Yelp Archive

I’ve been a fan of Yelp for a long time – it’s quickly becoming my go-to site for reviews similar to how I always check TripAdvisor for hotel reviews without ever using Google. Unfortunately my experience with Yelp over the past week has me wondering whether I can trust what Yelp spits out on their SEO-rich business review pages.

Since I am new to Austin, I like to check out reviews for the local businesses (mostly eateries) that I am considering visiting. Yelp seems to have a page for every business in the world so it is an easy to use site compared to other review sites and it also seems like Yelp users have more similar demographics. I use Yelp on my PC and also on my mobile phone and tablet. Yelp helped me find the best pizzeria in Austin when I had a craving for real NYC pizza.

This past week I learned that there’s another side to Yelp — the section on each business profile known as, “filtered reviews”. I always assumed that Yelp had some mechanism in place to weed out spam reviews (e.g. 10 reviews of the same car wash from the same IP address located at the car wash, 14 reviews of Taco Allen all from one IP in India, etc.). You can read more about how Yelp filters reviews on their blog including a cutsiepie video. Claire Cain Miller at the NYT covered the launch of filtered reviews last year.

Continue reading “How Yelp Almost Screwed Me Out of a Great Doctor” »

Last night, Adaptive Blue hosted the “The Changing Role of PR in Publishing and Tech” meetup in NYC. The panelists were (from left to right in the video): Chantelle K from Yelp, Kristin M from Attention PR, Ami G. from Macmillan and Russ M from RussCommunications.

The panel discussion lasted an hour and I’ve split the video into 20-minute segments – you can view the videos below. Some notes from the panelists:

• Chantelle loads Tweetdeck the moment she hits the office to check Twitter and spends 30 minutes to 1 hour each day going through what her friends sent her
• Kristen discussed using the bit.ly URL shortener as a way to track ROI
• At about the 18 minutes mark in the first video, Chantelle explains how they went to market for their iPhone app using an exclusive with Robert Scoble. She notes that they saw great results by using Robert to get the word out about the app and were even able to get an exciting trending topic on Twitter. They didn’t give the news to the NYT or Newsweek. They met with Robert several times beforehand to build a relationship with Robert. Later on Chantelle noted that depending on the type of story they are trying to push, they will use different sources to work with.

There was a discussion about analytics in the second video although I found the analysis weak. There was no mention about real-value stats – just simple discussion about how many followers or fans a brand has. My guess is that in late 2010 ”followers and fans” will be the hits of 1995.

In the third video there is a discussion about whether to hire a PR firm or if you should look at bringing a person on-board internally.
Continue reading “The Changing Role of PR in Publishing and Tech (video)” »

Reviews site Yelp has announced the launch of a local site for UK residents today. The company notes that over 100,000 visitors from the UK visit Yelp monthly. It will be interesting to see what type of community builds around the UK Yelp and see how it compares to the USA or Canadian versions. I am an infrequent Yelp’er — I write a bunch of reviews but I wouldn’t consider myself part of the Yelp community.

Jemima Kiss of the Guardian has a good review of the Yelp UK launch. The comments on her post suggest that Yelp might have some work to do to win over the UK reviews audience. With Google aggregating reviews, there comes a point where a person can stay in their community and still be seen across the Web. 

Other local UK reviews site we have reviewed include WeLoveLocal and TrustedReviews.

As user-generated content and review sites become more popular and take on mainstream appeal (see Google paying for business directory info), will we start to see businesses who opt-out from being reviewed? Yes, says one coffee shop in Oakland, California.

Greg speaks about an experience he had the Cafe Rooz where a sign said that Yelp’ers are not welcome. After speaking with cafe management, he noted, “What I was told, in a nutshell, is that the café staff has encountered a stream of would-be critics “with attitude,” predisposed to take issue with or be critical of the business. Whether or not this is a correct perception, there are many more outlets (Yelp being only one) for customers and consumers to voice opinions about businesses on the Internet. And there’s little most of these businesses can do about it, for better or for worse.”

The listing is still on Yelp and is relatively positive overall. While I can understand their fear about bad reviews affecting their business, wouldn’t it be better to work on correcting the issues that are mentioned? The business says they prefer any issue be brought to management’s attention before posting online. I do believe that this is the best course of action.

And one thing this draws attention to is how each of us differ in what is good service vs. bad service. What is acceptable in one region of the country, might not in another.  I would love to see a review site that tells me something about the user providing the review — age, income, gender, lifestyle - so I can put a frame of reference to a review I read. This is especially important when looking at hotel reviews.

And lastly, how will video change the way reviews are handled. Will be interesting to watch, especially as the big players get into the game.

Earlier this week I posted a column titled, "Google kills Yelp." The feedback has really been strong on this one! Some saying that, yes, Google will kill Yelp (and the other local review sites) but most saying that Yelp will live on and continue to grow. I love Yelp. I use Yelp for finding information about a local business before I would ever think to Google it.

Mashable followed-up with "Google Maps Local Reviews: 8 Big Losers" where James notes eight local reviews services that might be losers after Google dominates. His eight include: Yelp (cn coverage), welovelocal (cn coverage), Angie’s List, Zipingo, InsiderPages, Touch Local, MojoPages and TrustedPlaces.

One of the posts that stuck out to me was by Stephan Uhrenbacher, Qype CEO. Qype provides local reviews in a bunch of European countries with a large percentage of users in the United Kingdom and Germany. Check out his post titled, "Never compete head to head with Google." on the Qype blog and here are some excerpts:

Will Qype be successful? To answer this question, you have to take a closer look at our business. We are in the business of building a local community of people who have something meaningful to say. We try our best to separate signal and noise. We actively support our community. We solve conflicts. This the expensive part of our business. We invested a lot of our resources to get our community going in Germany and are planning to achieve this in the UK.

We at least find it not easy to convince visitors that it is a rewarding experience to contribute to Qype. The reward comes later from the community, in form of recognition, feedback, etc. And this is what makes us grow. There is no recognition element on Google Maps. So for the moment, I think the review feature on Google Maps will not be a huge threat.

Look, the truth is that anytime you are in a business, offline or online, someone bigger can appear at any minute. It's  your job to continue to differentiate yourself from the others. Competition is a good thing. Qype, Yelp and the others are working their angles and I think we will see even stronger products appearing over the balance of the year. I have always been a fan of review sites and look forward to the next generation of reviews. Who will create the first video reviews site?

Google, the company that keeps on giving, has launched a new feature as part of their maps/local service. You can now write a review about a local business. They have offered links to other review sites in the past, but now you can offer up your own thoughts on the pizzeria down the block or when the dry cleaner shrunk your best nightie.

So will this hurt sites like Yelp? Yes and no. Yes to new sites that don't have the "cred" yet. No to Yelp because the Yelp community is a tightly-knit one. I am sure that at the smaller local review startups, there were some earthquakes today while at Yelp HQ, they were still playing foosball.

The reviews option works well from my limited testing this afternoon. I guess a question would be… how many people use Google maps to search for a needed business. I use the maps feature when I want to find something I already know I am going to. But it will be nice to get a quick view on thoughts on the places I am already going to.

Another thought – is this the first time that Google is allowing user-generated content on their main service offerings? Will users want to write reviews on Google? Currently there are too many clicks to even see that you can write a review. Will the casual user even know it's there? Too early to tell but it will be interesting to look at the numbers of written reviews over the first period.

Continuing my LOCAL theme of the day, LeeAnn at Hitwise posted some interesting metrics about some of the local engines. She shows that for the past 6 months, Yelp traffic is up 91%! and InsiderPages (which was just sold this week) up 34% while Judy's Book traffic remained pretty flat.

Her last comment hits the nail on the head:

Based on traffic to Local.com, Yahoo! Local and Live Local Search, it does not appear that interest in local search is increasing, but the substantial growth in Yelp's traffic indicates that the social networking/local search combo is an effective means of engaging users around local content. The demographic and lifestyle differences between Yelp's user base and that of other local search sites are quite interesting, and merit another post – look for one next week.

Why does Yelp do so well? It's easy. They cater to the high-end techies. The design, the feeling also play into it. But what else is it? C'mon now boys and girls, I have said this a million times. It is the community. Loads of sites have user generated content but no community. Yelp has a community and when you have that, you have gold.

Spend 30 minutes on Yelp and then the other local search/reviews sites. There is a different feeling that you get on Yelp. When you design your web app, think about this. Community is key for so many and without it, you really have a tough hurdle to climb.

Can a wiki play in this market? It's too early to tell but Wikia sure wants a piece of that pie.