yelp's influence in your decisions

how much weight do you put into reviews?

how many stars is your cutoff point?

i was looking for a new restaurant to try this weekend and got to wondering about how a bad review affects someone's choice to pick a particular business.

so... what are your thoughts?

yelp's influence in your decisions

Reviews are subjective and biased. And for every bad review there are 10 good ones. I don't put much stock into the reviews of anyplace.

yelp's influence in your decisions

4 stars and i check yelp and trip advisor

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I also feel like Yelp isn't the most unbiased as I believe I have seen bad reviews removed.
I take it with a grain of salt.
Some people would complain in heaven

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Why does Yelp take down bad reviews for some restaurants but not others? Do some restaurants pay to be sponsored (like LIW/LIF) on Yelp? Way to be unbiased Yelp!

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yelp's influence in your decisions

My son's daycare used to have 1 review on yelp, 1 star. it was clearly from a disgruntled parent who was calling the owner all sorts of names including money hungry, etc etc. - recently I saw that it had been removed. I believe that business owners can probably request for certain reviews to be removed if they feel they are without merit or detrimental to the business.

I definitely read reviews but I take them with a grain of salt - to me whats pretty telling about a restaurant is how crowded it is on weekends! I had been dying to try this new restaurant by us that had been under construction for years. I finally was able to get a sitter and go one night, and made a reservation for my desired time without any issue (right at peak dinner time)... got there and the place was totally empty and the food was so blah.

yelp's influence in your decisions

I take all reviews with a grain of salt but I personally like Tripadvisor better then Yelp.

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Number of stars is not as important as number of reviews. If I see a restaurant has 150+ reviews over the past few years I figure it's probably a safe bet.

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Yelp is BS

If you advertise with them, they remove most of your bad reviews. They will keep some basic bad - opinionated ones up so it's not "obvious". They were practically blackmailing us to advertise with them or else hahaha
They even started to hide our good reviews to bring our rating down.

We stopped even looking at it.

ETA: from PP comments about a business can call and have a review removed - nope. Not unless you're a current client of theirs. Even with paperwork proving the completely false review. They don't give a crapola unless you're paying them

Message edited 7/26/2017 11:53:31 PM.

yelp's influence in your decisions

I don't even look at Yelp. Now for travel, I look at Tripadvisor, and they don't take down bad reviews

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yelp's influence in your decisions

As the wife of a business owner I no longer trust any kind of reviews. My husband has had legit crazy customers write a bad review that, if you knew nothing about the true situation, would make his company seem horrible. Also, if you do not pay for a certain status they will only show your company's bad reviews and make it almost impossible to see the good ones. Many people have also told my husband, "Just have your friends and family write good reviews for you, that's what I did." So I wouldn't be fully convinced just because I see a whole bunch of positives either.

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The issue I have is that most people who write reviews go to write them because they feel they have been wronged and want to vent. Very rarely will someone take the time to write a rave review. I am guilty of this too. But, I still read them. I wouldn't necessarily not go somewhere that has a bad review, but if the vast majority of reviews are positive then it does hold some weight with me that the place is good.

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I know that I have put reviews on there that were negative and they were erased. So that makes me hesitant to rely on the reviews on this site that are especially all negative.

yelp's influence in your decisions

Nothing. People are so quick to complain

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I've never used yelp. At all. And the fact that they remove reviews is a good reason. Not to use it. And people make shit up. Not directed at anyone on here but if you read they some reviews it's so over the top there's no way it can be real.

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It depends on what the complaints are about and the frequency of a particular complaint.

If, for example, multiple reviews are ranting about poor service, yet I am interested in the food at a restaurant, I would go for the cuisine. If, however, multiple reviewers are complaining about food poisoning, I would think twice.

Also, it depends on what the service is. If I'm looking to have work done in my house, I'm going to take the reviews more seriously than if I want a cup of coffee.

yelp's influence in your decisions

Even though this post is about Yelp, I want to say something about the BBB. A few years ago, someone spent their own money to register an organization and it immediately got great reviews. The name of the organization was Hamas, a Palestinian militant Islamist group. When this came out and there was such an outrage in the media, the head of the BBB at the time apologized and said it was a mistake. If you spend money to be a member of these kinds of groups, Yelp and the BBB they will not let anything negative be said of their income payers.

yelp's influence in your decisions

I use it a lot for restaurant recommendations, but usually stick with places having no 4 or more stars. You can usually determine what reviews are "fake" because the person usually only had that review. But I've def. been let down (but also really pleased) by following Yelps recommendations.

yelp's influence in your decisions

I take it with a grain of salt. But, when it is a restaurant, I do go by the pictures uploaded by customers.