"Yelp is all but meaningless in San Francisco, probably its most popular city. Really average or even crappy cafes, salons, restaurants have greater than or equal 4 star ratings... it's a little baffling. I presume from the stories you hear that it's because the businesses pay."
I have noticed this as well, but if you read the reviews you get a good idea of what is happening in SF: tourists.
Joe and Jane Honeymooners come to SF from Tulsa/KC/Duluth/DesMoines and have the "best meal/coffee/pastry/brunch EVER".
The flip side happens as well, especially with hotels on sites like Trip Advisor. "My $200 room in Manhattan was tiny and looks out on a light well." Umm, welcome to NYC!
If you're vacationing to NYC from Kansas for the first time, you might book the largest affordable room in the city and be shocked at how small it is. Conversely, if you are familiar with NYC and travel to it enough, you might recognize that a 400 sq. ft. room for $200 a night is an astonishing bargain.
Both types of review are valid, but the former is more valid for new-to-NYC vacationers while the latter would be better suited to those who are repeat travelers or people people who have migrated away from NYC and are vacationing home.
The complaint though, is that there's no way to distinguish between them. How big is big? How small is small? Reviewers seldom list the square footage, and the net result is that one person's anecdotal evidence is countered by another's opposite anecdotal experience. At the end of the day, unless there is an equal number of use cases, we're left reading reviews for context, which renders the star ratings useless.
I don't spend a lot of awake time in my hotel room when I'm in NYC. But my point was that if I have a cheap room in NYC (and $200 is quite a cheap room) my expectation is that it will be quite small.
I actually often stay at a hotel that has small [edit: 170 sq. ft] but deliberately engineered for the size rooms and I rather like it.
Funny thing, I tend to use Tripadvisor more for reviews than I do Yelp because I find the non-local perspective on places to actually be a benefit when it comes to deciding where to go. I am fully aware that those reviews are even more profoundly tourist-tinged than Yelp, however, there are some very smart travelers. For example, if some lady that has been all over Asia said "this was the best Kung Pao Chicken I've had since I was in Suzhou" then I'll pay more attention than some San Franciscan claiming their Kung Pao Chicken was the best one outside of Chinatown.
Also, the implication that everything is better in SF/NYC compared to Tulsa/KC/Duluth/DesMoines and thus the opinion of Joe and Jane Honeymooner isn't as useful is really rather snobby.
I have noticed this as well, but if you read the reviews you get a good idea of what is happening in SF: tourists.
Joe and Jane Honeymooners come to SF from Tulsa/KC/Duluth/DesMoines and have the "best meal/coffee/pastry/brunch EVER".
Good for them.