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Small Restaurant Out-Maneuvers Yelp In Reviews War
An anonymous reader writes Yelp has, for the past year or so, garnered a reputation for extorting businesses into paying for advertising on their site. Allegations include incessant calls for advertising contracts, automatic listing of a business, and suppressing good reviews should a business decide to opt out of paying Yelp for listing them. One small Italian trattoria, however, may have succeeded in flipping Yelp's legally sanctioned business practices in its favor. The owners of Botto Bistro in Redmond, CA, initially agreed to pay for advertising on Yelp one year ago apparently because they were tired of getting calls from Yelp's sales team. But even after buying advertising, the owners claim that they kept receiving calls. So they started a campaign to get as many one-star reviews as they could, even offering 25% discounts to customers. As of this writing they have 866, and a casual perusal of them reveals enthusiastic tongue-in-cheek support for the restaurant. One-star reviews, once Yelp's best scare tactic, is now this particular business's badge of quality. And they didn't even have to pay Yelp for it.
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The submitter (or Timothy) talks about "The owners of Botto Bistro in REDMOND, CA ..."
The restaurant is in RICHMOND CA, methinks.
there is no way to filter the ignorant and/or malicious from the informed and sincere.
Actually, it is quite easy, the informed ones stick out as a linux deployment in a government agency. You can fall for the fake comments only if you're stupid, inattentive, or promoting a book in a slashdot post.
Yelp sells advertising to the very businesses that their users review so that the business can get their more favorable reviews pushed higher while burying the negative. Their business model is extortion.
Checkbook.org, co-founded by Consumer Reports, uses a system that is difficult to game. To come up with ratings the site sends out a survey every year asking customers to respond with ratings. To game the system you have to pay for a subscription. Each subscription must have a valid mailing address. The downside is that you have to pay for a subscription to use the site and they only review local businesses.
Michelin Guide slants towards a certain style of restaurant (chefs who try to make something 'original' or 'interesting'). If you aren't interested in that kind of food, or you want something good for lunch, then there might not be anything in Michelin guide for you.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yelp is fighting back by removing hundreds of the one star reviews.
Slashdot's system works because there is not much at stake here apart from people's egos or opinions. If businesses depended on comments on slashdot, I think we'd find way more trolls and mod points for sale. The problem would be in a different league altogether.
Oh no, that might lead to business-promoted article selection by the site's editors or even 'Slashvertisements'. If worst came to worst the slashdot management might even start to think of site users as "viewers" waiting to consume a publication and no longer see them as "commentators" here to exchange opinions.
So it's a might good thing that businesses don't depend on slashdot comments or articles...
Exactly. They're refusing Danegeld, and sticking it back to the Dane.
Good on 'em.
Companies do not have privacy or free speech rights in the EU, only individuals