There's been a lot of opinion expressed on both sides for this topic - most of the feedback is overwhelmingly negative but there's a substantial number of positions which are quite positive.
However looking at specific examples I've been able to witness first hand seem to weigh in on the former, although in reading up on this one there's been some comedic uses of the review sites - such as a bistro in the US offering a discount to customers providing negative reviews. There's an unknown amount of trade for former "SEO Consultants" who are now plying their trade to review site optimisation too, inferring that there's a sizeable economy surrounding these platforms.
Not only did it make a mockery of the review system on Yelp specifically but it highlights how abusive some of the platforms can appear. For example we got a local tradesman to fit the new carpets in our home and whilst talking to him he specifically asked us to read his reviews on Facebook, not Yelp.
Of course a comment like that is going to peak my natural curiosity so I dug a little deeper whilst the carpets were being laid, uncovering all sorts of fun & games (and stress) had trying to deal with the Yelp reviews. Having a quick look at his business Yelp page I can see what he means.
Of the 23 reviews that I could see at the time, 12 had been removed by Yelp as violating it's "terms of service", and 9 were "not recommended". This left two valid and "recommended" reviews - as far as Yelp itself were concerned - that were viable views on the business involved.
I couldn't understand the criteria match involved as the two remaining reviews were from Qype user accounts, and Qype hasn't existed as a platform since it was absorbed into Yelp in October 2013. To my mind more recent reviews over the previous twelve months are more likely to be representative of a business than something logged about a problem in three years previously.
For example, a restaurant can change hands and improve it's quality of service as a result; or a museum changes exhibits regularly providing differing levels of engagement over a longer period of time. TripAdvisor solves this problem by refusing any reviews over 12 months old - although they may still be visible their priority and importance in the overall business rating are lowered slightly too. On the face of it that makes more sense to me and allows business to atone for any past mistakes (as well as ensuring they don't rely on previously high ratings to boost their search rankings).
Yelp does not do this from any of the business reviews I've seen. It tries to hide the majority of reviews with a greyed link at the bottom of the page (enlarged in this image for ease of reference).
However looking at specific examples I've been able to witness first hand seem to weigh in on the former, although in reading up on this one there's been some comedic uses of the review sites - such as a bistro in the US offering a discount to customers providing negative reviews. There's an unknown amount of trade for former "SEO Consultants" who are now plying their trade to review site optimisation too, inferring that there's a sizeable economy surrounding these platforms.
Not only did it make a mockery of the review system on Yelp specifically but it highlights how abusive some of the platforms can appear. For example we got a local tradesman to fit the new carpets in our home and whilst talking to him he specifically asked us to read his reviews on Facebook, not Yelp.
Of course a comment like that is going to peak my natural curiosity so I dug a little deeper whilst the carpets were being laid, uncovering all sorts of fun & games (and stress) had trying to deal with the Yelp reviews. Having a quick look at his business Yelp page I can see what he means.
Of the 23 reviews that I could see at the time, 12 had been removed by Yelp as violating it's "terms of service", and 9 were "not recommended". This left two valid and "recommended" reviews - as far as Yelp itself were concerned - that were viable views on the business involved.
I couldn't understand the criteria match involved as the two remaining reviews were from Qype user accounts, and Qype hasn't existed as a platform since it was absorbed into Yelp in October 2013. To my mind more recent reviews over the previous twelve months are more likely to be representative of a business than something logged about a problem in three years previously.
For example, a restaurant can change hands and improve it's quality of service as a result; or a museum changes exhibits regularly providing differing levels of engagement over a longer period of time. TripAdvisor solves this problem by refusing any reviews over 12 months old - although they may still be visible their priority and importance in the overall business rating are lowered slightly too. On the face of it that makes more sense to me and allows business to atone for any past mistakes (as well as ensuring they don't rely on previously high ratings to boost their search rankings).
Yelp does not do this from any of the business reviews I've seen. It tries to hide the majority of reviews with a greyed link at the bottom of the page (enlarged in this image for ease of reference).
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| Suspect Carpety Reviews |
The rest of the reviews - which are almost all positive from what I've read - are hidden in a "...reviews that are not currently recommended" moniker, and labelled essentially as irrelevant.
Yelp makes the following statement about this logic:
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| Yelp statement on "Not recommended" reviews page |
Now there's a few interesting sentences in there I'd like to focus on which don't seem to tie-in with a common-sensical approach. The first (highlighted yellow) seems to indicate that the reviews are assessed on quality and reliability combined with user activity. I don't understand how that's possible in Pete's case as there are a number of reviews in the last twelve months from people who have created a Yelp account purely to commend Pete's carpeting ability.
But the two reviews which are being counted also indicate those users only ever made one review, and are from 2013 - neither those reviews or most of those on the "not recommended" page have any Yelp "friends" which may be the algorithm metric involved. Doesn't seem to tally. So the Qype user reviews giving Pete 5 stars are "not recommended", but the Qype reviewers panning Pete are on the front page.
Pete doesn't advertise on Yelp and rejected their sales teams suggestions that he buy a business account, shortly afterwards he says the problems really started. Customer reviews got moved away from the front page and his Yelp star rating shown alongside the search result dropped to a one star. Of course Yelp vehemently reject any suggestion that the two events are linked but Yelp only have a 2 star rating on their own website.
After Pete fitted the carpets I added my own review for his business on Yelp - creating a new account in the process. I also added a review for another business I'd used in the previous six months just to see if that was the deciding factor but, as if by magic, my review went from the front page to the "not recommended" page within 24 hours.
So going back to the Yelp statement the blue highlighted note about advertisers getting preferential treatment cannot really be proved or disproved without actually seeing the underlying algorithm first hand. However the majority of positive reviews for this specific business would nominally give Pete a 4.8 out of 5 (4 star service). The reviews de-listed because they "infringed the terms and conditions" would provide a small increase over that.
Should business owners like Pete care about Yelp? I'm not so sure - we did a lot of searching on other platforms such as Check-a-trade and social media; on both of those areas Pete scored highly based on recent customer reviews. Everyone gets to make up for past mistakes.
I also recently had an interesting conversation with another platform provider - Trustpilot.co.uk - who apply reviews of businesses and websites. I thought I'd try something related to my anti-spam activities and lodge appropriately negative (but entirely honest) reviews about two data trading businesses. The two businesses involved are AdView and UK Staff Search - both trading brands of Roxburghe / Dash Marketing who scrape job seeker details from jobs boards such as Jobsite.co.uk, pretend to operate in the US and then sell the personal data to various unsolicited marketing firms back in the UK.
The review went something like this:
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| Actually not as detailed or specific as it could be |
The review omits details about how the company broke the law (DPA & PECR) but notes the basic facts.
Both business lodged a complaint about my reviews, and Trustpilot were of the opinion that despite AdView illegally acquiring my data and then spamming me I didn't qualify as a customer. Despite that being the very definition of an Adview customer they deemed my review in breach of their terms and conditions. And also despite AdView staff writing most of their reviews themselves. Perhaps if word of this post gets to them this review will also be removed by Trustpilot but I was completely unimpressed with their reasoning and position.
However the USS review stood and today someone marked it as "Helpful". That's the real purpose behind these platforms - finding good opinions and using them to choose the right product or service.
Overall I'm going to continue taking all reviews and opinion with a pinch of salt and actually talk to people to see if they know their trade. It's crazy but it might just work.
