This is how most apps develop, I think. People see a niche to be filled and, if they have the resources, they scramble to fill it. Nature abhors a vacuum, after all.
But one app I don't think anyone asked for was Yelp.
Yelp has a lot of problems. Don't take it from me; when I Googled Yelp news for this blog post, here are the first four recommended related searches I got:
Not a very flattering list, that.
Some of the arguments against Yelp include the huge impact it has on small businesses. One study says that going from four to give stars can generate a 5 - 9% increase in revenue. The filtering of reviews on pages, and the filtering of businesses themselves in searches, are done based on a Yelp algorithm that no one quite understands. And there are, of course, allegations of extortion, some of which came to light in the documentary "Billion Dollar Bully," which in turn led to a 30% stock decrease for Yelp in November of last year.
And that's just on the business end of things. People who leave bad reviews have horror stories of being harassed by the businesses for trying to leave honest feedback. And Forbes points out that "anonymous platforms have a tendency to skew toward the negative." We're not even including fake reviews here, though those do happen, and there's no real mechanism or policy for easily identifying or removing fake reviews designed to artificially alter a business's rating.
I'll admit that I have a Yelp profile. Mostly, I leave good reviews for places I like, which was the original intention of the platform. But let's face it; we all love a brutal review because at the end of the day, we're only human, and brutal reviews can truly hurt a business. It's the small businesses that suffer the most.
This brings me to the bar I work at, the Dragon and Meeple. Recently someone left a two-star review for us on Google that specifically targeted me. I was devastated. Here's the review:
Let me break down a few parts of this review that really cheesed me off.
First of all, let's talk about "Smokey" here. He's a guy who comes in once a month for Magic: The Gathering. On his previous visit, he and his pals worked up a $180 tab that they almost accidentally walked out on. It was comprised of $120 worth of peach Berliners and a $60 pack of cards. They left no tip. The reason I remember this so well is because 1) $120 is a lot of peach Berliners, 2) they nearly walked out, 3) they didn't fucking tip. They were also generally rude. (I will say that this is a LOT of Magic players; it may not be rudeness but just general social anxiety, or total absorption in their game. I don't know, but whenever I check in on Magic players, they never seem like they can be bothered to look up and say, "No, thank you, I don't need another drink," or, "Yes, please, I'd like another drink." It's more like monosyllabic grunting or pointing to an empty glass.)
Since tipping is, essentially, paying for table service, I am disinclined to prioritize non-tippers. This doesn't mean you don't get service. It means that, on a busy Saturday, you're going to get slightly slower service since my attention will be on other tables, many of whom aren't there for 4 or 5 hours of card games and who manage to look me in the eye when I ask them if they need anything and treat me like a human being.
Second, let's talk about me. Not that Smokey knows this but I don't identify as a "lady," thanks, and his description of me as some short-haired blond Karen type is not very flattering. Also, maybe he failed to notice, but at the time he wrote this review, I was 7 months pregnant, so, yeah, I'm gonna be a little slow. Sorry not sorry for that; I can't help it and I'm doing the best I can. You might notice, at this point, that his being rude and my being pregnant both have nothing to do with race.
That brings me to my third and final complaint about this review, which is his ability to call me racist based on absolutely nothing. He didn't even really say I was racist, just that he sorta-kinda "felt" that way. It's an effective tactic to smear the restaurant without actually having anything concrete to complain about. Our restaurant has a crazy diverse staff and prides ourselves on being an inclusive environment, and I, for one, have never been called racist. I checked out his other reviews and, lo and behold, there were two more that claimed racism based on "slow service" with zero actual racism or context. Personally, I think calling someone a racist without any foundation for it is a really, really, really shitty thing to do, but that's just me, a person who abhors racism.
And despite rating us two stars and complaining, he continues to come back every month and order peach Berliners by pointing to his empty glass, as if he didn't leave a review that could hurt our business or jeopardize my job.
Now, this is a Google review, not a Yelp review, but the problems it demonstrates are the same. And despite proudly maintaining a 5-star rating, the D&M has gotten some crappy reviews, like these:
Some of the arguments against Yelp include the huge impact it has on small businesses. One study says that going from four to give stars can generate a 5 - 9% increase in revenue. The filtering of reviews on pages, and the filtering of businesses themselves in searches, are done based on a Yelp algorithm that no one quite understands. And there are, of course, allegations of extortion, some of which came to light in the documentary "Billion Dollar Bully," which in turn led to a 30% stock decrease for Yelp in November of last year.
And that's just on the business end of things. People who leave bad reviews have horror stories of being harassed by the businesses for trying to leave honest feedback. And Forbes points out that "anonymous platforms have a tendency to skew toward the negative." We're not even including fake reviews here, though those do happen, and there's no real mechanism or policy for easily identifying or removing fake reviews designed to artificially alter a business's rating.
This racial reference is going to be relevant and hilarious later in this post.
I'll admit that I have a Yelp profile. Mostly, I leave good reviews for places I like, which was the original intention of the platform. But let's face it; we all love a brutal review because at the end of the day, we're only human, and brutal reviews can truly hurt a business. It's the small businesses that suffer the most.
This brings me to the bar I work at, the Dragon and Meeple. Recently someone left a two-star review for us on Google that specifically targeted me. I was devastated. Here's the review:
First of all, let's talk about "Smokey" here. He's a guy who comes in once a month for Magic: The Gathering. On his previous visit, he and his pals worked up a $180 tab that they almost accidentally walked out on. It was comprised of $120 worth of peach Berliners and a $60 pack of cards. They left no tip. The reason I remember this so well is because 1) $120 is a lot of peach Berliners, 2) they nearly walked out, 3) they didn't fucking tip. They were also generally rude. (I will say that this is a LOT of Magic players; it may not be rudeness but just general social anxiety, or total absorption in their game. I don't know, but whenever I check in on Magic players, they never seem like they can be bothered to look up and say, "No, thank you, I don't need another drink," or, "Yes, please, I'd like another drink." It's more like monosyllabic grunting or pointing to an empty glass.)
This isn't how our business model works but it would still be nice.
Since tipping is, essentially, paying for table service, I am disinclined to prioritize non-tippers. This doesn't mean you don't get service. It means that, on a busy Saturday, you're going to get slightly slower service since my attention will be on other tables, many of whom aren't there for 4 or 5 hours of card games and who manage to look me in the eye when I ask them if they need anything and treat me like a human being.
Second, let's talk about me. Not that Smokey knows this but I don't identify as a "lady," thanks, and his description of me as some short-haired blond Karen type is not very flattering. Also, maybe he failed to notice, but at the time he wrote this review, I was 7 months pregnant, so, yeah, I'm gonna be a little slow. Sorry not sorry for that; I can't help it and I'm doing the best I can. You might notice, at this point, that his being rude and my being pregnant both have nothing to do with race.
That brings me to my third and final complaint about this review, which is his ability to call me racist based on absolutely nothing. He didn't even really say I was racist, just that he sorta-kinda "felt" that way. It's an effective tactic to smear the restaurant without actually having anything concrete to complain about. Our restaurant has a crazy diverse staff and prides ourselves on being an inclusive environment, and I, for one, have never been called racist. I checked out his other reviews and, lo and behold, there were two more that claimed racism based on "slow service" with zero actual racism or context. Personally, I think calling someone a racist without any foundation for it is a really, really, really shitty thing to do, but that's just me, a person who abhors racism.
And despite rating us two stars and complaining, he continues to come back every month and order peach Berliners by pointing to his empty glass, as if he didn't leave a review that could hurt our business or jeopardize my job.
Now, this is a Google review, not a Yelp review, but the problems it demonstrates are the same. And despite proudly maintaining a 5-star rating, the D&M has gotten some crappy reviews, like these:
The first review fails to mention that the kids knocked over 3 glasses of water in one meal, ruining said deck of Uno cards and demonstrating why we have a game fee. The game fee is something we explain to guests when they come in, and it's printed on the menu.
And let's not forget this nice little review here:
Her complaint that the beer selection is "meh" is based on us not having beer that she liked. We have 16 local, craft beers on tap and another dozen beers in cans or bottles. That's a selection of over two dozen beers. (In another review of a restaurant, she gave 2 stars because they didn't have eggs Benedict on the menu.)
Her complaint that we expected a customer to pay for the food they ordered is... a bizarre complaint. Her mention of the customer's disability seems unnecessary. I mean, disabled or not, that's how businesses work: you order food, we serve it to you, and then you pay for it. We have no idea who can or cannot pay for food; we take it on good faith that people can, and that's why they order it. If we had refused to serve someone because of an apparent disability, that would be discrimination... and she probably would have complained about that, too. No one asked her to step in to pay for someone else's meal, and trust me, the situation was uncomfortable for us, too. It's not pleasant to tell someone their card was declined. Not at all.
As for the lack of inclusivity of her gal group, well... we can't help that. We can't help it that the group she didn't like chose our venue for their meeting place, but she began and ended the review by complaining about the group she was with, so it really felt like the D&M was being punished for her bad experience that we had no control over.
My point is, Yelp gives people a platform to hurt small businesses and doesn't seem especially trustworthy in terms of its reviews to begin with. It's bad enough to have gotten a South Park episode mocking it, and to have its own anti-Yelp website, Yelp-Sucks.com.
I appreciate, of course, the irony of complaining online about a platform that allows people to complain online. And so in the interest of trying to be fair, I will make an effort to make my criticisms constructive in nature, and suggest a few improvements Yelp could make that might improve it. But I don't think these measures would be enough, and the truth is, I'd prefer a world without Yelp.
Suggestion #2: Crowd-source the filters. Currently, Yelp operates on an unknown algorithm that takes into account user metrics like number of reviews left, length of account, et cetera in order to filter reviews and "suggest" "good" reviews. I think a crowd-source filter would be better; this could be a simple upvote/downvote button, as seen on sites like Reddit.
Suggestion #3: Include more "reactions." Currently, Yelp allows you to click one of three reactions to a review: cool, useful, or funny. These are all positive and don't have nearly enough diversity to allow people to react to reviews. It's the closest thing other users have to responding to other people's reviews and it's severely lacking. Also, the "funny" reaction appears to be used both to indicate that the review itself was funny as well as to indicate that the reviewer is being mocked. (Jena S.'s review of the toy store, for example, got a TON of "funny" reacts despite not being written in a comedic style.)
Suggestion #4: Modify the algorithm for small businesses, as opposed to franchises or chains. This one is self-explanatory; franchises and chains don't give a shit about Yelp, but for small, independently-owned businesses, Yelp reviews can make or break a place. Yet they all get the same algorithm. This seems unfair.
Suggestion #5: Get a better system for rating. Right now, it's based on "stars." There are two problems here. First, saying it's a "five-star" restaurant implies it's nice when it could, in fact, just be a really clean, fast Wendy's. Second, Yelp, like many other platforms that use star ratings (i.e., Lyft or Uber) artificially selects for five-star ratings. Realistically, not all restaurants can have four and five stars. And people are going to assign star rankings in different ways; Jena S., for example, is much more critical than me. I tend to leave 5-star reviews and Jena tends to leave 3-star reviews. Some people will only ever leave 2-star reviews. There's no standardization. I propose a different system of voting. Perhaps a point total, similar to Reddit's "karma" scores. I don't know. But trying to get every business to strive for 5 stars puts undue pressure on those businesses, and it hits small businesses the hardest.
I assume The Hotel California went out of business because of The Eagles.
In conclusion, Yelp gets a two-star rating from me. It's a handy way to find restaurants near me, but the harm it does seems to outweigh its benefits, and there's a ton of room for improvement.
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