Biz First ranks city's top 24 (according to Yelp!)

[Robin Garr]

Biz First ranks city's top 24 (according to Yelp!) If you have the patience to sit through the slideshow, you'll be ... amused?

http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/n ... 1448483497

Amusing is a good description of that list! While there are a couple that belong on the list the majority of them certainly don't then again look where the list came from.

I wonder how much extortion money Yelp pulled in to make that list?

I wonder how much extortion money Yelp pulled in to make that list?

I don't think it really takes extortion money to be high up on the list. Rather, the people who write reviews on yelp and other lists like that are the type of people who don't really visit the better restaurants in town on a regular basis. I bet that a very small proportion of the people who post here regularly write reviews on yelp for example.

Yes, but Yelp extorts restaurants in order to "squash" the negative reviews. So a crappy restaurant with deep pockets to pay for protection will be higher ranked than the little guy with an incredible restaurant that can't afford to pay the mob. (add to that any "pressure" "anonymous" negative reviews might apply)

So, you can bet a high rank on Yelp is bought and paid for.

I don't understand everyone hate of Yelp. Yes, the company itself has some shady tactics, I get THAT part, but the fact is there is a great demand for people to be able to read reviews of their peers and this company fills the niche. I don't necessarily agree with some of the ways they make money but I'm not sure how common a practice the extortion thing is. I have had a legitimately unfair bad review for my own company (person complaining about a policy, not even actual service they received) and Yelp would not remove it nor did they offer to remove it for money.

That said...ok the company itself is bad...but what is the hate with the reviewers. Do you guys hate amazon reviews as well? Should people not be able to review things on the internet unless they are an expert in that field? Even if you only like expert reviews, there are a lot of issues with that as well. You usually never know the actual qualifications or biases of an "expert". And no disrespect to Robin, I like his reviews, but sometimes I just want to know what "normal" people think of a restaurant as well.

To dispute a couple of your points: what gives you the idea a high rank is bought and paid for? If you search restaurants in Louisville there are NO chains anywhere even close to being in the top results. All locals. And some of them extremely small at that. Hell, Yummy Pollo is the top result right now. Then you take a restaurant with obviously deep pockets, Mesh, and it is at 28 but only has a 3.5 star review...so why aren't they getting all the bad reviews removed? Why dont they have better reviews than Yummy Pollo, or Con Huevos or the Feed Bag?

Also what gives you the idea that people that write reviews don't go to the better restaurants? Huh? There is not a single chain in the top results anywhere on yelp. What restaurants do you feel are missing from the top 50 results? I would love to know. There are some pretty great freaking restaurants on there...MBB, Grind, Hammerheads, Harvest, Taco Luchador, Holy Grale, Mayan Cafe, Fontleroys, ATG, Joellas, Le Moo, Game, Con Huevos, etc etc. Where are you eating that isn't on the list?

Yes, I realize some reviews are entitled jerkwads who will write completely baseless bad reviews. But that is a minority. Unfortunately it just comes with the territory. But any half intelligent person can pick these out of the bunch and separate them from legitimate bad reviews.

Personally I don't understand why people on this board AREN'T writing yelp reviews. You know a lot about food and good restaurants and you would help out the businesses you love by giving them good reviews. It just makes no sense to me.

[Robin Garr]

Do you guys hate amazon reviews as well?

Jason, it seems to me that the big difference there is that Amazon preferences real-name, verified reviews. Yelp makes its money on anonymous reviews. I'd rather see our gang reviewing here than on Yelp, but admittedly I'm in the position of the mom'n'pop hardware store watching Home Depot rake in the bucks.

I do agree with a lot of what you say, though. It's overly simplistic to argue that Yelp reviews are no good because Yelp has a bad reputation for playing games at the business-to-business level.

Jason, I think Robin hit the nail on the head when he said that the big difference is that all of the reviews on Yelp are anonymous! If they had some way of ensuring that people are using their real names when they write reviews I would probably completely agree with you. However because people hide behind fake names I don't trust that they are writing what they really think about a restaurant. There is also no way to ensure that the good reviews aren't all written by members of the staff of the restaurant or that bad reviews are all written by staff of competing restaurants.

Yes, I'm sure some people write reviews on yelp but because of the above conditions it's hard to determine which are honest and which are not. Combining that with Yelp's bad business practices I find it very hard to trust any reviews written there.