YelpReviews 1,585

I've watched Yelp grow these past years. Yet, I have to agree that they have a weird review or 'filtering' process. I take them with two grains of salt. I've found pluses and minuses on the restaurant reviews for Yelp in my home city. Since I generally eat-out in 'ethnic' types my experience and judgement through Yelp's reviews has been a scatter-shot.

Also, I signed-up with yelp through a buddy's computer in a distant city with an e-mail account that I don't commonly use. I am very careful in leaving negative reviews for frankly 'big Trust reasons' - honestly more my stuff. I amusingly still receive e-mails from Yelp on this account trying to welcome me back though I haven't visited this city in near four years. I read the reviews of this city's foodie trade with amusement and caution.

Regarding yelp's other rec's for other services, frankly I don't trust them. Sad to hear their pseudo-extortionate practices.

I find it useful for the reviews of restaurants, stores and so forth for cities/towns I'm not familiar with or for places around me that I've never been to. However, I too have an issue with their "filtering." I wrote a review for an establishment that had terrible customer service (very rude employees) and my review was filtered out, leaving only the positive ones. To view the filtered review, you have to enter a code for one of those robot-checking annoying things.

In addition, filtered reviews do not contribute to the overall star rating --- what kind of nonsense is that? If all the negative reviews were filtered out, then obviously every place would get a 4 or 5 star rating. It makes me wonder if the other reviews of Yelp are right on and that either they're bribed to weed out negative reviews by the vendor or if it's their general policy to be dishonest. Also, from reading their FAQ they seem to have an automated process that filters out reviews. I think that's even worse if the review isn't checked for being honest and truthful - rather than some kind of algorithm to determine the overall negativity of the review.

Therefore, this discourages me from writing actual honest "negative" reviews on Yelp as if it's bound to be filtered out, what's the point? Why bother if only positive reviews will be counted and featured?

This site is a very biased site. They blast negative reviews all over the web. They hide favorable reviews and in some cases actually remove them for no reason. That is unless you advertise with them. If you pay their advertising fees the negative reviews will disappear and the the positive will be highlighted. How do owners of these types of scams live with themselves. Oh well one day they will be judged whether by our courts or a higher one!

YELP is a known extortion scheme whereby businesses who decline to advertise wind up with their positive reviews filtered and their negative reviews made prominent. A cadre of so called elite Yelpers (chronically unemployed losers) are Yelps hired guns who do the dirty work of defaming small businesses for them and shilling for advertisers. Thousands upon thousands of Yelp reviews are actually reviews of big chains like Starbuck and Chipotle rather than being genuine reviews of small businesses who lack advertising and p. R. budgets. If you look at the numbers for this IPO they simply do not add up. After all, how can YELP expect small businesses to advertise with a bulletin board which has already defamed them or threatens to do so? Keep in mind that this MONEY LOSING BUSINESS relies on advertising for over 60% of its revenue! To make matters even worse there are numerous class action lawsuits which have already been filed, one of which has been dismissed but there are many, many others in the works. The nail in the YELP coffin? GOOGLE is a powerful competitor which recently acquired Zagat. The removal of links to Google searches will considerably reduce Yelp traffic.No wonder Jeremy Stoppelman and other top brass absconded with 36M in Series E funding by dumping shares in advance of this sham IPO.

I used to love Yelp. I used to use Citysearch and then it seemed like everyone was switching over to Yelp and so did I. I used it mostly to find good places to eat, the best places to eat since I'm a bit of a foodie. I trusted it. That was until I decided to try a 4 1/2 star rated sushi place in Laguna Beach that turned out to be a total disappointment. I couldn't understand why my experience was so different from all the reviewers who raved about the place. I started feeling like maybe I was the oddball out who didn't know good sushi when I ate it. But I've been eating sushi for years. I scrolled down further on the listing and saw some similar opinions as mine so I knew I wasn't going crazy. I began to question the legitimacy of the reviews on Yelp. I also didn't like how food trucks began showing up at the top of the list for the best places to eat. There were times when 7 of the top 10 food places were food trucks. I just didn't understand that either. So I questioned some more. I don't think it's Yelp's fault. They have simply gotten too big. I do appreciate that they are diligently trying to fight the illegitimate reviews by having the review filter. Although it makes it harder for the legitimate reviews to get through. It's the price I suppose. So yelp for me used to be 5 stars but now it's 3. I think I use them more now just to see what's in the area and will rely on good ol word of mouth for good places to eat from now on.

I agree with the fact that Yelp.com does have problems with its filtering in terms of filtering out positive reviews and only allowing on negative reviews.

Another problem with the site is that sometimes posting reviews is not always an easy thing especially in getting all the preliminary details right.

However the site also offers some great features and is still useful when it comes to exposing bad businesses. Just remember that Yelp like other review sites do not post reviews so they cannot be blamed for what goes on to the site.

However they should have the decency to include both the good and the bad reports of a company or website so that all can make up their own minds about the quality of a company or website as a whole

I am an owner of recently open Thai restaurant. Below is solely my personal experience with Yelp that I would like to share.

1. Biggest mistake I made was talking to Yelp. Once they know I own the restaurant they keep on calling to get us to subscribe to $300 per month advertise with them. There is nothing wrong with that; however, there are no reason for us to advertise on a site where I don't think it portrays business fairly.

2. Filtered system is bogus. All of our legitimate positive review got filtered and they don't filtered bad review. We would be 4 star restaurant, but it keep us at 3.5 star (like that matter, but again I think it is not fair)

3. I used to use Yelp and review restaurant and service. More and more unfair practice I might stop them completely.

4. Sad but I have to say this Yelp's customers (more than 90%) are cheap and rude. We used opentable reservation and we can see the world different between yelp's customer and open table customer. Opentable's customer who actually dine at the restaurant can review the restaurant. On yelp, you can't even tell when they dine at the restaurant or what they said is directly from their experience not from competitor or someone who hate the restaurant.

As much as I like their idea of website, I hope Google place and their newly create restaurant review take over them. Yelp is not good for small business.

I have learned that all of my Yelp reviews are being filtered. I had only been a casual member of Yelp, with just two reviews over the past few months, but all of them are filtered? All of them? Really? What's the point of me bothering to review, then?

In researching why my reviews are filtered, I found several other aspects of Yelp that lead me to close my account:

(1) There is no easy way to contact Yelp or request assistance.

(2) The FAQ information provided me with no help whatsoever, re: 'Why are my reviews being filtered?', 'What should I do to stop this from happening?', 'How do I have my reviews un-filtered?'

(3) Broader googling for help on this issue suggested that my reviews might automatically become un-filtered if I add more information into my profile and write more reviews.

(4) Attempting to write more reviews resulted in this error:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access this server.
Apache Server at yelp.com.

(5) Attempting to revise my profile lead me to realize some of the fields I was expected to fill out were on such ridiculously twee topics as "Current Crush" and "Don't Tell Anyone Else But...", leading me to believe Yelp considers 10-year-old girls to be its median demographic.

Due to my dissatisfaction with all of these issues, I have deleted my reviews from Yelp – including one review which had been flagged 'Useful' despite being filtered – and moved them to a profile I have just created in Google Places.

I have directed Yelp to close my account forthwith.

Yelp is hot right now, i hope they crash and burn. Yes my account just got cancelled, and i have just spent several hours checking out others experience on different sites. Go ahead, if your a business use them while they last. If your looking for a place to go, filtered reviews which lead to deleted reviews are more of the truth. Yelp will probably change this soon. Don't believe anything on yelp. Its a shakedown operation for businesses where positive reviews are the carrot and negative reviews the stick. For us, the curious public, its just a road they walk.

So I have mixed feelings for this website. It's more of a love dislike relationship.
Besides using this site find all the great places around my area or when I travel, it also shows me the places I shouldn't visit. I'm a pretty decent guy when it comes to places with reviews lower than 3 stars. I give them the benefit of the doubt and read at least 5-6 different reviews before choosing it.
Always keep in mind what kind of person is reviewing, how many stars they rated other places, the reason there were complaining, etc etc. They're people out there who are just complete d-bags (seriously).
Beside using yelp, I'm all for" word of mouth" and even television (man vs food :D ). I'm not even done with talking about yelp itself!

What I've heard (and hearing just on a radio station), they had a interview with one of the head ponchos on yelp. Explaining about the system where they filter good reviews and bad reviews. Supposedly they try to sell ads to certain business and "explain" to them they can help get rid of bad reviews... and increase the good ones to show up. Some say "no" and start noticing bad reviews filtering out more. I'm not sure what station it was, but you can try finding it online. There's a lot more to it as well. Just google it.

Again it's just mixed feelings. Even hearing that, I still use yelp and usually right good reviews for a lot of the places I go to. Only a few i wrote bad, but not to many. Pretty considerate guy. Good yelping!

PS. This site jabber is pretty much the yelp format for websites :)

ANNOUNCEMENT:

We have recently implemented a system to outsmart yelp from hiding our filtered reviews:

Step 1- First of all, if you're advertising with yelp, we suggest you stop doing so and shift that money to optimize your own web site instead

Step 2- Have a graphic designer make a yelp badge that is placed on your web site. It should say "we have... filtered and unfiltered reviews on yelp".

Step 3- When a visitor clicks on the badge, it will go to another page ON YOUR OWN WEB SITE (instead of going to yelp's. (why help them get traffic and rank higher anyways)?

Step 4- On this page have your graphic designer get a screen capture (picture) of all your filtered and unfiltered reviews and have them pasted together onto one page (in 2 sections, the top section to be unfiltered reviews, leave a space, and then the lower section the filtered reviews).

Now, all your reviews (filtered and unfiltered) will be visible to all your web site's visitors.

5- Add the following words on the top:

"for your convenience, we have combined all of our filtered and unfiltered reviews on one page for you to view. If youd like to go to our live yelp page, please click here -------"

This is done so that your potential clients will not feel like you're trying to hide something or trying to cheat the system.

6- Be sure to update your unfiltered yelp page every few weeks.

Advantages of doing this:

1- Your visitors will stay on your web site instead of being re-directed to yelp's

2- Your visitors can't be redirected to your competitors page (unless they choose to go to your live yelp page).

3- No more being a slave to yelp's algorithm

4- Yelp would not benefit from getting traffic from you and higher rankings on google.

5- This system cost us only $150 to implement

Just be sure to shift that $300 per month on yelp advertising and put it into KEYWORDS that people will search for.

**Please pass this on to all small business owners that may benefit from this.