Yelp no longer a reliable source of information

darsben wrote:
I can also see good and bad reviews. Can you give an example of what you see.

He's looking for *hotels* for his RV, ROTFL

~

wintersun wrote:
There was however a grayed out link to reviews that Yelp termed "11 other reviews that are not currently recommended "

On the standard listing Yelp shows a single 1-star review from 2013 and one 3-star and 11 5-star review going back as far as 2009. What is on the non currently recommended page (not recommended by Yelp management) are 7 reviews that rate this merchant at 1-star. Quite a difference in seeing one 1-star review or eight 1-star reviews for a place.

This is very shifty and disingenuous. It is sort of how Angie's List works, just more overt.

Bruce

I posted a couple of reviews on Yelp, one for a great dealership service department, and one bad for their sales department. Being that the posts are contradicting in rating, they are not added to the overall rating....but if you scroll down, you'll see a link to "unrecommended reviews"...that's where mine landed due to the conflict

TucsonJim wrote:
I've placed a lot of reviews on Yelp, some postive and some negative. I just checked and my negative reviews are still there. What are you basing your accusation on?

I saw a number of my positive reviews for local contractors disappear. I recently had a problem with Charkbait in Huntington Beach, CA and I posted a 1-star review. I went back to edit it the next day and it was not showing. There was however a grayed out link to reviews that Yelp termed "11 other reviews that are not currently recommended "

On the standard listing Yelp shows a single 1-star review from 2013 and one 3-star and 11 5-star review going back as far as 2009. What is on the non currently recommended page (not recommended by Yelp management) are 7 reviews that rate this merchant at 1-star. Quite a difference in seeing one 1-star review or eight 1-star reviews for a place.

Yelp did not use to segregate its reviews in this manner and I have done more than 50 review over the past several years on Yelp but will no longer waste my time and use Trip Advisor instead.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/charkbait-huntington-beach

I find a lot of these reviews to be annoying. They post a 1 star review for a restaurant... if you read it, they are upset about small parking spots, or the delivery guy was "rude" or some other nonsense that doesn't have anything to do with the restaurant.

When I am looking for food, I wanna know about the FOOD. I don't care if the delivery guy was rude, that has nothing to do with the food. Same thing with RVpark reviews. If some place gets bad reviews because the wifi doesn't work... I generally could care less. Wifi is not a make or break deal for me for an RV part.

You have to take any reviews with a grain of salt. I ignore the overly critical or overly complimentary reviews and pay more attention to the average review. If someplace is rated 4 stars and has 500+ reviews, I can take comfort that its probably a decent place. No system is perfect, you have to use a little common sense.

My company has numerous positive and no negative reviews on Yelp. Yelp calls the office from time to time to get us to advertise with them, but we always decline. This has had no negative impact on our ratings.

Now, Angie's List -- that's another story. My company has several hundred all-A reviews and only a couple B, C, D and F reviews. All of the C, D and F reviews are from people we never worked for and Angie's List refuses to remove them from our profile. We have earned all of our As, but have done nothing to merit a C, D or F. It's funny how we don't have any As from people we didn't work for, but several negative reviews from people we didn't work for.

Angie's List wants money from us. They tell us if we buy a certain level of advertising from them, our company's name will show up higher on the list than those who didn't pay that amount for advertising. And, the more you pay in advertising and other Angie's List products, the higher still your name will appear on the list. I am sure once you reach a certain amount, your complaints about false reviews will mean more to Angies List and they will probably do something about those pesky reviews. You know how it works -- the more you pay, the better you're treated -- they don't want to lose that income.

Angie's list is a sham. They make their money from the very people they are supposed to be protecting their paying customers from. I don't feel particularly proud when somebody tells me they found me on Angies List, but I do when they tell me they found me on Yelp or Washington Consumers' Checkbook -- a publication with no advertising -- all of their income coming from their paying (and reviewing) customers.

Bruce

They can't put anything on the internet that isn't true...lol

I use trip advisor, rv park reviews and resently yelp. Found it fun that on some reviews on yelp they recommend the negative reviews and all the positive reviews are below in the not recommended link, go figure. I like when an owner can respond to a review to either thank someone for a good review or try to explain a negative review. most of the time they know who gave the negative review and what the issue was. Sometimes it is a bad place but sometimes the customer got caught doing something wrong thus the negative review. Read them all and then hope for the best.

Popsie wrote:

NYCgrrl wrote:

Popsie wrote:
Here is an article that says Yelp posts bad reviews unless businesses advertise with them ?

I came to a different conclusion after reading the article: Yelp won a lawsuit that alleged it was exhorting local businesses for advertising fees:h. It's critics still want them to reveal the formula of the algorithm used for weeding out false reviews but uhmmmm well if it was my business don't think I would.

The article did not say that the court found that Yelp did not base reviews on whether or not the business bought advertising.

Here is the relevant section out of the story: the court said that, even if Yelp did manipulate reviews to penalize businesses, the practice would not constitute extortion.

So the relevant part of the story to you is that the court didn't require an answer to the question you wanted Yelp to respond to but instead made it's judgment based solely on the allegation(s) in front of it?

Only one solution I can think of: start your own lawsuit and then you can get to the bottom of the entire affair.

TripAdvisor allows their advertisers to file something against negative reviews. They then try to get you to change negatives. I was surprised to get that as the review I posted on a condo was far from all bad.

NYCgrrl wrote:

Popsie wrote:
Here is an article that says Yelp posts bad reviews unless businesses advertise with them ?

I came to a different conclusion after reading the article: Yelp won a lawsuit that alleged it was exhorting local businesses for advertising fees:h. It's critics still want them to reveal the formula of the algorithm used for weeding out false reviews but uhmmmm well if it was my business don't think I would.

The article did not say that the court found that Yelp did not base reviews on whether or not the business bought advertising.

Here is the relevant section out of the story: the court said that, even if Yelp did manipulate reviews to penalize businesses, the practice would not constitute extortion.