<story><title>Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted</title><url>https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/yel-review-fraud-kay-dean-18150617.php</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>telchior</author><text>I despise Google Maps for this. I can know that a restaurant exists, zoom in on its block, search &amp;#x27;restaurants&amp;#x27; -- nothing. It&amp;#x27;ll zoom out the map and show other stuff. Worse, I can max my zoom and hunt for it on the map and it will outright show a blank space. Only searching for the restaurant&amp;#x27;s actual name will bring it up.&lt;p&gt;But there&amp;#x27;s not really any alternative. Apple Maps can&amp;#x27;t show me things because it&amp;#x27;s missing the entries entirely. Yelp became useless years ago. I feel like we&amp;#x27;re going back in time because the best way to find local restaurants has become walking &amp;#x2F; driving around the neighborhood to see what&amp;#x27;s there, or getting word of mouth recommendations.</text></item><item><author>Guest9081239812</author><text>Google Maps is terrible for hiding results. I&amp;#x27;ll use the filter to show restaurants with a 4.5+ star rating, and it hides dozens of places 4.5+ stars while instead showing results 4.0 - 4.4 stars and even some that have no reviews at all. I find the arrogance insulting. You want to see 4.5+ star Japanese food restaurants? Well, I don&amp;#x27;t think that&amp;#x27;s best for you, and I&amp;#x27;m going to replace some of those results with 4.1 star Caribbean food restaurants that you&amp;#x27;ll like instead.</text></item><item><author>majormajor</author><text>Good for her. Yelp&amp;#x27;s business model seems to work best if they can pick winners, which is unfortunate.&lt;p&gt;If I search for &amp;quot;dinner&amp;quot; on Yelp for &amp;quot;current location&amp;quot; and look at the map, it leaves out an astonishing number of places that I can see within a mile if I drive down the street.&lt;p&gt;And if your business model is centered around hiding all but the winners - who might pay for placement + reviews both - then you have to try to keep people from talking about it, and the moral interests just get worse and worse.&lt;p&gt;Google Maps isn&amp;#x27;t any better; OpenTable seems the &amp;quot;least bad&amp;quot; of options I&amp;#x27;ve looked at recently, at least for fancier reservation-having places, in terms of &lt;i&gt;actually showing my options&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;(It&amp;#x27;s a broader internet problem in general - &amp;quot;trending&amp;quot; algorithmic reinforcement stuff will push everyone towards the ONE TRUE BEST HOTTEST MOST POPULAR bbq&amp;#x2F;ramen&amp;#x2F;whatver place, when probably there&amp;#x27;s half a dozen other options within 10% of taste and quality, that some people very well could legitimately like better if they heard about them too.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chinchilla2020</author><text>Internet search in general has severely declined in 2023. I was trying to figure out the syntax for putting a URL in slack the other day and couldn&amp;#x27;t find a proper article anywhere in the top 10 results.&lt;p&gt;I think they are trying to integrate their bard UI into search and it is killing the results.&lt;p&gt;At this point, I use google to search reddit in order to find organic results. Unfortunately, that will probably be taken over by spammers soon enough.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted</title><url>https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/yel-review-fraud-kay-dean-18150617.php</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>telchior</author><text>I despise Google Maps for this. I can know that a restaurant exists, zoom in on its block, search &amp;#x27;restaurants&amp;#x27; -- nothing. It&amp;#x27;ll zoom out the map and show other stuff. Worse, I can max my zoom and hunt for it on the map and it will outright show a blank space. Only searching for the restaurant&amp;#x27;s actual name will bring it up.&lt;p&gt;But there&amp;#x27;s not really any alternative. Apple Maps can&amp;#x27;t show me things because it&amp;#x27;s missing the entries entirely. Yelp became useless years ago. I feel like we&amp;#x27;re going back in time because the best way to find local restaurants has become walking &amp;#x2F; driving around the neighborhood to see what&amp;#x27;s there, or getting word of mouth recommendations.</text></item><item><author>Guest9081239812</author><text>Google Maps is terrible for hiding results. I&amp;#x27;ll use the filter to show restaurants with a 4.5+ star rating, and it hides dozens of places 4.5+ stars while instead showing results 4.0 - 4.4 stars and even some that have no reviews at all. I find the arrogance insulting. You want to see 4.5+ star Japanese food restaurants? Well, I don&amp;#x27;t think that&amp;#x27;s best for you, and I&amp;#x27;m going to replace some of those results with 4.1 star Caribbean food restaurants that you&amp;#x27;ll like instead.</text></item><item><author>majormajor</author><text>Good for her. Yelp&amp;#x27;s business model seems to work best if they can pick winners, which is unfortunate.&lt;p&gt;If I search for &amp;quot;dinner&amp;quot; on Yelp for &amp;quot;current location&amp;quot; and look at the map, it leaves out an astonishing number of places that I can see within a mile if I drive down the street.&lt;p&gt;And if your business model is centered around hiding all but the winners - who might pay for placement + reviews both - then you have to try to keep people from talking about it, and the moral interests just get worse and worse.&lt;p&gt;Google Maps isn&amp;#x27;t any better; OpenTable seems the &amp;quot;least bad&amp;quot; of options I&amp;#x27;ve looked at recently, at least for fancier reservation-having places, in terms of &lt;i&gt;actually showing my options&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;(It&amp;#x27;s a broader internet problem in general - &amp;quot;trending&amp;quot; algorithmic reinforcement stuff will push everyone towards the ONE TRUE BEST HOTTEST MOST POPULAR bbq&amp;#x2F;ramen&amp;#x2F;whatver place, when probably there&amp;#x27;s half a dozen other options within 10% of taste and quality, that some people very well could legitimately like better if they heard about them too.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>karaterobot</author><text>&amp;gt; I feel like we&amp;#x27;re going back in time because the best way to find local restaurants has become walking &amp;#x2F; driving around the neighborhood to see what&amp;#x27;s there, or getting word of mouth recommendations.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s face it, that never stopped being the best way. There have always been problems with internet reviews, if only the ones inherent in the 1-5 star mechanism. But, it is very inconvenient to ask around for recommendations when you&amp;#x27;re (for example) hungry and passing through an unknown town or something. So I get why we need a source that isn&amp;#x27;t completely unreliable.</text></comment>