I move that we refer to this layout as a "webmullet".

THAT'S A GREAT IDEA even though it sucks

I don't see what they are talking about. (new window)

Sounds like the local better business bureau.

"Sir, we received a recent complaint about your business. If you buy our membership we will help you clear this complaint from our database within the next 24 hours.....if not we will take 2-3 weeks to review the claim".

"Ummm, what? I closed that business down three years ago".

"Oh, ummmmmm.....well......uh........".

OMG!! I'll bet they're the first to ever do this!
What a front runner!

1. Lie.
2. Deny.
3. Profit!

The chef gets especially annoyed when diners arrive and announce they are reviewing for Yelp.

So people who blog think they're reporters, people who write Yelp reviews think they're restaurant critics. Honestly tho', if someone came into my restaurant and announced they were critiquing us for any publication I'd take it as professional blackmail and assume they were looking for special treatment, then I'd throw their asses out.

You can sort by rating...

Complaining? That's not the Chicago way! They send one of your reviews to the back, you send one of their reviewers to the morgue.

steveo: The chef gets especially annoyed when diners arrive and announce they are reviewing for Yelp.

So people who blog think they're reporters, people who write Yelp reviews think they're restaurant critics.

And people who run news aggregating websites think they are experts on mass media.

steveo: The chef gets especially annoyed when diners arrive and announce they are reviewing for Yelp.

So people who blog think they're reporters, people who write Yelp reviews think they're restaurant critics. Honestly tho', if someone came into my restaurant and announced they were critiquing us for any publication I'd take it as professional blackmail and assume they were looking for special treatment, then I'd throw their asses out.

And rightfully so. Real restaurant critics go out of their way to not tip off the staff, as they don't want the review to be tainted. Some well-known critics wear disguises.

Smells like a plug. No news is bad news, etc.

steveo: The chef gets especially annoyed when diners arrive and announce they are reviewing for Yelp.

So people who blog think they're reporters, people who write Yelp reviews think they're restaurant critics. Honestly tho', if someone came into my restaurant and announced they were critiquing us for any publication I'd take it as professional blackmail and assume they were looking for special treatment, then I'd throw their asses out.

How pathetic must someone be to actually announce they are reviewing a restaurant on a public web site that anyone can post to? Why not just go in and say "I plan to leave a post-it note for my grandmother reviewing your establishment."

Although, having spent some time on Yelp, there are people on that site who have written 500+ reviews and think they are legitimate critics. Go against one of their reviews and they call you out.

Yelp is useful for some things, but you really need to take the reviews with a grain of salt. The most active users, whose reviews are usually featured prominently, tend to be attention seeking trend whores. For a while, my girlfriend and I used to use Yelp all the time to find new restaurants, but we got burned too many times by the bland tastes and obsession with style of the reviewers. Yelp ultimately fails for me because I can't just use their distilled down 5 star ratings because I have to individually read each review to guess the tastes and motivation of each person, which just isn't worth it to me.
While Yelp probably isn't full on blackmailing like some of the recent articles about the insinuate, it's still another ding on them that makes me not want to use their service any more.

ZAZ: The SF magazine Locus has a policy of not printing unfavorable reviews. I think that is common in print media. Advertisers don't like that stuff.

I have mixed feelings about such policies. On the one hand, it would be nice to find out if a restaurant is lousy so I don't waste a trip eating there, but on the other hand, with a limited number of pages in the magazine for reviews and an essentially infinite number of restaurants, I'd rather use the available space to find out about as many good restaurants as I can.

If you can fill all of your allotted pages with honest reviews of restaurants that the critics liked, what's the harm?

rekoil: And rightfully so. Real restaurant critics go out of their way to not tip off the staff, as they don't want the review to be tainted. Some well-known critics wear disguises.

They also hit the restaurant more than once and at different times before writing the review. They just don't write off a restaurant just because they may of gotten a bad bit of arugula during breakfast on a monday after your boyfriend dumped you the night before.

ILoveBudLight: Yelp is useful for some things, but you really need to take the reviews with a grain of salt. The most active users, whose reviews are usually featured prominently, tend to be attention seeking trend whores. For a while, my girlfriend and I used to use Yelp all the time to find new restaurants, but we got burned too many times by the bland tastes and obsession with style of the reviewers. Yelp ultimately fails for me because I can't just use their distilled down 5 star ratings because I have to individually read each review to guess the tastes and motivation of each person, which just isn't worth it to me.
While Yelp probably isn't full on blackmailing like some of the recent articles about the insinuate, it's still another ding on them that makes me not want to use their service any more.

All of this is true. I started yelping recently because hardly any businesses around here had been reviewed. It becomes a chore figuring out whether the person who gave the new local restaurant one star is actually someone with good taste or if they gave Applebee's 5 stars.

Pocket Ninja: Well, the whole thing about "cater one of our parties for free and we'll make sure you get positive reviews" seems a bit dodgy.

But as long as they're actually publishing all the reviews, I don't see why it really matters if they're appearing at the front or back. It would be one thing if they were just dumping bad reviews and only printing good ones, despite claiming to have an open review system...

I found out recently that www.babiesrus.com does exactly this. The do not publish all negative reviews but any positive review goes up almost immediately.

Agree with the sentiment that as long as they are publishing the negative reviews I don't really care.

As far as review manipulation, the worst are all those fake Amazon.com reviews. Can never trust an Amazon.com star rating.

Yahoo does this all the time... there is a shiatty Mexican restaurant in Atlanta that had a couple of raving reviews at the top of it's page, so I decided to inject some realism into the situation... my review was scrubbed completely from the list and the 5 star reviews remained in place.

Yelp has positive reviews? Since when?

The times I've been on the site, it's full of a bunch of people whining about not getting their food right away, or how long it took the waitress to refill their coffee cup on a busy opening day.


/Yeah....don't give a fark about Yelp.

I found out recently that www.babiesrus.com does exactly this. The do not publish all negative reviews but any positive review goes up almost immediately.

i found the babby to be overcooked, and the sauce in which it was served tasted too "earthy". also the toenails were not properly removed, making for an embarrasing presentation. I would definitely not order this babby again.

The chef gets especially annoyed when diners arrive and announce they are reviewing for Yelp.

This is an effective way of reviewing soup-spit.

I don't see what the stink is here. I can't really think of any place that would want to put their negative reviews up. (except a Whorehouse saying that it really sucks, but that's still not a negative)

Think about the movies,(or any business review done by the public) when was the last time you saw a "review" by patrons fresh out of the movie, when they said they thought it was 30 lbs of shiat in a 5 lb bag. Never. Seems like Yelp was just following the smartest business choice. As for blackmail, meh. You can always write a review about them.....

I have no specific experience with Yelp, but the problem I have found with most of these business review sites is the number of obviously fake reviews. The problem is only exaggerated once they start placing well in the search results.

A client of mine got reported on Rip-Off Report. This review consistently shows up at the top of the search pages, which undoubtedly hurts business. The problem is that it is written in the same broken, punctuation free english that shows up in negative reviews all over the place for my client. The same broken english also shows up singing the praises of one of his direct competitors on all of the same review sites.

ROR is yet another example of review extortion. Their policy is to never remove any review, even if it is proven to be a fake. Unless of course you sign up for their 'Corporate Advocacy Program', which can vary in price based on some arbitrary criteria. Though it's usually in the thousands of dollars.

As for positive feedback, you have to ask for it. Otherwise the majority of your reviews will be from the few customers you managed to piss off. Of course the review sites get bent out of shape when you ask for feedback (not bribing for positives, that's a different problem).

I personally take business review sites with a big grain of salt. The best I can do is try to filter out all of the B.S. and try to dig up the handful of real reviews.

I'm amazed people actually even read the reviews on sites like this. With Citysearch and Yelp, I started pretty much ignoring any 1 star or 5 star review and scanning the rest just to see if there were any problems with a place. I ultimately tried the places regardless of the reviews so I just stopped looking at all.

bravian: They also hit the restaurant more than once and at different times before writing the review. They just don't write off a restaurant just because they may of gotten a bad bit of arugula during breakfast on a monday after your boyfriend dumped you the night before.

I don't review anything on there that I haven't patronized more than once, unless I had a truly awful experience AND they didn't do anything to remedy it when I said something to the manager. Doesn't seem fair to base a review off of one visit.

I can't believe anyone would actually announce that they're reviewing on Yelp though. That's deserving of a cockpunch.

I do find that sorting by date is useful because you can find out if a place has taken a turn for the worse, or fixed earlier problems that is deflating their overall rating. Sometimes a place has a new chef and changes significantly.

I never seem to get negative reviews when I put it in the back..

Sounds like extortion.

moothemagiccow: Agh I can't stand Yelp Austin. Every thing with a glowing review is garbage and everything with a stinking one is written by some stuck up little whiner.

Yelp sucks, everything has 4 stars, 45% love the place, 10% think you're an idiot if you like the place, and the remainder are on the site looking for a prostitute.

I was reading one review site - can't remember which now - where a crappy strip-mall "Chinese" joint (like Applebees, pseudo-Chinese food and lots of overpriced mix drinks) shot up to the top of the list while I was looking for the legit, English menu / Chinese menu Chinese place by my parent's house.

Almost ALL of the positive reviews were written by a user who only had one review, of that place, and about half of them congratulated the owners by name.

When it really got good was when other users started calling it out, and then more users-with-only-one-review stepped up to defend it.

Hilarious. Reminded me of reading the AOL user logs.

Most yelpers in Seattle are vapid hipster douchebags who have no idea what good food is.

sonder: Most yelpers people in Seattle are vapid hipster douchebags who have no idea what good food is.

You should preview before posting.

SeamusFerrell: sonder: Most yelpers people in Seattle are vapid hipster douchebags who have no idea what good food is.

You should preview before posting.

To be fair, to me, most people have bad taste in food. Because, like all of us, I have unique taste buds.
My strategy is to give anything a try once or twice. Mostly word of mouth type stuff. If I really like it I will probably drag friends there at some point.

There are a few places i know of that some friends absolutely adore, but i cannot stand. Like sushi. Everyone I know has a huge hard-on for it, and i wouldn't dream of letting it anywhere near my mouth... And similarly, some of the Vietnamese or Mongolian restaurants that I love to death, they can't stand. In the end, you compromise, depending on who you are eating with or suck it up of the whole group wants sushi (they usually have a few things i can stand).

Also, like previous posters stated... it is really easy for someone with a little time to put in a bunch of 5star reviews in from a bunch of different accounts.

Bartleby the Scrivener: I found out recently that www.babiesrus.com does exactly this. The do not publish all negative reviews but any positive review goes up almost immediately.

i found the babby to be overcooked, and the sauce in which it was served tasted too "earthy". also the toenails were not properly removed, making for an embarrasing presentation. I would definitely not order this babby again.

I am sorry for your lots.

Who even uses Yelp? I predict it will be dead in a year or two.

Negative reviews in the back of the bus? Why, that's Racism!

I love the "denial" the CEO had. The sales people don't have access to the architecture of the reviews. Because of course they couldn't possibly be telling someone else who to move around how much.

You have to love denials that aren't even close to denials.

Anyone who posts on Yelp should get a swift kick in the nuts. That is all.

Infinite Insanity: SeamusFerrell: sonder: Most yelpers people in Seattle are vapid hipster douchebags who have no idea what good food is.

You should preview before posting.

To be fair, to me, most people have bad taste in food. Because, like all of us, I have unique taste buds.
My strategy is to give anything a try once or twice. Mostly word of mouth type stuff. If I really like it I will probably drag friends there at some point.

There are a few places i know of that some friends absolutely adore, but i cannot stand. Like sushi. Everyone I know has a huge hard-on for it, and i wouldn't dream of letting it anywhere near my mouth... And similarly, some of the Vietnamese or Mongolian restaurants that I love to death, they can't stand. In the end, you compromise, depending on who you are eating with or suck it up of the whole group wants sushi (they usually have a few things i can stand).

Also, like previous posters stated... it is really easy for someone with a little time to put in a bunch of 5star reviews in from a bunch of different accounts.

Sushi is an entire class of food, not just raw fish. My favorite sushi rolls were fried chicken/sesame and the teriyaki marinated beef, also rolled in sesame.

I review on Yelp on occassion, and find it fun to put down my impressions of the places I've been... though I don't really see how what I write is very useful to anyone else, just as I don't bother reading other reviews usually, except for entertainment value - friends who are funny writers are fun to read, but I don't use the site for its prime purpose.

I can't speak for everything that was accused in this article, but the promising good reviews if you host an event... I think that it is less of a promise of a tit for tat and more of a likely preview. Yelpers get to go to free events, with free alcohol and free food. Afterwards, everyone goes home and praises the crap out of everyone involved - Yelp, the restaurant, themselves... because they just got a fun social night out for free, so unless the restaurant really screws up, they're going to get some good publicity because they just gave away something for free.

So it may not lead to unbiased opinions being posted, but it's also not an underhanded buying positive reviews scheme. It's just sucking up to amateurs. And if you read the reviews with any sense of discretion, you're able to see this. That's really what Yelp is about - it's not for looking at the stars and seeing how good a place is. It's for finding entertainingly written reviews and seeing if the personality of the person who's written it shines through and reflects something in yourself that would make you want to go to that place or not. And likely 90% of it is crap, but if you go in expecting that, it's fine.

Most sites do this.