Why you should ignore Yelp, Urban Spoon, Google et al.

I would say most of the people who post on this board are of above average intelligence. It's good you can filter the bad reviews, especially when there are many to sort through.

However I would not say the general population is so savvy ESPECIALLY when there are only a couple of reviews period and they are bad. We just started a new business and I've done a lot of SEO work to get our website up in the rankings, but somehow Yelp surpasses it in multiple searches. So Yelp is the first thing many potential customers are seeing about us.

Needless to say I've been scared to death that a competitor would write a couple of fake reviews to slam us. Or one person has a bad experience and takes it to the internet without even contacting us. How many people would see those couple of reviews and just click the next link? There's no telling.

I don't know if this company is a scam or not but I can certainly sympathize with someone who would try and use them, especially if it was to balance out dishonest negative reviews against them. As a new business you almost have to be proactive to get a couple of initial reviews because you can't wait a year for them to just happen and leave yourself open to being slammed in the meantime. It could literally destroy your business.

Jason,
Good points. A suggestion: actively ask your clientele that if they had a great experience, to post it on Yelp, UrbanSpoon, etc. Maybe a little note with their check so it's not putting them on the spot. Or train your staff that if a guest comments that their food was great, to suggest that you'd really appreciate it if they'd post it somewhere. No pressure just a genuine appreciation. As a new business, people can be very receptive to this if done with the right tone- if you are good ,people can appreciate being able to help. I've been the recipient of this approach a couple of times in my travels, and if done right it can be very positive.
Deb

No Jason- you can get railroaded or you can actually stand up and say- hey, this is bullshit, let me show you how this is bullshit and actually have a salient argument.

Yelp cannot KILL your business unless you let them. Stand up for yourself for chrissakes. It's literally a scam. Spread the word, don't fall victim.

After some of the atrocious grammar and spelling I have attempted to read in some of these online "reviews" I have pretty much disregarded any of them as credible. And, yes, I am smart enough to wade through the "It wuz good" and "There food sux" reviews to find the ones that look quasi legit, but to be honest, it's not just worth my time or effort. I would rather check out the restaurants website and then make a risk-based decision.

All of these online "review" sites are bunk if you ask me.

No Jason- you can get railroaded or you can actually stand up and say- hey, this is bullshit, let me show you how this is bullshit and actually have a salient argument.

Yelp cannot KILL your business unless you let them. Stand up for yourself for chrissakes. It's literally a scam. Spread the word, don't fall victim.

I'm not sure I'm following you. Are you saying you can demand Yelp remove the reviews or something?

I disagree that Yelp could not kill a new business. Our business, for example, can only be found via advertising or word of mouth. We have no store front yet. If you are initially depending on internet marketing to drive your traffic, and your business gets a few bad reviews, while your competitors...in business for years, have ten or twenty positive reviews, VERY few people are going to say "hmm, these are probably bogus I'll give this new business with the bad ratings a chance." I mean just a few lost customers could be the difference in not having the cash flow to pay your bills, and you'll be done quickly.

Keep in mind all businesses don't have the turnover or volume of customers that restaurants do so a few misses here or there can be a big difference.

Of course we could not use Yelp but to get our site rankings up it is pretty important for SEO. And so far we have not been subject to any fake reviews, thank god. But it still makes me very nervous.

I would say most of the people who post on this board are of above average intelligence. It's good you can filter the bad reviews, especially when there are many to sort through.

However I would not say the general population is so savvy ESPECIALLY when there are only a couple of reviews period and they are bad. We just started a new business and I've done a lot of SEO work to get our website up in the rankings, but somehow Yelp surpasses it in multiple searches. So Yelp is the first thing many potential customers are seeing about us.

Needless to say I've been scared to death that a competitor would write a couple of fake reviews to slam us. Or one person has a bad experience and takes it to the internet without even contacting us. How many people would see those couple of reviews and just click the next link? There's no telling.

I don't know if this company is a scam or not but I can certainly sympathize with someone who would try and use them, especially if it was to balance out dishonest negative reviews against them. As a new business you almost have to be proactive to get a couple of initial reviews because you can't wait a year for them to just happen and leave yourself open to being slammed in the meantime. It could literally destroy your business.

Jason,
Good points. A suggestion: actively ask your clientele that if they had a great experience, to post it on Yelp, UrbanSpoon, etc. Maybe a little note with their check so it's not putting them on the spot. Or train your staff that if a guest comments that their food was great, to suggest that you'd really appreciate it if they'd post it somewhere. No pressure just a genuine appreciation. As a new business, people can be very receptive to this if done with the right tone- if you are good ,people can appreciate being able to help. I've been the recipient of this approach a couple of times in my travels, and if done right it can be very positive.
Deb

We are doing this but I'm pretty sure it's still against yelp rules. But well worth the risk. Thing is you have to be careful to find people who are already real Yelpers, or you get caught in the flip side where the reviewer only has one review, so potential customers think you just created an account to write a review about yourself, which is almost as bad (IMO).

Jason,

It's not against Yelp rules to ask customers to review you ( or TripAdvisor, OpenTable or Urbanspoon). This from Yelp:

Should I ask customers to write reviews for my business?
Probably not. It's a slippery slope between the customer who is so delighted by her experience that she takes it upon herself to write a glowing review and the customer who is "encouraged" to write a favorable review in exchange for a special discount. And let's be candid: most business owners are only going to solicit reviews from their happy customers, not the unhappy ones. Over time, these self-selected reviews create intrinsic bias in the business listing — a bias that savvy consumers can smell from a mile away. Don't be surprised, then, if your solicited reviews get filtered by Yelp's automated review filter.

You can deal with the later by suggesting "If you are an on-line review kind of person, we'd appreciate you sharing your views. " Only after./ as tendering a Bill so they don't think it influences anything. Do not EVER ask friends to post something for you; not only is that dishonest, but my experience is that they tend to write overly glowing reports which do not pass the sniff test and will likely get caught in fraud filters.

Personally, I don't care much for Yelp and only use it to find close places when travelling ( which it is very good for). Urbanspoon and OpenTable are good sources; I use and post on TripAdvisor while travelling ( but rarely go to their highest recommended places as it tends not to be my tastes).

Deb

Jason,

Personally, I don't care much for Yelp and only use it to find close places when travelling ( which it is very good for). Urbanspoon and OpenTable are good sources; I use and post on TripAdvisor while travelling ( but rarely go to their highest recommended places as it tends not to be my tastes).

Deb

Thanks for that info.

I don't use Yelp much either, but for me its more of just a situation of someone googles "dog walking business" and boom, there it is.

Probably the same for restaurants. People aren't going to yelp initially but they google "pizza louisville" and yelp pops right up.

Coming late to the fray...

Put me in the category of those who believe they can (to a large degree) separate the wheat from the chaff. While I have never been a fan of Yelp, I do use Urbanspoon (and have posted 30-some reviews, most of them positive). While it's true that you do in fact run into the occasional (obvious) "drive-by", I have been equally struck by the number of reviews that carry the stench of an "inside the house" counter-punch. Overall though I find most of the reviews to be an honest...albeit often poorly written...documentation of a persons dining experience. As much as anything else, what I look at for when I pull up a place on Urbanspoon are trends. If it's a new place, I won't put much stock in the first 4 or 5 reviews...or the fact that the owner has found 20 people to click "like" for a 100% positive rating. On the other hand if the place has been around for a period of time and they've got a positive rating of 62% and a boatload of negative reviews, I'm probably not going to try them. Conversely, if they've got an approval rating in the 90-something percentile along with a couple of dozen "must try" reviews I'll be beating their door down. The other thing I find myself doing, particularly when someone posts a negative review, is to check that individuals other reviews...is there a pattern or trend here ? Are they giving honest opinions or just taking pot-shots ? Speaking strictly to Urbanspoon, while I can certainly sympathize with the restauranteur that receives what they consider an undeserved or (in some instances) suspect review, I am also of the opinion that long-term a restaurants ratings/reviews will give a fairly accurate picture of the public's satisfaction.

I'm not sure I'm following you. Are you saying you can demand Yelp remove the reviews or something?

I disagree that Yelp could not kill a new business. Our business, for example, can only be found via advertising or word of mouth. We have no store front yet. If you are initially depending on internet marketing to drive your traffic, and your business gets a few bad reviews, while your competitors...in business for years, have ten or twenty positive reviews, VERY few people are going to say "hmm, these are probably bogus I'll give this new business with the bad ratings a chance." I mean just a few lost customers could be the difference in not having the cash flow to pay your bills, and you'll be done quickly.

Keep in mind all businesses don't have the turnover or volume of customers that restaurants do so a few misses here or there can be a big difference.

Of course we could not use Yelp but to get our site rankings up it is pretty important for SEO. And so far we have not been subject to any fake reviews, thank god. But it still makes me very nervous.

This thread is going off the rails here- let me put it back on track.

What I mean is this- what is going on on these sites is a load of horse shit. We literally have companies and restaurants paying people who have never eaten at the restaurant to post positive reviews to counteract the negative reviews that they themselves have posted. It is a scam. And even without the scam aspect, there are companies who restaurants pay to populate the site with positive reviews of a restaurant they have never actually eaten at. It's not hard to go online, look at a menu and post a false positive review.

What I mean is I really think as independent restaurants you can just sit there and let yourself be bullied and play along, or you can start a larger dialogue within the restaurant community about what is actually going on. Talk to the news, talk to robin, talk to your guests. You can be bullied or actually say- "Hey, what is going on here is wrong."

And Steve- Again- this isn't intended to be a discussion on whether reviews from normal people mean as much or are worthwhile, that's a separate debate. I am literally talking about fraud. I don't believe this is about "separating the wheat from the chaff," there's no way of knowing whether any of these reviews are legitimate or not. As long as restaurants are paying for false reviews, every review should be suspect. Even if you have a profile and numerous posted reviews and you're charming and funny and articulate, there's no way of knowing whether a marketing firm has paid you to do that. Again- I could spend 2 minutes on the internet and pull together a favorable review for any restaurant I've never been to, and (as much as my rants on HotBytes may prove otherwise) I'm fairly articulate and witty. It would be easy to tell you what I thought of the Swordfish with the peanut som-tom I just had at Corbett's and how attentive and funny our server was- you know the woman with the brown hair? Except that I have never eaten at Corbett's.

I really think that there needs to be a discussion in the restaurant community about making this reality known to everyone. People looking at these sites should know that some, likely many of the reviews they are reading are completely fabricated. These companies wouldn't be offering this service so aggressively if there wasn't money to be made. The media needs to be made aware and deal with this more aggressively. I think restaurant owners should get together and demand an answer from Yelp et al on how they are going to prevent fraud. There should be an attempt to police this behavior. That is the responsibility of the owners of these sites, which have a very real effect on very real people who own restaurants and also people who work in restaurants for that matter. The added steps on hotbytes may make signing up a little tougher, but at least when I read a review on here I know the person actually dined there.

From that article:

Here's part of the problem: There are legitimate reputation improvement companies out there. If you run into a "real" negative online review, you have options. Online expert Matthew Hunt with smallbusinessonlinecoach.com says:

Look at it as a positive - If it's a real review, use it as a learning experience.
Contact the reviewer - Thank them for their feedback, ask how you can make it right and if they wouldn't mind amending their review.
Be on the offensive - Counteract that bad review with a bunch of good ones.

How is this legitimate? If you are posting manufactured positive reviews why is anyone taking these sites even remotely seriously? The model is seriously flawed and is a great example of why there is no substitute for legitimate journalism.

Also- the fact that these shakedowns are occurring so frequently is pretty disturbing to me.

The "real" companies are very expensive, often more than an independent can afford. I've done some work for one particular chain. We went in and tabbed all of their comments on all such sites, and on twitter, and then compared these reviews - along with each specific comment - to those for each of the chains in their customers' decision sets. In this way, we could follow trends, check out exactly what problems were being brought up for each restaurant option, and then went in to validate our client's problems via mystery diners. We rewrote the training manual to overcome problems, helped them with menu chainges, worked with chefs to address customer issues, and developed promotions to bring people back into the restaurant to verify improvements. The payout was measured in many months, and most larger chains are doing this as a matter of course.

Actually, the legitimate places are simply monitoring customer service and customer satisfaction, which we do for many more manufacturers (who understand the value, and who can afford the studies), colleges, and universities than for restaurants.

There seems to be 2 schools of thought going on here. Jeremy J. brought up the fraudulent business and most posters are more concerned that THEY won't be victimized by a phony review but they are thinking only from the diners' perspective. (I.e. " I won't be snookered into dining at a crap restaurant because I can sort through the 'drive by bashings' or the self promoting sunshine.") Jeremy J is legitimately concerned that businesses are experiencing the equivalent to an arm twisting or black mail. Something none of us should be shrugging off. It seems marketing in general as taken a very ugly turn in the last few years. Once upon a time it was all about letting the public know where you were, what services you provide, what your hours of operation were and what experience you had. Now it's all more like an episode of Survivor and about as real. (Which is to say not real at all.)

A million thanks for Jeremy for bringing this up. I agree with all of his points. These sites are the bane of a new restaurant's existence. Instead of addressing a flaw while in the restaurant, they will BASH you for a problem that could have been easily corrected. Yes, a restaurant has the ability to respond to some of these sites but really, who has the time to deal with it all?

The bottom line is that these sites are parasitic. The name and image of Taco Punk is trade marked material, yet these sites use it freely, without my permission, to make money. Just like music played, royalties should be paid and full creative control should be granted over the use of trade marked material. None of these sites have one shred of credibility, yet when I Google Taco Punk, a fairly negative profile is revealed. My staff and I have worked ceaselessly to provide excellent service and awesome food yet some hack can burn us for anything they want without any credibility or accountability what so ever.

Yes, smart people who know food can figure out what is legit, but when alot of people make decisions to try a new place, a Google search is their first stop. If Taco Punk was a thriving business I might be able to ignore these sites. But we are struggling to stay in business and I can't help but wonder how much influence these sites do have -especially for visiting diners. As no one in the food service industry has one shred of respect for these sites, the lawyers will eventually get involved. Until then, just remember to think for yourself and support your independent local establishments. We need all the help we can get.

This is a good discusion topic that was worth spending time to comb through.

As a consumer these sights are of little/no value to me. They are a waste of time. I've come to learn that my blood pressure is consistantly 120/80 because I'm not going to engage a market analysis to get something to eat. Nor would I refer to consumer forums of this type for viable info on plumbers, roofers, etc.

However, I can understand the concern of business owners. This is serious stuff with serious consequences. Two lawyer friends of mine who share a practice back in my hometown of St Louis spent the better part of an evening explaining how much time, effort, and money they spent selecting and working with consultants in an effort to bump and maintain their website link to page one of Google for lawyers in St Louis. They used to just advertise in the Yellow Pages and that was that. Now it is a wild goose chase. It was a very informative, insightful, and even disturbing conversation.

The bottom line is that these sites are parasitic.

We have a winner: The perfect "P" word.

What's kind of scary is that the premise of Jeremy's post is absolutely correct.

I don't even look at those sites. I pay attention to LHB and OpenTable- those matter. Short of a bi-annual google audit 'Stephen Dennison Chef Mixologist,' that's about all you get (hey, I'm 20 pages now! Big-flippen deal)

Really- I just care about the person across the bar and hope that they enjoy my hospitality.

It beats the hell out of anything anybody can ever post. That handshake and that hug. I think it catches up, in the long run...