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.
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.
> The quality as a whole is about the same as Amazon reviews, which I find close to useless.
Agreed, I think that any crowd source review of anything is so open to massive gaming that you can't trust it.
That said you can't really trust (as an example) the general technology press reviewing most things either since they all have interests in one way or another (call out Foo vendor for something and suddenly find yourself no longer on the VIP list at Foo's future launch events).
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.