
A restaurant owner who asked for 1-star Yelp reviews - kull
https://thehustle.co/botto-bistro-1-star-yelp/
======
cc81
What a guy though:

>Under the alias “Babghanoush I,” Cerretini posted 13 fake positive reviews
for Botto Bistro, as well as fake critical reviews of neighboring restaurants
— sometimes going so far as to disparage fellow owners.

......

>In the spring of 2014, after turning down another Yelp salesperson, Cerretini
claims that four 5-star reviews were filtered from his page, and three 1-star
reviews were suddenly catapulted to the top of the page. For the chef, this
was the final straw.

>“Those 1-star reviews were from people who never even set foot in my
restaurant,” says Cerretini. “One complained about our waiters… we didn’t even
have waiters!”

Yeah, I wonder why you got fake negative reviews.

~~~
avs733
Notably that information came from Yelp...

"Documented records shared with The Hustle by a Yelp spokesperson tell a
fuller story of Cerretini’s actions."

~~~
cc81
Yes, but he himself admitted to writing good reviews and I have no reason not
to believe Yelp in that case.

~~~
avs733
Two businesses each claim the other is full of shit. More at 11.

------
pmoriarty
I used to go a lot to a particular restaurant which I really liked which I
remember had a bad review about a rude waiter. The review described that
waiter in detail, and despite going there all the time I never saw him there.
The review said that waiter was really rude, but I've never seen anyone be
rude there. The staff was always quiet, professional, and polite. I couldn't
imagine any of them being rude to anyone. Maybe that waiter had once worked
there, but got fired or quit and was no longer there, but the review remained.

After some years the restaurant closed for renovation, and when it reopened
there were completely different people working there, and the food was way
worse. It was probably sold or went under new management, though they kept the
name. So all the reviews this place had gotten over the years were really no
longer relevant, as it was effectively a new restaurant. Yet all the Yelp
reviews remained.

~~~
pembrook
A similar problem happens on Glassdoor. If you look at the salaries for pretty
much any position at a big legacy company the bulk of the data comes from
reviews submitted up to a decade ago...during the depths of the financial
crisis.

At many smaller companies with only a few submitted salaries, the problem is
much worse. I've received offers for 2.5X the quoted salary for the same
position glassdoor supposedly had 10 submitted salaries for (bay area).

None of these review aggregators are incentivized to dump old reviews and make
it look like they have less data than their competitors. Inevitably, consumers
will start trusting reviews less and less...similar to what has happened on
Amazon.

~~~
saltyshake
comp.fyi and Blind are much much better for that sort of thing.

~~~
TadaScientist
I've seem the first but what's Blind's url?

~~~
Wehrdo
teamblind.com

------
xyelperTTFs
I am a former Yelp engineer who worked on the review filter and had full
access to Production. There is nothing in the code or infrastructure that
allows sales to filter reviews. End of story. Any other position is for your
own entertainment.

Users can and will be creative on the site. Making fake accounts in order to
mislead others is not a creative practice that aligns well with typical users
of Yelp.

~~~
zenexer
Does it really matter? All that matters is what we perceive: from the
perspective of both consumers and small business owners, Yelp looks like the
bad guy--and that's probably only going to get worse. Nobody is ever going to
be satisfied with their decisions.

Imagine if they allowed total anarchy and didn't police any of the reviews.
Small business owners and consumers would be upset about all the fake reviews.
Yelp claims they attempt to filter out these reviews; opponents claim they
either go too far or filter as a form of extortion.

Who am I, as a consumer, to trust here? My only solution is to avoid using
Yelp: then I don't have to worry about either of these problems. If I'm
traveling, I ask the locals where they like to eat.

I'd argue that Yelp's whole business model is flawed; it doesn't scale for
this very reason. No matter which path they take, it's going to be a PR
nightmare. Unless they're able to both avoid filtering and disincentive fake
reviews, somebody's going to be unhappy (and vocal).

~~~
xyelperTTFs
>Does it really matter? All that matters is what we perceive: from the
perspective of both consumers and small business owners, Yelp looks like the
bad guy

nope! you don’t need to believe the truth. a lot of people don’t. but the
hacker news community tends to like to surface technical truths even when they
defy popular sentiment.

------
NetBeck
This reminds me of someone I used to play with on Starcraft Broodwar. When
victory when inevitable, he would always quit the game to give himself a loss.
He considered it better to have mostly losses on his record so other players
cannot gauge his skill level.

~~~
anbende
Or so he could constantly play below his skill level as the matching system
would think he was worse than he is.

If he was doing that on ladder, that’s generally considered to be bad form.

~~~
lxtx
If I remember correctly, there was no matching system in BW.

~~~
least
Brood War had (has) a ladder system and then there were external leagues such
as ICCUP that has ranking as well.

------
human20190310
> ...a clear violation of the platform’s Terms of Service.

What can Yelp do to you if you invite their worst punishment as a badge of
honor?

This is brilliant.

~~~
csa
I know, right?

What? Will Yelp _remove_ me from Yelp’s listings and search results?

Oh, darn!

~~~
huac
This was Yelp's business plan - get so big, aggregate so much demand, that you
_had_ to play by their rules to get business.

------
kull
So many business people I know have their own Yelp horror story. How is this
company even still in business?

~~~
smt88
Yelp's practice of intentionally biasing their reviews (and search results)
was protected in court a few years ago[1], so unfortunately businesses have no
legal recourse.

If we want to kill Yelp, we have to switch. My cousin works for Likewise[2]
and recommends it. It solves the fake/biased reviews problem by letting you as
a user select who influences your recommendations (including friends and
family). I've never tried it, so I can't vouch for it myself.

1\. [https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Yelp-can-give-paying-
cli...](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Yelp-can-give-paying-clients-
better-ratings-5731200.php)

2\. [https://likewise.com/what-is-likewise](https://likewise.com/what-is-
likewise)

~~~
code_duck
There's plenty of review action on Google Maps. My impression is that it's
surpassed Yelp already, at least in the markets I'm active in (Denver).

Oddly I see lots of hipster businesses with signs mocking yelp, but none of
them seem to register that GM is similar.

~~~
ilikehurdles
Google maps reviews are of way lower quality compared to both Yelp and
TripAdvisor. Lots of 3-word reviews or barely English reviews. I’m sure there
are more of them but I don’t value them at all.

I think there’s a weird culture around yelp reviews especially of people who
openly label themselves as yelpers. I haven’t met them but it’s an easy group
to mock. I’d bet a lot of those restaurants don’t realize how many visitors
end up at their business because they saw something they liked about it on
yelp despite not being some kind of power users of the site.

Frankly I like the platform more for discovery than reviewing, but generally
most restaurants at 4 stars or above are pretty consistently good, while those
between 1 and 3 are pretty consistently trash. It’s also nice being able to
search reviews for menu items and things like “happy hour” or “patio”.

Lately I use Eater a lot more than any user-driven service though.

~~~
ryantgtg
A few year ago my wife and I decided to look up all the restaurants we
regularly go to, and we were surprised to find that pretty much all of them
rated 3.5 stars on yelp. Perhaps that rating helps ensure we won’t have to
wait for tables. Works for us.

But more to your point, I’ve noticed that when friends/family refer to “5 star
restaurants” these days, they’re almost always referring to 5 stars on yelp.
To them, it goes without saying that they’re using yelp as the measuring tool.

~~~
code_duck
My experience is that the places that rate 4.5 or five stars on yelp deserve
it. Every once in a while, I do discover one that I would consider excellent
that has 3 1/2 or four.

------
throwaway287391
Seemingly unpopular take on my experience with various review sites:

1) In the US, Yelp's reviews of restaurants have a significantly higher
correlation with reality than any other review site. Google reviews are okay.

2) In Europe, Yelp reviews are mostly by American tourists and are sparser and
higher variance quality-wise. Google reviews seem to be generally the best in
Europe. (Canada might be a toss-up between Yelp and Google.)

3) In both continents TripAdvisor reviews are pretty much meaningless. I've
been to multiple restaurants on TripAdvisor with ~4.5 that have absolutely
sucked in terms of both food, service, and atmosphere.

I don't have much experience with reviews for local businesses that aren't
restaurants or outside of the US/Canada/Europe. But in the US, for all of
Yelp's supposed manipulation, their reviews are noticeably better than other
sites'.

------
duxup
>claiming he was exchanging reviews for “incentives” (a discount on pizza) — a
clear violation of the platform’s Terms of Service

That doesn't seem all that different than what yelp itself does.

~~~
caymanjim
How does Yelp's Terms of Service matter? Does the restaurant owner even have a
Yelp account?

~~~
jjeaff
Exactly. Terms of service don't mean a thing unless you explicitly agree to
them. And checking a box upon sign up is not necessarily enough to constitute
agreement either.

------
propter_hoc
Here's his Yelp page:
[https://yelp.to/qTKq/2I1Y0WkNnX](https://yelp.to/qTKq/2I1Y0WkNnX)

All the _wink wink_ 1-star reviews are gone - many 1-star reviews left, but
only those that seem somewhat believable. There are also only a few hundred
reviews, not the thousands mentioned by the article. I'd guess that Yelp
watches his page pretty closely and deletes any reviews that are obviously
fake.

That said, I'd bet that the majority of the 1-star reviews, even the ones that
appear believable, are still fictional.

------
whack
I've noticed that any organization or process that serves as a "gatekeeper"
inevitably has a lot of resentment directed at it. Business owners resent
Yelp. Software developers resent the interview process. Aspiring entrepreneurs
resent VCs. College applicants and their parents resent Ivy League admissions.

In all of these cases, people love to complain about the injustices and
imperfect heuristics being used by the gatekeepers. A lot of these complaints
are very valid, but a lot of them also seem to miss the bigger picture
entirely. These gatekeepers and their heuristics serve a very valid purpose in
society, which is why they wield so much power to begin with. The only
productive complaints are those that suggest viable alternatives or
improvements - suggestions that don't simply trade-off one set of bad outcomes
for an even worse set of bad outcomes. It's hard to take Grotto's "burn Yelp
to the ground" ethos seriously, because I've lived through the pre-Yelp era of
Yellow Pages and tourist traps, and I'd never want to return to that world
again.

~~~
FussyZeus
We've heard again and again that Yelp harasses small businesses for ad buys.
In itself, not a problem. But we've also heard that their mystery secret sauce
"algorithm" then by sheer coincidence puts down 5 star reviews in favor of
negative ones when they say no.

If Yelp was really interested in clearing the air, they'd show how their
algorithms are making the decisions they're making. It's not like they'd give
away their entire platform or market space by doing so, there's such immense
network effect at play with Yelp that they'd likely never be unseated.

But they won't, and I suspect it's because they do manipulate it, even if
slightly, because they have _have every single solitary financial and business
reason to do so._

~~~
whack
You could make the same accusation against any gatekeeper. The linked article
quotes a unbiased professor and his peer reviewed study which found no
evidence of review tampering by Yelp as a means of extortion. Any accusations
at this point are pure speculation.

~~~
FussyZeus
Except there's no way to review Yelp's process without intimate involvement of
Yelp itself, which, if you assume for a moment that they do have levers and
strings into their algorithm, means they would be pre-prepared to change how
data is presented to those conducting the study, with minimal impact to their
ongoing business.

Or, even if they don't manipulate them directly but simply have baked that
behavior into the algorithm, it wouldn't even look that different. It's not as
if Yelp wouldn't assume this behavior would attract complaints and regulatory
attention, so they'd be motivated to make sure it's as subtle and undetectable
as possible, which when you have total and complete control of a closed-source
codebase, is easy.

Do we have proof? No, and that's why Yelp won in court, they couldn't be
implicated beyond a shadow of a doubt of manipulation. But considering how
much of their system is nothing but shadows and doubts, I don't find that all
that exonerating.

------
stabbles
> Dan Neves, a waiter at a fine dining establishment in Austin, Texas, created
> YELP BULLIES EXPOSED, a private Facebook group that tracks down rude Yelpers
> and sends them a one-pound bag of animal feces procured from
> poopsenders.com. In a little over a month, the group has attracted 278
> members.

With this kind of publicity poopsenders might soon go public

~~~
lacampbell
This will backfire though - poopsender will get negative yelp reviews and
people will no longer go there to eat.

------
aloukissas
If only Yelp behaved a little like the late Jonathan Gold, who'd only give
_favorable_ reviews to restaurants he really enjoyed, skipping
negative/mediocre reviews for those that could improve.

~~~
randycupertino
The problem is then Yelp filters your reviews to be lower on the main page-
their algorithm features reviewers who leave "balanced" reviews so more even %
of 5-1 star reviews. People who have only positive or only negative reviews
get pushed onto the non-featured reviews/reviews we don't recommend page. One
thing that helps your reviews stay on the front page is having a lot of
friends on yelp, as well as being on of the first to review for places.

I always feel bad leaving a mediocre review for small businesses, so I
generally will only do that for places that it doesn't really matter (random
gas stations).

------
csa
I’ve started ignoring yelp reviews. The quality as a whole is about the same
as Amazon reviews, which I find close to useless.

That said, I still use the app. I use it for pictures, especially recent
pictures of menus and food. I also use it for basic business info like hours,
address, phone number, and (sometimes) map.

If I were to own a business that would be a natural yelp candidate, I would
definitely incentivize one-star reviews.

First, I think that good yelp reviews attract some (perhaps many) pathological
customers, many of whom are not from your natural customer base. These folks
will put an effective service tax on the business, and they will make the
place not what your regulars want it to be. Think a minor version of the
Michelin Star hug of death.

Second, I think that there are much better / more effective outreach methods
than yelp and similar apps to target the audience you want.

What I would do is keep an up-to-date collection of images of the menu and
food on the site, and the business information would be accurate. I would be
tempted to muck with the business information if yelp tried to go to war, but
I imagine taking the high road would be the correct choice even if yelp
didn’t.

I would not create accounts to post to about any restaurant, including my own.
I also would not advertise on the platform.

I fully believe that a lot of these “social” sites seeking growth with
questionable ethics practices will end up biting themselves in the ass. The
tech isn’t _that_ complex. I (naively?) believe that companies that make an
effort to delight both sides of the marketplace (purveyors and potential
customers) without trying to make VC-level returns will eventually marginalize
predatory sites and apps. I hope this comes sooner rather than later.

~~~
batbomb
I wish we could boil restaurant reviews down to “did you like it?”

I usually use some combination of TripAdvisor, Google Maps, Yelp, and
OpenTable to get an idea of what’s going on. TripAdvisor tends to have less
millennials which is nice.

Actually, what would be ideal, is filtering out the prolific reviewers in any
of these platforms.

Other things to get good data would be more general questions, like “what are
some places you like to eat in your neighborhood” or “what places stood out to
you on your recent trip to _____”

... and then some incentive to respond or something.

------
muzani
A lot of startups focus solely on exponential growth. It's probably only a
matter of time before they resort to extortionist tactics like this and
somehow justify it as a l perfectly valid strategy.

------
ranprieur
This is why Consumer Reports doesn't take ads. In any ad-funded review
platform, corruption is inevitable. And we could solve it with a simple (but
difficult) law: that review platforms may not receive any income from whoever
they're reviewing.

------
xyzal
This is genius tactic, and should become a coordinated movement.

~~~
yoz-y
Why? If all rating systems are driven to ground then what did we earn in
exchange?

~~~
sonnyblarney
We don't need such ratings systems for restaurants.

We need a rough idea of what's there, some photos of the place and food tell a
lot of the story. And prices.

Maybe some 'editors choice' for the one's that stand out.

A 'guide book' made by a small, decent team is as legit as any public review
system, probably more so.

~~~
yoz-y
Well, for example Paris has a few thousand restaurants. If you know the locals
then it's of course best to ask them. But if you come for a day or two it's
pretty nice to be able to check that you are not falling into some sort of
tourist trap.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Yes, a small team of professional reviewers could handle Paris.

20 reviewers x4 restos a day (most are little brasseries, don't need tons of
time) is 80 / day, 800 in 10 days only.

It would only take maybe 4-5 people to do it ongoing, once most were
established.

~~~
yoz-y
I don’t know. Like with all reviews, one would first need to find a reviewer
with similar taste. For movies, for example, I don’t trust journalist reviews
at all because they all have to go see all the movies, whereas the public pre-
selects and more or less only goes to see movies they might enjoy watching.

If some reviewer smashes a restaurant because the food is too spicy it makes
it of no value.

------
cheerlessbog
On his blackboard the fourth line seems to say, "We have no god". Am I
misreading? Seems a little incongruous for a restaurant to have a public
position on such a historically controversial topic...

~~~
tyingq
It's the last of 4 lines of various "we have no <whatever>".

I'd read it like:

 _" Yes, we are godless heathens for not having lemon, ice, ranch, butter,
etc. Get over it."_

~~~
the-rc
Plus he's from near Pisa. Historically, modern Tuscany had the reputation of a
communist/leftist stronghold where people might go to Sunday Mass, but still
swear a lot and not follow the church blindly (when they weren't outright
atheists).

------
nathan-io
Yelp has always been a thinly veiled extortion platform, overrun by spam, yet
surprisingly quick to filter legitimate five-star reviews.

I tried their paid advertising for a client in 2017, and have avoided it like
the plague ever since.

Not only did the trial yield no leads, but Yelp billed substantially more than
the defined monthly campaign spend.

It took repeated complaints and escalation to a sales manager to even get part
of the overage credited.

My experience was:

* Near zero detail or transparency in campaign reports

* Deceptive and confusing budget rules

* Absurd cost per click (even compared to Google Ads)

* Sudden filtering of _all_ the legitimate 5-star reviews on one listing, after we declined further sales efforts

------
ww520
Bad Yelp reviews can safely be ignored most of the times. Some of the best
tasting restaurants I went to have 2 to 3 stars, and they are hugely popular.
It seems they don't care about the rating and relying on providing the best
food and best service.

------
herodotus
When it started, crowd-sourced ratings seemed like such a great idea. But I
now think it has either failed or is doomed to fail. I have noticed, for
example, that some movies rated on IMDB split into 9 or 10 star and 1 or 2
star. These are generally movies that, in my opinion, are bad: poor writing,
wooden acting and so on. I get the impression that the 9/10 are all paid for.
Well written, but somehow wrong. The 1/2 always ring truer to me.

At least in the golden days of paid movie critics (or even restaurant
reviewers) I could decide whether or not my tastes (in movies or restaurants)
were similar to the critic. Crowd reviews make that impossible.

Call me old-fashioned, .... please.

~~~
justwalt
IMDb definitely seems to be on the take when it comes to new movie reviews.
Almost any summer blockbuster will be in the top 10 for a number of weeks
before eventually being edged out of the top 250.

Friends and I have a tradition of picking movies from the top 250 list and we
always skip these as a result.

------
drngdds
"We won't tell you how our filter works but we pinky promise we're not
extorting you!"

Not sketchy at all

------
mekane8
“I came from Italy, and know exactly what mafia extortion looks like,” he
says. “Yelp was manipulating reviews and hoping I would pay a protection fee.
I didn’t come to America and work for 25 years to be extorted by some idiot in
Silicon Valley.”

I love this paragraph so much!

------
pugworthy
For some pretty good satire on Yelp reviews, check out Yelping with Cormac -
Yelp reviews in the style of Cormac McCarthy...

[https://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/](https://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/)

Bitingly funny.

------
doesnt_know
Isn't it a ridiculous joke that yelp is threatening "a clear violation of the
platform’s Terms of Service", when it seems he is no longer a user of the
service?

By his own admission, he is no longer paying yelp for any service so there is
no contractual agreement between the two entities right? A punishment where
they delist the business from their site is giving him and other businesses
exactly what they want? So.....?

From a conceptual level, an unrelated entity lists the details of you/your
business on their own accord and then threatens you with "terms of service
violation" when you do something or share information it doesn't like? Seems
insane.

------
dmd
Intentionally targeting someone like this (or yourself) with a flood of abuse
in order to discredit/drown out real abuse is a plot point in the new Neal
Stephenson book!

------
nashashmi
This story an be copied on to the onion. And no one would know.

------
exabrial
"We don't have ranch"

Good Lord people, it's an actual Italian restaurant. You wanted the real deal?
You got it.

------
sonnyblarney
The truth is people don't want reviews!

They just want a rough idea of what to expect.

Frankly - you should be able to tell by the _pictures_ of the place, and
photos of the actual plates (if they're legit).

That's 90% of right there.

The odd bit of bad service or extra great service I don't think is a huge
deal. I've never thought poorly or great of a place because of the service, I
always just assumed that was the individual server.

All we ever need is for 2 or 3 people with decent taste to walk in the place,
have a taste, take a few photos and 'tell us what it is' \- maybe point out
what's good, what's bad a little bit.

And then maybe some 'editors choice' for the one's that naturally stand out.

That's it.

~~~
true_tuna
“People don’t want [this thing millions of people use, around which entire
industries exist. And which is the only effective way of assessing a
restaurant you’ve never been to personally.]”

If I could reach through the internet right now I would.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Your comment defeats itself.

"is the only effective way of assessing a restaurant you’ve never been to
personally"

That's why they use it, not because it 'has reviews', but because it's a
comprehensive directory, it has the address, phone number, photos, and the
'reviews' give a rought idea of what's up.

If the reviews were replaced with a simple star rating, then people wouldn't
care.

There is also Google Search, which shows images, price.

I haven't used Yelp in a few years, it's simply unecessary.

