
Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site - breitling
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/09/yelp-craters-30percent-as-advertisers-abandon-the-site.html
======
mlrtime
I don't have any sympathy for a site that purposely cripples the web mobile
site to force you to install their app. They lock you out of pictures after
around 20 so you have to go to desktop or install their crappy app. Yelp will
not be missed.

~~~
wilg
I think one of the most interesting/telling user experience things in the
industry today is why people feel so strongly about not installing apps. It
seems like it spans most people, from novice users all the way to technology
experts.

Personally, I've never understood it, since nearly every mobile website is
terrible. I prefer installing the app.

Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve.

If you don't like it, why not?

~~~
smelendez
Well, it's especially annoying with something like Yelp that you often use on
the go and sometimes in stressful situations (somebody in your group is hungry
and ornery).

Downloading an app can take an unpredictable amount of time and bandwidth, and
once you download it you may have to log in, remember or set a password, deal
with 2FA, click a verification email, etc. .

~~~
pyr0hu
> once you download it you may have to log in, remember or set a password,
> deal with 2FA, click a verification email, etc. .

like you don't have to do those on a website?

~~~
azeotropic
Ugh. Yes, but there are many fewer sites that actually _need_ this than those
that deploy it just so they can harvest emails.

The only sites that need this are those where users are adding content _and_
the site is moderated, and then login should only be required for moderated
actions.

So Yelp should require a login to leave a review, but not to read one.

------
vikingcaffiene
Good. Yelp is utter trash. They've shaken down several friends of mine who own
and run restaurants. Either you pay for their premium services or a bunch of 1
star reviews start magically appearing on your business Its a well known
racket and they should be run out of town on a rail for it.

On a more personal note, they also refused to adequately protect my wife when
we encountered and reported an unscrupulous vendor who threatened my wife and
exposed her personal information on the site.

There is a very real need for this kind of thing but Yelp has proven time and
time again that they can't be trusted to deliver it.

~~~
thoughtexplorer
> Either you pay for their premium services or a bunch of 1 star reviews start
> magically appearing on your business

How do you square that claim given that both current and former Yelp employees
say they do no such thing?

How do you know those reviews are fake vs coincidence? I've heard a lot of
anecdotes and conspiracies about this, but have never seen actual proof. No
documents, recorded phone calls, court cases etc? And given how many people
have worked at Yelp it's strange no one has blown the whistle yet if they
engage in such practices. They would be an instant hero.

~~~
parthdesai
There is a whole article on cbc about it.

Here is the link: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/yelp-accused-of-bullying-
bu...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/yelp-accused-of-bullying-businesses-
into-paying-for-better-reviews-1.2899308)

~~~
istjohn
That article is hardly conclusive.

There are plenty of salty business owners, and somewhat understandably. Yelp
is far more proactive than, say, Amazon in policing reviews with its automated
software. They do sometimes filter legitimate reviews, particularly when a
reviewer has few other reviews on the site and is very flattering to the
business. They do not want businesses to game the system by bribing customers
or recruiting friends and family.

But of course, sometimes this incorrectly flags legitimate positive reviews.
And when simultaneous negative reviews don't get filtered, this is
understandably frustrating for businesses. And it doesn't take much
imagination for a slightly paranoid owner to wonder if Yelp's pushy sales
efforts have a nefarious undertone.

But this aggressive quality control is what makes Yelp ratings so much more
useful than Amazon ratings. And if businesses can keep attracting positive
reviews, especially from established reviewers on the platform, and perhaps
more importantly, avoid negative reviews, their ratings will rise. And they
will have to fight Yelp's slightly trigger-happy automated review moderation
whether or not they give money to a Yelp sales rep.

------
cletus
Good.

The Yelp app/site is basically the same it was 5 years ago. Rather than
innovate they chose to:

\- Opt for the shakedown/extortion method of ranking sites (those that
advertised with Yelp rank higher, negative reviews can mysteriously disappear
for advertisers)

\- Whine to regulators about Google is stealing content from them (by, you
know, serving a snippet of content that Yelp allows to be scraped).

\- Harass users to install their (shitty) app.

This is just bad management/leadership to the core and such a waste
opportunity. A telltale sign of this is the demonization of some nefarious
third-party and blaming all your woes on them, which they've clearly done with
Google. Don't think that's effective? Look at the current state of US
politics.

I really have no time for these shenanigans.

~~~
kadendogthing
>Opt for the shakedown/extortion method of ranking sites

Do you have any proof of this?

~~~
deelowe
No. No one does because it doesn't happen.

------
allochthon
I can't relate to the negativity I see here. I like Yelp quite a lot. There
have been a number occasions where I've found an excellent local restaurant
that I wouldn't have otherwise found.

Admittedly, you have to know what you're doing. If you're in a food desert,
like some parts of the US, you'll need to take those 4 and 4.5 star restaurant
profiles with a grain of salt. What I would really like: the ability to select
other users whose tastes are similar to mine that Yelp would then use to
influence the ratings I see. This might also protect against paid spam reviews
and over-picky reviewers.

~~~
dunpeal
Yelp was involved in more than a few shady dealings over the years, and most
people remember that.

They manipulate their own rating for money, and for that reason many consider
these ratings - their core product - to be unreliable and misleading.

They will not be missed.

~~~
DerfNet
I don't think "most people" are even aware of Yelp's previous issues. It's
probably more just Google eating their lunch.

~~~
acdha
I don't know, I've heard an awful lot of people who aren't tech/privacy nerds
joke about how Yelp allows you to pay to remove bad reviews or add fake ones.
It seems to be a common belief in at least the food industry and that employs
an awful lot of people who may hear and propagate it.

~~~
istjohn
And yet no one can produce any evidence. It's just an easy excuse for a
manager or owner whose location is getting poor ratings. My personal
experience is that Yelp has an agressive sales force, their fraud detection
system seems to fairly frequently raise false positives, but a business can do
great on Yelp without paying a penny if they have happy customers.

~~~
acdha
My point was that it was widespread. There are so many small businesses that
you don’t need that high a percentage to have bad experiences with sales
critters or be conspiracy minded for a lot of people to hear the claim.

------
duxup
I abandoned Yelp as a user pretty quick as it was just too much to filter
through so many reviews by people who 1) Had some one off bad experience that
is probably not representative of anything. 2) Wished that place they reviewed
was like some other place that is kinda the same but ... it's twice the price
so why are you comparing?

~~~
ghaff
It's not great but TBH I still find it to be better than nothing. You've
pretty much described every review site on the Internet. "My hotel room in
Manhattan was small." You don't say.

I still prefer Zagat (though it's not what it was when it was pretty much
limited to foodies) where it's available. But if I'm in an area I don't know
well I still will take Yelp over picking a restaurant on total whim or because
it has a clever name.

~~~
dfxm12
Your choices aren't just Yelp and nothing though. There are things that are
better than both, like Foursquare.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Tripadvisor has always been best for me, in the UK, but you do have to
interpret reviews carefully.

~~~
ghaff
Yelp tends to be worse outside the US so I tend to agree Tripadvisor is
relatively better. But in the US, I'll often look at Tripadvisor for B&Bs etc.
but I tend to come back to Yelp for restaurants.

------
SnowingXIV
Yelp is incredibly annoying as a business owner. After signing up to setup
basic NAP consistency, they will automatically flag it as some sort of tag
often incorrectly and then continue to call and email you asking to spend
advertising dollars on their site for months. Even after asking them to no
longer do so.

I'm glad google reviews and others have taken their place.

~~~
52-6F-62
My girlfriend is one of the main operators of a small chain of board game
cafes here— her experience is pretty well the same as yours.

They rely on Google reviews and Facebook reviews. Facebook has even been toxic
enough with false stories pushed in attempts to defame the company for money.
I haven't heard the same about Google reviews and Reddit has been strangely
fair.

I just never liked Yelp. It seems like it spoiled very early on.

edit: Just told her the news. Her response: "Good. Yelp is evil."

~~~
3minus1
> Facebook has even been toxic enough with false stories pushed in attempts to
> defame the company for money.

Could you explain what you mean here?

~~~
52-6F-62
It was more that the environment (Facebook, in this case) has allowed toxic
situations where less scrupulous patrons were taking advantage of the social
network to spread falsehoods for an attempt at personal gain by viral
traction. Basically tell the lie fast and hard enough that the targeted party
was helpless to defend themselves.

Thankfully it didn't play out that way. The company has a decent amount of
respect in this town, and the situation was well documented in advance.

------
momentmaker
Maybe now local businesses are realizing they don't want deal with the mob-
like business practice Yelp had been accustomed to over the years.

~~~
lgleason
Yeah, but Google reviews are essentially the same thing.

~~~
vageli
> Yeah, but Google reviews are essentially the same thing.

How so? I've registered businesses on Google and never gotten a sales call
from a Google rep.

~~~
lgleason
have a mob go after your business on Google reviews and then try to get them
removed.

------
nasalgoat
If your business model is essentially extortion, you have to wonder about
long-term viability.

~~~
vinceguidry
The actual mob still seems to be doing well.

~~~
nosequel
Is it? The NY and Boston mobs are pretty well dead these days.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
They've just pivoted into "legitimate" government. The middle bunch of the org
chart of some government departments in MA is sprinkled with these people.

Edit: some vs most. I can't speak for all of the departments.

------
Upvoter33
In contrast to many posters here, I really like Yelp (as a user, at least,
never been a restaurant owner). I sort by number of reviews and find places
that are highly rated (4 stars or so) and almost always this has worked well.
Other services I've tried are not nearly as easy to use or reliable.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
What other services have you tried. Where in the World are you.

~~~
ilikehurdles
For what it's worth, I've tried Google (absolute and total bottom of the
barrel trash level reviews in my opinion -- cannot say enough bad things about
that review quality) and Tripadvisor (not bad, better for lodging and sights
than food). I do like Eater but it's a different service and not user-driven.

I'm in the US. Have been all over the place, all over both coasts, texas, and
colorado.

------
stanleydrew
I bet Apple will be snooping around for a cheap acquisition here. Apple
already uses Yelp for their place data in Apple Maps and they are still way
behind Google.

Eventually Apple will probably need to have its own place data if it wants to
continue to compete in maps. Yelp would give them a starting point.

~~~
rchaud
Doesn't Apple tend to buy relatively unknown companies and fold their IP into
their products? Beats Audio was the only major one I remember them absorbing,
and was rebranded as Apple Music.

But Beats had that upscale demographic and positive brand image that Apple
covets so dearly, whereas Yelp feels very much like a bygone brand of the
2010s IPO rush (along with Groupon and Foursquare). Not sure Apple would be
interested. They can just pay for the POI data. Why buy the cow when all you
need is the milk?

~~~
stanleydrew
I don't think Apple cares about any Yelp "IP". It's a local establishment
discovery and review site.

You suggest "they can just pay for the POI data." Which is basically what I'm
suggesting.

Yelp's actual underlying asset is its POI database. Apple might want that if
they decide to own rather than rent (which is a transition Google made a while
back). Not at any price, but if Yelp continues to struggle the valuation might
make sense.

~~~
skinnymuch
Wouldn’t Foursquare make more sense as a much much cheaper acquisiton if none
of the things actually driving most of Yelp’s value don’t matter? Yelp is
still valued at close to $3B. If it recovers half of what it lost, Apple would
have to pay close to $4B for Yelp. If it doesn’t recover at all, still talking
over $3B.

While Foursquare wouldn’t even be for $1B. It was last valued at $300M 3 years
ago and just raised money again. So at worst it’s 4x cheaper. At best, 5x or
6x cheaper. The business model probably fits better too with having an
enterprise package with Apple Maps.

------
adwordsjedi
Great news! I run a local service company and stopped advertising with Yelp
several months ago. No transparency how clicks go to $12 when they used to be
$5. That's not even a click to your site, just your Yelp profile still on
their site!

On top of it, my 5 star reviews keep getting filtered, even ones that have
shown for months. Meanwhile two recent 1-star reviews we got with people from
brand new accounts still show just fine.

GOOD RIDDANCE, hope they go BK. They deserve it.

~~~
gscott
I spoke to them for insurance clicks and it was around $25-30 a click. Might
as well just buy Google PPC ads for the same amount and get more value.

------
27182818284
I've never met the owner of a bar/eatery/brewery that liked Yelp. All of them
dealt with Yelp as a necessary evil.

~~~
elsewhen
Yelp positions their product primarily as a consumer service; the fact that
the other side of the marketplace (service providers) is dissatisfied may
affect Yelp's business but not necessarily the product they provide to
consumers.

------
skadamou
Does anyone else find that their best restaurant experiences come from places
that only show up on a yelp search several pages down (if at all)? A number of
years ago I stopped using yelp to find places to eat in my hometown because I
found that the app completely overlooked smaller, locally run places for big
name places near tourist hot spots.

~~~
crazygringo
Nope, not if you sort by rating instead of default (which seems to include
things like popularity).

Yelp ratings (at least here in NYC) are the most reliable signal of a
restaurant's quality I've ever found, particularly when you look at the
histogram.

If a place has significantly more 5-star ratings than 4-star, you're basically
guaranteed it will be amazing.

And it has more 4-star than 5-star (assuming it's also more 4-star than
3-star), it's probably fine but there's a reason it's not getting 5 stars, and
it's unlikely to be amazing.

Obviously this relies on having a large enough sample size (e.g. 30+).

------
zachruss92
Yelp ads were completely ineffective for me as a business. I was paying about
$900/mo for 3 months (they force a contract) and literally got 0 leads (calls,
clicks, messages, etc...). If I was even able to get a project from Yelp ads
it would have been worth it. I can't imagine if you're a restaurant (where the
average sale is a _lot_ less than web design/development services) that you
can make any money advertising on Yelp. No surprise that ad sales are going
down/staying stagnant.

------
notyourday
Yelp in NYC is infuriating to use. Not only it does not know neighborhoods, it
is incapable of identifying rivers that separate areas. Ask it for places in
Greenpoint and it would happily include stuff in Manhattan, sometimes well
before it runs out of the Greenpoint options which could be OK had Greenpoint
not been separated from Manhattan by the East River.

Yelp is also happy to manipulate reviews contrary to their denials. It is
rather funny, of course, because it seems that no one in the tech leadership
of the company understands how easy it is to take a screenshot of a review.

~~~
smelendez
It was honestly faster to do a lot of searches with the old paper Zagat books
than modern Yelp, since they were compiled by people who understood the cities
they were covering.

I don't remember this being as much of an issue when Yelp launched? It seems
like there are certain restaurants (advertisers? mathematically trending
places?) that they're determined to shoehorn into any search result.

Also, it's frustrating how every review site I've tried constantly turns off
the "open now" filter. I get that people want to plan tomorrow's lunch at
10pm, but other people just want to quickly find a decent place to take their
hungry friends.

------
yalogin
The problem is even now Yelp is probably the best resource out there for
finding new restaurants but I find Yelp poorly run. There is no innovation,
the UI hasn’t been updated or changed since the first release. They have so
much potential, for example, they should have been the leaders in delivery and
should have provided the api for Uber eats. They just don’t do anything
outside of maintaining the servers for their basic service, at least that’s
what it feels like.

~~~
rchaud
What you are describing sounds like a lot of work for not much payoff, and
that's not what you pursue once you IPO. Yelp just became yet another "we sell
ads" company, and that's not surprising considering that it was basically an
online directory with reviews.

------
radium3d
These large corporations need to knock off the bullshit and make their
websites well developed and designed in-browser apps. Something so simple
could save Yelp and many others. There is no need to have a native app unless
you require certain hardware features that are unavailable on the browser to
meet your apps purpose.

------
haloux
Yelp is one of those YMMV apps. Absolutely terrible for smaller cities like
Albuquerque, NM.

I miss the days when their competitor, Urbanspoon, was really pushing the
envelope on a great customer experience and review variety.

~~~
Marsymars
Old Urbanspoon reviews are still available on Zomato, but recent reviews (in
my area) seem few and far between. Activity seems to be mostly on fb and
google maps now.

To me, every time there's a migration of platform for restaurant reviews, the
user experience gets _worse_. :(

------
sxp62000
Yelp is full of wannabe food critics/influencer types who complain about the
ambience or quality of service. I always get the impression that these people
only go to places that are already popular. For things not related to
food/drinks, Yelp is no better than Google.

Also, they focus too much on search/ratings, so finding a place is harder when
you aren't quite sure what you're in the mood for. I hope Yelp focuses more on
the discovery aspect, because right now that's happening on Instagram and
blogs like Eater.

~~~
thebigspacefuck
Tons of places have low Yelp reviews but decent Google reviews and in my
experience, the Google reviews are more accurate. I think it's because you get
more off the cuff honest opinions from Google users instead of someone that
went out of their way to get on Yelp.

------
Mikeb85
They've tried to hold restaurants and other small businesses hostage for years
and never expected that, given how despised they are, someone would displace
them?

The way they run their business is comical as well. In my city Yelp is
basically a non-factor. Businesses that have 500 Google or OpenTable reviews
will often have a dozen Yelp reviews at most, yet Yelp will constantly phone
you trying to get you to sign up for their services... Usually very
aggressively and during peak business hours.

------
vco1
I've always enjoyed Louis Rossmann yelp rants. A week ago he posted a great
interview with some people who made a documentary about yelp practices of
bullying businneses to join their service Link:
[https://youtu.be/BHEbVh3Yhrw](https://youtu.be/BHEbVh3Yhrw)

------
osdiab
I wonder if there’s a way to get the quality of reviews and rankings from
Tabelog in the USA - for those who don’t know its the Japanese equivalent
service and diners are so critical that most restaurants have 3 stars, 3.5 is
an exceptionally good one and 4 and up generally have Michelin stars; I’ve
never been disappointed by a decently rated restaurant on it.

The magic sauce for them might be cultural; though there’s definitely room for
a better (probably nonlinear) type of reviewing system in the market given how
bad quality Yelp reviews are in comparison.

------
_cs2017_
This has probably nothing to do with them losing advertisers, but I really
dislike the app UX. Examples:

1\. Videos auto play in the app, stopping my music or whatever else I'm
listening to. And I can't disable that feature.

2\. Frequent crashes and other glitches (eg, the Recent category doesn't
actually show many of the places I visited today).

3\. No way to save default settings, like sort by rating. So with every search
I have to manually set those preferences. Similarly, no way to save searches
or even to go back to a previous search I just ran.

~~~
antichronology
google maps has a lot of ratings and I find is good at suggesting a list of
places from which I can select one. Look into the explore around me feature

------
Opossum
I have a question: Would it be possible to do something like Fakespot for Yelp
reviews or just restaurant reviews in general? I can appreciate that the
problem is harder than say spotting fake Amazon reviews, but it seems
plausible.

Given that there is really no good verification for restaurant reviews, there
must be a ton of fake reviews out there. In theory, it would not be too hard
to periodically crawl reviews and figure out when/if they got deleted and use
that dataset to find patterns.

------
xfitm3
Yelp is an unscrupulous business, however, I do find it useful. I don't read
the reviews but I enjoy looking at pictures of food before choosing a
restaurant.

------
1024core
Yelp is tanking because it is putting profits before customers.

Case in point: let's say you're looking for a restaurant in a certain area,
maybe in San Francisco? So you zoom into that area and do a search: find "x"
in the map.

So what do they do? They zoom out (sometimes, far out) to include some
advertisers.

Rule #1 if you have a customer-facing product: if you give the users choice,
_then respect that choice!_ Always respect the user. Always.

------
lalos
For vegetarians and vegans be sure to try out HappyCow, it's a must have when
traveling. Disclaimer: free website but the iOS app costs some money.

------
robodale
As Yelp finishes flushing itself down the toilet, I wonder what opportunities
can open up for similar services that actually provide value?

------
pbreit
Wow, $YELP has almost $1b in revenues, $800m in cash and trading at a $2.5b
market cap.

Yelp took far too long to go big into self-service advertising.

------
oh-kumudo
Well, you don't really have to have distinguished insights to tell that Yelp
is doing a horrible job as an advertising company. Their ads are unattractive
and annoying. What is fundamentally wrong with their business model is that,
good restaurants don't need ads to wow customers: they are already
oversubscribed, only troubled ones do.

------
_august
Foursquare! I've been using it pretty regularly and it always seems to give me
cool neighborhood gems compared to over-advertised entires that Yelp gives
you. You can kinda even feel that the app was built with some heart.

Also, I love the filters on there compared to Google (Google maps always seems
to hide a lot of places)

------
myth_buster
The only redeemable feature on Yelp that I come to often (from Google Maps) is
Open Now, where I can fill in a time and it filters for that time. If its
close to closing time, its rare that I want to know what's open right now
given I've to drive to that location.

Other than that, I get the same value prop else where.

------
exabrial
Good. Being an asshole to both consumers and small businesses should end in
this outcome.

------
forkandwait
Am I the only one who considers companies like Internet pollution and hopes
they all die?

------
dreamcompiler
Good. [https://thetechnoskeptic.com/yelp-extortion-starring-
role/](https://thetechnoskeptic.com/yelp-extortion-starring-role/)

------
Misdicorl
Here's to hoping the replacement will implement an old school Netflix style
recommendation engine.

Some people rate taco bell 5 stars, some 1 star. These people should not
influence ratings for eachother.

------
tyingq
Don't forget to give Yelp a rating: [https://yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-
francisco](https://yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco)

------
JetSpiegel
"Adds zero net new advertising customers" means advertisers are abandoning the
site?

Money 'abandoned' my wallet when I payed for my friend's dinner and she payed
me back.

------
gdsdfe
there was numerous accounts of extortion and bullying in regards to yelp in
the past, I am so not suprised by this and it's just going to get worst

------
PHGamer
I think the bigger issue simply is no one goes to yelp, they go to deliver
sites now because no one ones to leave their house

------
xd1936
Man. They just bought NoWait too, which was an awesome service. I hope they
don't drag it down with them into the abyss.

------
phendrenad2
Now Apple will have to build their own rating tool for their maps app. Can't
say that's a bad thing.

------
fipple
No sympathy for them but Google completely trust-fucked them and the DOJ is
too incompetent to care.

------
Circumnavigate
Good riddance, that is one of the most unethical corporations won the
internet.

------
segmondy
I use yelp as a yellow page, that's it. I never look at the reviews.

------
sharemywin
I don't understand why they don't offer delivery like grubhub?

~~~
dominotw
Yea they could have easily added reservations ( opentable) , deliveries (
grubhub) , group dining ( meetup).

~~~
greglindahl
Yelp purchased a reservations startup SeatMe, which worked out so well that
they bought another reservations startup Nowait.

------
advertising
You should be able to decide if you want to be listed on yelp or not.

------
jessaustin
Wow people have passionate opinions about Yelp. If I need a quick meal while
on the road, I just pick out some fast place. If I want a nice meal, I cook
it. Spending a lot of my own money at a restaurant is only very rarely a
satisfying experience.

------
dawhizkid
a Yelp-like Token Curated Registry (TCRs) would be very interesting

------
minikites
Looks like enough people figured out Yelp was a computerized protection
racket.

------
sys_64738
Shareholders let out a yelp when they saw the numbers!

------
jordache
Good!

------
eruci
Welp!

------
artursapek
It all comes back around in the end.

------
Alex3917
Fuck Yelp. They’ve been deleting my reviews of restaurants that haven’t paid
them enough.

------
crkhms
I don't get the negativity here, Yelp is an incredibly useful service;
especially living in NYC. With such a dense amount of restaurants in the city,
you need some way to cut out the cruft.

I'm yet to eat at a Yelp 4-star restaurant in NYC that I didn't think was
good. Besides Foursquare as an alternative, the reviews on Google,
TripAdvisor, etc. are all way too inflated.

