For some reason the title kept me away from reading this article as I saw it climb the ranking on here. Now that it’s AOTD I figured I should give it a read and wow it was worth it! I learned a lot and will see online reviews from a new perspective.
I tend to discard the one stars as disgruntled blue meanies and five stars as fanboys. I look for those that provide some pluses and some decencies. Not perfect methodology I am sure marketers have hacked right through that as well.
Makes sense to me.
I’m not someone who writes reviews. The only time I’m emoted to write one is when I’m frustrated with something so I assume that review pages are heavily biased
The best Italian food I had was in a restaurant without menu and a chef who abused customers that refused to accept cheese on his pasta. It was like eating with your Italian grandfather you never knew you had
Old school newspapers used to claim that they had a firewall between editorial and advertising department. From being in the restaurant business we knew this was not entirely true. If you wanted their restaurant reviewer to visit any time soon it always helped to signup for an ad campaign.
I guess Yelp just entirely dispensed with that charade of sorts.
good point. I'd mostly prefer out in the open, bold-faced extortion over pretending you weren't but...not extorting a business at all would be pretty cool too haha. I guess the difference is the democratization of a reviewer, you could likely opt out of a reviewer visiting but you can't opt-out of being on Yelp
There is something to this, an idea of cultural betters really knowing something about a subject and being able to make suggestions. Experts, that is what we called them. They could recommend a good restaurant or movie or wine depending on their expertise. We've democratized expertise, not sure that was all bad, but it also wasn't all good. Sadly, it did come with a healthy dose of extortion! Interesting points ChetD and Alexa.
In the aftermath of his press, he’s become a celebrity in the restaurant scene — a Davide who went up against a tech Goliath and emerged self-empowered.
“I’m the only person who beat them at their own game,” he says. “I left a black mark on that company. I trolled them. I humiliated them. And now, they avoid me like the plague.”
This is a fantastic article. What guts this guy has, creativity, dark humor, integrity. We could use a few politicians with his boldness and dedication to values.
I’ve read countless articles like this , I DESPISE YELP-the downfall of modern dining. I’m so glad I’m in an industry (packaged liquor goods to-go) where my yelp review doesn’t mean anything.
I’ve seen waitresses/chefs almost on the brink of tears over a bad review. I refuse to ever visit their site... ever
fabulous article. Yelp deserves all the trolling coming at them.
I recall when I was in the corporate world we went through a major merger. Two 700 location healthcare businesses combined. A Yelp salesman tried to charge us hundreds of thousands of dollars to update the listings after our merger.
My director put it best "if they want to have the right information on their site why should we pay for it?". It was absurd, and pretty gross how they went about it. The calls truly felt like extortion the way they spoke to us about what would happen if we didn't take them up on their offer.
I have nothing but bad tales from both corporate and small business days. they are like the mafia, it's gross business practices.
For some reason the title kept me away from reading this article as I saw it climb the ranking on here. Now that it’s AOTD I figured I should give it a read and wow it was worth it! I learned a lot and will see online reviews from a new perspective.
I tend to discard the one stars as disgruntled blue meanies and five stars as fanboys. I look for those that provide some pluses and some decencies. Not perfect methodology I am sure marketers have hacked right through that as well.
Makes sense to me. I’m not someone who writes reviews. The only time I’m emoted to write one is when I’m frustrated with something so I assume that review pages are heavily biased
got to love snarky ambitious business owners.
The best Italian food I had was in a restaurant without menu and a chef who abused customers that refused to accept cheese on his pasta. It was like eating with your Italian grandfather you never knew you had
Old school newspapers used to claim that they had a firewall between editorial and advertising department. From being in the restaurant business we knew this was not entirely true. If you wanted their restaurant reviewer to visit any time soon it always helped to signup for an ad campaign.
I guess Yelp just entirely dispensed with that charade of sorts.
good point. I'd mostly prefer out in the open, bold-faced extortion over pretending you weren't but...not extorting a business at all would be pretty cool too haha. I guess the difference is the democratization of a reviewer, you could likely opt out of a reviewer visiting but you can't opt-out of being on Yelp
There is something to this, an idea of cultural betters really knowing something about a subject and being able to make suggestions. Experts, that is what we called them. They could recommend a good restaurant or movie or wine depending on their expertise. We've democratized expertise, not sure that was all bad, but it also wasn't all good. Sadly, it did come with a healthy dose of extortion! Interesting points ChetD and Alexa.
This is great!
Fun and entertaining article.
This is a fantastic article. What guts this guy has, creativity, dark humor, integrity. We could use a few politicians with his boldness and dedication to values.
I’ve read countless articles like this , I DESPISE YELP-the downfall of modern dining. I’m so glad I’m in an industry (packaged liquor goods to-go) where my yelp review doesn’t mean anything.
I’ve seen waitresses/chefs almost on the brink of tears over a bad review. I refuse to ever visit their site... ever
I'm glad someone is standing up to Yelp. I learned years ago that their service is useless to the consumer as well as businesses.
fabulous article. Yelp deserves all the trolling coming at them.
I recall when I was in the corporate world we went through a major merger. Two 700 location healthcare businesses combined. A Yelp salesman tried to charge us hundreds of thousands of dollars to update the listings after our merger.
My director put it best "if they want to have the right information on their site why should we pay for it?". It was absurd, and pretty gross how they went about it. The calls truly felt like extortion the way they spoke to us about what would happen if we didn't take them up on their offer.
I have nothing but bad tales from both corporate and small business days. they are like the mafia, it's gross business practices.