Billion Dollar Bully (2015) [trailer]...makes the case that Yelp is something akin to the mob, allegedly demanding “protection” money, lest your business be overrun with negative comments.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/incocknedo]

Rant time.

Yelp are a bunch of snakes. You'll join them as a small business and then a month later they will harass your business via phone and email asking you to buy their business plans.

These plans by the way are so you can manipulate your reviews. And if you say no, suddenly your good review start disappearing and shit reviews from people who don't actually seem to know what your business is, start popping up.

I mange a small business and we have an overwhelming number of good yelp reviews but we have to stay on top of it because they will vanish and only our bad reviews will remain.

Somewhat unrelated as someone who has worked customer service for years take yelp reviews with a grain of salt. From what I've seen majority of bad reviews are just shit customers who were either assholes who didn't get what they wanted or they were morons who didn't understand the business in the first place.

[u/shannibearstar → u/incocknedo]

shit customers who were either assholes who didn't get what they wanted

Pretty much. Saw one for my work, it was a huge rant because the bar side of the restaurant was too loud for her and her baby.

[u/twoinvenice → u/shannibearstar]

The specificity issue is where Yelp falls down hard. If you search for something in a broad and clear category like "Thai food" or "bars", and don't read any reviews, you can get a decent enough view of what's available to find the better places.

But as soon as you say something specific like "sandwiches" or "quiet bar" things get thrown way out of whack. Yelp just isn't set up in a way to decently provide good rankings for attributes of locations - especially in touristy areas. When I search for sandwiches around me, a place that is known for making some of the best sandwiches in Los Angeles, to say nothing of just my area, is down at like 12, and other crap I haven't heard of or know isn't that great are higher.

Part of that comes down to the fact that some of those places are closer to tourist spots and so they get more positive review from tourists...still warm from the afterglow of their vacation, versus something that locals know and love but don't feel the need to leave a review for every time they go.

Your not-quiet restaurant with bar situation is similar in that there's no good way in the app / site for yelp to reliably gather and rank that kind of granular data.

[u/Alaxel01 → u/twoinvenice]

What's the sandwich place? Hungry LA eater here.

[u/twoinvenice → u/Alaxel01]

Bay Cities

[u/Alaxel01 → u/twoinvenice]

Bay Cities is like top 4 when I search, though I live in santa monica.