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Small Restaurant Out-Maneuvers Yelp In Reviews War 249

Posted by timothy from the slumming-with-the-stars dept.
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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Small Restaurant Out-Maneuvers Yelp In Reviews War More

Small Restaurant Out-Maneuvers Yelp In Reviews War

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  • Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21, 2014 @11:05PM (#47962053)

    No not really, but here are some Yelp reviews anyway, just from this weekend:

    (one star)
    Your food seems delicious, but that you do not offer shipping to Canary Islands (Spain).... That I cannot accept...
    C'mon what kind of service do you offer if you don't deliver to 10000km afar?
    I better go to another place!

    (one star)
    Don't try the pizza, it's so good you will come back every day, it completely ruined my social life cause each night I only want to go there
    I hate this place!

    (one star)
    Great food, great drinks, great service awesome experience overall. However...
    - No pet giraffes or tigers allowed inside
    - No shower in the bathroom
    - No gym inside to work out after meal
    - One time they wouldn't serve me because I was completely naked and very drunk
    - Food is not free and I have to pay for it
    - They always get your order right
    So for these reasons I hate this place and will not return for a day or two.

    (one star)
    I have never been here before.
    In fact, I have never heard of this place before. But, it is SO AWFUL that I am going to refuse to get within 500 miles of it. Therefore, all because of how bad this restaurant is, I am going to have to cancel my plans to visit the Bay Area. In fact, this place is so bad...so I have heard...that I may have to move out of the state due to the embarrassment of being in the same state as this place.

    (one star)
    Too much integrity. No thanks!
    How can I be sure that you care about your food if you won't be manipulated by the Yelp powers-that-be?
    How can I trust that you care about quality if you won't spend your time whoring yourself online for 5-star reviews?
    How can I expect you to care about your staff and their families if you won't give money to Yelp instead of them??

    (one star)
    Can't stand this place. Came here and asked if I could substitute the pizza dough with cardboard... they could not accommodate me.
    BRB going to Dominos.

    • Never ate there, but the website survived a Slashdotting.

      I like how they thank Yelp for the world wide publicity. Can't pay to get that type of exposure. I will remember them if I am ever in the area. I hope their in restraunt WiFi is as good as their website. If it is, I'm going to hire their IT guy!

  • Profit (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21, 2014 @11:07PM (#47962059)

    Yelp Tactic
    Submit Yelp story on Slashdot
    Profit

  • Redmond, CA ...? (Score:5, Informative)

    by sk999 ( 846068 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @11:19PM (#47962087)

    The submitter (or Timothy) talks about "The owners of Botto Bistro in REDMOND, CA ..."

    The restaurant is in RICHMOND CA, methinks.

  • The review ecosystem is good and truly broken... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by radtea ( 464814 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @11:24PM (#47962103)

    ...and no one knows what to do to fix it.

    In 2010 the new Web was all about "user generated content". Today, the modern mantra is: "Don't read the comments" [scu.edu]

    Reviews and review sites have almost exactly the same problems as comment sections: there is no way to filter the ignorant and/or malicious from the informed and sincere. Case in point: there are currently exactly two reviews of my book [amazon.com] on Amazon. One from a reasonably thoughtful reader (3 stars) and one from a troll who apparently has given Charles Dickens the same rating as me (2 stars).

    There was a five-star review which was from someone who had read the book and genuinely liked it, but Amazon determined it was from someone I knew (likely because I bought her a book on the site a few years ago) and removed the review. This is a ridiculous practice--it would invalidate a huge number of reviews in traditional publications--but is made necessary by authors who try to game the review system in the stupidest possible way.

    If there is a solution to these problems it's likely some kind of reputation system, but as near as I can tell no one--not Amazon, not GoodReads, not TripAdvisor, not Yelp, not anyone--is even thinking along those lines, which suggests there is no money in building a site that provides honest peer-to-peer feedback. This is a shame, because the Web should be enabling us to help each other, not increasing our distrust of each other (we're plenty good enough at that already).

    /. has had a basically functional reputation system for well over a decade, so it's not like there's any real mystery as to how to do this. I wonder if there might be some b2b model where users sign up with a third party reputation system that then sells reputation information (which would exist across all sites that use it, like discus does for comments) to review sites. Without something like that there seems to be very little hope of getting much long-term value from online reviews of any kind.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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.

    • Re:The review ecosystem is good and truly broken.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Harlequin80 ( 1671040 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @11:47PM (#47962171)

      Personally I love the slashdot moderation system but it cannot work in a review system. It works because there is a single topic piece that people then comment on and everyone has the same baseline information. When you are looking at reviews of hotels or restaurants you have almost nothing to judge the comments against.

      The closest anyone has come up with is the "was this review helpful?" but that gets abused easily. With restaurants it is hard to even decide if someone should be a trusted reviewer and hence promote their reviews as they will tend to be geographically limited.

      I have actually given this problem some thought for a website idea I have been working on and I haven't been able to solve it. Every system I come up with is simply too easy to game.

      • Re:The review ecosystem is good and truly broken.. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @01:34AM (#47962457) Journal

        When you are looking at reviews of hotels or restaurants you have almost nothing to judge the comments against.

        I think the idea is to tie their reviews into the larger ecosystem of online comments.
        So if they are assholes in the comments section of [online news article] and get downvoted,
        then that would be reflected in the data your site gets from the "third party reputation system."
        Then it's up to you how you want your site to weight their asshole behavior.

        Ideally, this system would support one identification, but multiple user names,
        in the sense that I can be Bob on one website and Alice on another,
        but the reputation reflects all my online comments.

        That said, while I see how it could be useful, I actually hate the idea.
        Having ALL my online comments concentrated in 1 easy to hack/subpoena place is discomfiting.

        • Re:The review ecosystem is good and truly broken.. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Harlequin80 ( 1671040 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @01:46AM (#47962491)

          I agree. Google and Facebook are probably the only entities that would come close to being able to achieve this. But if Google or Facebook started sharing ratings about people across broader networks I think they would get hammered. Both in people leaving them and potentially privacy lawsuits.

          That said though I think that could be a very flawed system. If you take Reddit for example (and slashdot to a lesser degree) a non-confirming post can get you downmodded to oblivion. Quite often there isn't anything wrong with what you said you just are not following the groups preference. Think how many people here get called shills here or the weird moderation that happens in anything apple v android.

          • the weird moderation that happens in anything apple v android.

            I'll never understand how attached some people get to a corporation. The corporation will never love you back.

            • Well said! Somebody should make it a .sig.

      • Re:The review ecosystem is good and truly broken.. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Sabriel ( 134364 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @02:08AM (#47962547)

        Why not have each reviewer's rating for a given item/location be statistically compared/weighted to that reviewer's history of ratings, e.g. a 5-star rating from someone who consistently gives 5-star ratings for everything could be valued less than someone who only does so some of the time, with weighting for older reviewers, anonymous reviewers, etc. Basically the equivalent of a bayesian spam filter, except for reviewers instead of mail. Yes, it won't be perfect, but can it at least be better than what we have now?

        • Re:The review ecosystem is good and truly broken.. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by flonker ( 526111 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @02:53AM (#47962649)

          It would need to be a full on classification system, similar to how Netflix does ratings. That is, it would have to put both the reviewer and the review reader into groups, and weigh the rating based on the reviewer's similarity to the reader.

          "People with similar ratings to yours gave this restaurant 2 stars, while the general public gave it 4 stars."

          The problem with this is that you would need a whole lot more ratings in order to get any kind of reliability.

      • Re:The review ecosystem is good and truly broken.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by wannabgeek ( 323414 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @02:33AM (#47962613) Journal

        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.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          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...

      • Perhaps enough crud will accumulate in the current system and the pendulum will swing back to professional reviewers.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

        Pretty neat... I thought the online reviewing space was going the "reputation" route, becoming more "social" by allowing more highly weighting reviews from people in your group of friends (as well as entries in your "feeds" when friends visit a place). This seems to be the route of stuff like Foursquare... and... well, other similar services that I ignore because I don't have a very extensive network of friends who dine at the same sorts of places I go to.

        The other route is to just have a place with reput

        • Re:The review ecosystem is good and truly broken.. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Half-pint HAL ( 718102 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @07:18AM (#47963197)

          Anyway, articles like this do make me upset with Yelp. But a lot of places do seem to have yelp sticker on their window, so perhaps it's just part of the cost of doing business these days. I applaud this italian joint for lashing out against it in an entertaining way, and I'll start searching for some of the lowest reviewed places too, since I mostly use Yelp to find the exceptional places anyways.

          I suppose it had to be an Italian restaurant that recognised a shake-down when they saw one. A lot of people put their lives on the line to challenge mafia extortion, so a website with no guns is hardly a threat.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Checkbook.org [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.

    • I've no problem at all with comment systems. I know the pitfalls. I filter and only read negative comments (positive comments are useless) Then look for things that would bother me. The idiots (which is most of them) I barely read at all. "This was incompatible with my ASUS motherboard!" THATS what I'm looking for. Books? Reviews aren't that helpful for books... At best, I look for books that there people bought along with books I really liked.

  • How is Yelp supposed to work? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @11:39PM (#47962133)
    I've never understood how the business model for 'free' review sites is supposed to work anyway.

    You're in the *reviewing* business. If you're legit you can't sell ads - Consumer reports has no ads - They make all their money from subscriptions.

    However, it's the internet, so you can't sell subscriptions. People won't pay.

    So can't sell ads, can't sell subscriptions... How can you create a legit reviews site?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Bing Tsher E ( 943915 )

      The even more lucrative operations are like Angie's List. Where they charge the businesses being reviewed and also charge the people who want to read the reviews.

    • No reason you cannot sell ads. You just need to disclaim on a particular review if you have received money (or other benefit) from the subject of the review, and not in fine print.

      It is a difficult line to walk as you have two masters but there are many sites that have managed to be a review site with ads. Anandtech is one that immediately comes to mind.

      If you are in a position where you are able to push customers in the direction of a business, you have the ability to say I am not going to give you a bia

    • Re:How is Yelp supposed to work? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lunix Nutcase ( 1092239 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @12:16AM (#47962239)

      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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      I've never understood how the business model for 'free' review sites is supposed to work anyway.

      It simple,

      You are the product.
      Advertisers are the customers.
      Reviews are the method where the product is exposed to the customers. Some customers are offered an opportunity to pay more to ensure that more products are exposed to them.

      There is no such thing as a free lunch. The review sites want to direct you to their advertisers (this is why Trip Advisor goes to great lengths to have a pop up whenever you go there).

  • Search algorithm failure and Yelp (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @11:53PM (#47962185)
    Search engines are absolutely awful at finding reviews. Try goggling "reviews for X", absolutely zero useful content. Into this void Yelp and other smaller rent-seekers stepped in. With their racketeering they poisoned the system to the point of being useless.

  • Same Business Model as the BBB (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22, 2014 @12:39AM (#47962313)

    Looks like Yelp learned from the Better Business Bureau.

    The BBB is fully funded by dues from member companies. They are even franchaised so each BBB is locally owned and operated.
    The incentive to join the local BBB is that unresolved customer complains ("bad reviews") are deleted from the public record of member companies after a certain amount of time, it varies by franchaise but usually 1-2 years. While unresolved complaints against non-member companies are never deleted. So if you file a complaint against a non-member company, that isn't something that will necessarily help you but it is a sales-lead for the local BBB office.

    This business model leads to the perverse result that you can't trust the records of BBB members but you can trust the records of non-members.

  • What I hear: Yelp isn't trustworthy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @01:06AM (#47962379)

    Basically Yelp isn't a neutral observer and can't be trusted.

    So I can't see valuing their opinions on restaurants and other businesses in the future.

  • This can only work a little bit... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @01:37AM (#47962461)
    This can work once or maybe in one or two places per region, but the reality is that many people will use services like yelp to narrow down their new eateries by a simple sort-by-rating.

    Also this somewhat depends on people being connected to local media to be informed about this reversal. Most of my technology friends have zero interaction with local media. That is they don't listen to local radio, watch local TV, read local publications; thus they are more likely to read about this place far far away than to read about a similar even locally.

    But this all raises a much larger issue and that is we almost need a yelp to rate the rating services. Especially as time goes by these crowd sourced rating services will either begin to alter their ratings for pay or they will be largely gamed by various unethical players who usually have financial motives to game the system.

    For instance in my town most restaurants don't have more than a few dozen ratings at best. Thus it would not take a competitor much effort to set up a series of shill accounts and trash their overall average. "I was served beef that had 2 cooked worms and the salad had a maggot in it, the owner laughed when I pointed this out and said that he has paid off the health inspectors so go ahead an call."

    Not to mention that there are professional services that will do this sort of shill voting for you. As an example when certain companies are brought up on slashdot there is an instant onslaught of comments that basically are talking points written in a style that only a PR company would use. "Those spurious allegations were never proven in court, with all court actions dropped, and the publications that conjured up that story don't even rate as tabloids. This civic minded company has given over $2,000,000 to women's shelters in the local area alone."

    But as more and more companies come to realize that crowd sourced rating or communication systems can be gamed for profit then they will put more and more sophisticated efforts into gaming the system. I love the slashdot system of quazi randomly assigning moderator points but very simply if you have 1,000 slashdot accounts run by a group of interns then a huge number of points and comments could be brought to bare on any issue that is desired.

    If you want to run a simple experiment. Go onto reddit, go into the appropriate area and trash talk a fortune 50 company using a classically known wrongdoing from recent history. In most cases your topic will not only be voted into oblivion it will have many comments that are the above mentioned talking points. Some issues are so powerful that it can overwhelm the mathematical capability of their PR firms if they don't get onto the issue fast enough or if reddit happens to have nullified one of their voting cadres recently.

    So unless someone comes up with a mathematically sound system of voting/rating that is invulnerable to manipulation these systems will only remain viable for as long as the people running them are able to maintain their ethics and outsmart the professional and financially motivated manipulators.

    • But this all raises a much larger issue and that is we almost need a yelp to rate the rating services. Especially as time goes by these crowd sourced rating services will either begin to alter their ratings for pay or they will be largely gamed by various unethical players who usually have financial motives to game the system.

      Yelp provides a review and rating for Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-s... [yelp.com]

    • Well, the mathematically sound system would be to pay real wages for real work, so that you couldn't hire shills at a dime-a-dozen. Not only because they had real pay, but also because they had more self respect than that. But that runs contrary to the American ideal (which is More for the Powerful, and the Powerless can dream of that which will never, trust me, never be). Which means that in an Amerika-run world (or EU... trust me, EU is the same only worse), it won't happen.

  • Two restaurants I visited in Berlin did not have a Tripadvisor post. When I asked about this, they asked to please not add them to Tripadvisor because of extortion.

    This is why we can't have nice things.

  • They seemed to imply it's an Italian thing but I've been to Italy and I'm pretty sure they had ice there.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Get it right... (Score:3)

    by bferrell ( 253291 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @03:46AM (#47962769) Homepage Journal

    Richmond California

  • Witness the problem with social media (Score:3)

    by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @10:44AM (#47964333)

    This is pretty damn funny but it illustrates the problem of mixing business with social media. Unless you are big enough to afford to hire someone whose only job is to monitor social media and fight the trolls, you have no chance of controlling your business message. Now trolling is sanctioned by the gumint, that task is even harder.

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