<story><title>Angie&apos;s List Acquired for $500M by IAC</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-01/iac-to-acquire-angie-s-list-in-deal-valued-at-about-500-million</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>narrator</author><text>I think this is why TripAdvisor is better, in my experience, for restaurants than Yelp.  If I&amp;#x27;m not mistaken, TripAdvisor makes most of its money off of hotel booking referrals.</text></item><item><author>dhd415</author><text>Not specifically apropos of the buyout, but my experience with Angie&amp;#x27;s List has been similar to that of Yelp, that is, businesses that paid to advertise on AL were better able to maintain high rankings. The top-rated companies were not the best from either a quality or price perspective. While it&amp;#x27;s a great idea to crowd-source referrals for contractors like that, it&amp;#x27;s unfortunate that that model falls prey to the same impulse to increase revenue by soliciting advertising contracts with the firms that it purports to rank impartially.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nunez</author><text>ANYTHING is better than Yelp. It literally does everything in the book to get you to download the app (to collect your user data, presumably) and is literally designed from the ground up to promote businesses that pay them to
be higher on the index.&lt;p&gt;Their sales tactics are borderline abusive, too. They will hunt you down forever until you sign a package with them, and they give you zero time to think about whether their ad package (which only works on their site and has a super high CPC compared to AdWords) is right for your business.&lt;p&gt;They need to go away</text></comment>
<story><title>Angie&apos;s List Acquired for $500M by IAC</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-01/iac-to-acquire-angie-s-list-in-deal-valued-at-about-500-million</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>narrator</author><text>I think this is why TripAdvisor is better, in my experience, for restaurants than Yelp.  If I&amp;#x27;m not mistaken, TripAdvisor makes most of its money off of hotel booking referrals.</text></item><item><author>dhd415</author><text>Not specifically apropos of the buyout, but my experience with Angie&amp;#x27;s List has been similar to that of Yelp, that is, businesses that paid to advertise on AL were better able to maintain high rankings. The top-rated companies were not the best from either a quality or price perspective. While it&amp;#x27;s a great idea to crowd-source referrals for contractors like that, it&amp;#x27;s unfortunate that that model falls prey to the same impulse to increase revenue by soliciting advertising contracts with the firms that it purports to rank impartially.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>covercash</author><text>Foursquare is my secret weapon whenever I need to impress with restaurant selection.</text></comment>