anyone who really cares about food."

It's really not. You take the reviews into aggregate, it's very easy to screen
out the idiots and fickle eaters. Don't pay attention to the ratings, pay
attention to the depictions in the reviews.

------
swayvil
This might be a common problem. Forums that, while ostensibly democratic, are
actually tailored to suit the forum-owner's agenda.

It's done by selective promotion, censorship, filtering, etc. "Boing Boing" is
one famous culprit if I recall correctly.

The owners argue "it's my forum so I have the right; and besides I'm not
censoring I'm unpublishing" or some such nonsense.

I'm sure it can get very sneaky. fake democracy.

------
stefap2
Another problem is that people are more compelled to write bad reviews.

~~~
illuminate
Right. I don't see any problem with INITIAL reviews being held in a queue
based on the user's participation level. With more participation reviews get
unfiltered.

Criticizing Yelp's algorithm is fine, but people don't understand how it
actually works, nor do they have the patience to figure it out. Full
transparency would be nice, but that would defeat the purpose to having it to
screen out the fakers and SEO spammers.

------
pspeter3
This is why I use Cloudy [<http://askcloudy.com/>]. They don't do any of this
nonsense and it's better to see reviews from friends anyway.

~~~
TylerE
That's useless to me. When I want recommendations it's because I'm somewhere
other than where I live and the people I know live.

~~~
pspeter3
It will expand to friend of friend if it can't find friends and will show
global ratings. It's been good so far for me when I travel

------
wahsd
I would like to remind people that this is not the first or even second time
that this kind of claim has flaired up regarding biased reviews, corrupted
reviews, purchased reviews, and extortionary practices.

I would also caveat though that there is a plausible possibility that this is
an attempt at mobbing Yelp.

I have always felt that reviews are ripe for disruption and a bit of an ethics
and authority treatment.

~~~
illuminate
"I have always felt that reviews are ripe for disruption and a bit of an
ethics and authority treatment."

I'd be fascinated to see how someone tries to tackle this better. I post
reviews there sometime and see people arguing against their algorithm, but
their (imperfect) algorithm is working against a social problem, not a
technical problem and that's where persons get confused.

"Ethics" is a pretty poor word to use when Yelp is working against the
equivalent of or direct SEO-style review spammers. It's hard to tell a real
person from a plant.

------
beachstartup
the only thing i use yelp for nowadays is directions and general info like
phone number or hours of operations.

looking restaurants / dry cleaners / whatever up in google and/or apple maps
is pretty much useless when you're on the go.

whereas on yelp, you simply enter the name (or ethnic category), click on the
map, and there you go.

quite frankly i stopped using yelp for reviews as soon as the idiots took
over. /hipster

~~~
epoxyhockey
_quite frankly i stopped using yelp for reviews_

I have too. My preferred method of searching for "good" restaurants is:

1) Viewing reviews on Opentable when making reservations (to discover which
dishes are good)

2) Looking at the Zagat rating when clicking on a restaurant in Google maps
(which is more analogous to a hotel's star rating and is more objective)

------
mahyarm
They should remove the captcha to view filtered reviews.

