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Top-Ranked Travel: Businesses (Do Not) Heart Yelp

May 22, 2008 at 4:00 PM | by | Comments (2)

That "intimate," "romantic" cafe looked like the perfect place to take a first date until you Googled it and discovered it was "way too jammed with tables" and "serves everything congealed."

As the popularity of San Francisco-based review site Yelp grows, businesses are starting to criticize its amateur reviewers--because they're cutting into profits.

While the Yelp founders defend the site as giving power to the masses who comment on coffeehouses and rate restaurants, owners of the businesses under review claim an untoward relationship between the tone of reviews and the amount of advertising they've purchased on the site. One shop owner told The New York Times, "Yelp does not respect us as business owners," since users submit rankings without consequences.

We've always regarded Yelp as Citysearch minus the pop-ups, but occasionally it gives us bright ideas. How much stock do you put in "crowdsourced" review sites like Yelp?

Related Stories:
· 'The Coffee Was Lousy. The Wait Was Long.' [NYT]
· Websites coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Yelp Store]

Comments (2)

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Not much at all.

I trust professional reviewers way more than the folks on sites like Yelp.
pbb on May 22, 2008 at 4:02 PM #Permalink

so-so on the trust factor

as a san francisco resident, i often check yelp when heading to places i've never been to before. but i stop short of taking the reviews as gospel truth - i think it's easy to tell when the review writer has a personal hang up or vendetta that is coloring his/her view. and there are a lot of those bozo-authored reviews on the site. but in many cases, the reviews do reveal some basic consensus about the venue's overall vibe - what type of people love it and hate it, etc. and that can be helpful, especially if you are new to the city or visiting from out of town.

as far as trusting reviews written by the pros, that's a crazy can of worms that i can't even touch....i really want to, but i'd be here all afternoon....

kayak1 on May 22, 2008 at 5:22 PM #Permalink

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