Yelp: 5-star or flop-star?
“The ambiance is total chaos” – Heidi V.
October 23, 2019
Yelp, a review website made to help people find quality local businesses, is often slighted by the internet for its humorous, and sometimes outright ridiculous, reviews. While these reviews are clearly entertaining, how helpful are they in reality?
Before we get into the bulk of the review, here’s some background on how Yelp works. The site’s search engine allows users to search by ZIP code and different categories of businesses (restaurants, dentists, bars, etc).Once the user finds the location they are searching for, they can go to its page to find its rating out of five stars, amateur reviews, and similar locations. The site is seemingly self-aware of its humourous content, as reviews can be upvoted as “Useful,” “Cool,” or even “Funny.” For this article, the focus will be on the most well-known category — restaurants.
To begin, here are the types of “good” reviews that are common on Yelp:
These “good reviews” can be genuinely for users to get helpful insight. In fact, a lot of the reviews span several paragraphs. These reviews are often a bit too long, and could honestly be shortened to a couple sentences, but the hearty reviews are nothing to complain about. As shown above, some reviews even have follow-ups, which helps to give a more well-rounded perspective.
On the flip-side, not all restaurants are held in the same high-esteem:
These reviews, simple or in-depth, flesh out the pros and cons of certain restaurants, and can be genuinely helpful. However, many of the reviews, made by less-than-satisfied customers, are often a bit too skewed and borderline excessive.
![Review by User A F. and response by Old Town Pizzeria owner Joe N. A.F: CUSTOMER SERVICE IS NOT THERE [SIC] SPECIALITY...... ordered pizza online at 5:37pm on a Friday (9-27-19) as of 6:48pm pizza still hasn't shown and we called the store 7 times and no answer........ Joe N: I apologize for the delay with the weather, our phones and internet which created a problem with our point of sale system. Please feel free to call me and I will gladly credit you for the delay. My number is 6306980565. Thanks, Joe.](https://nvhsecho.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Screenshot-2019-10-01-at-8.52.34-AM-475x293.png)
Albeit amusing, these types of reviews obviously hold several major flaws. Some reviewers leave their reviews during the peak of their dissatisfaction, which clearly leads to angry, perhaps inaccurate reviews. As seen in the Old Town Pizzeria review above, some customers can have unreasonable expectations, such as expecting on-time delivery during a thunderstorm.
Yelp, despite the stereotypes of angry, borderline comical reviews surrounding it, can often provide genuinely helpful reviews for a myriad of businesses, big or small. I give Yelp a four “Angry Moms” out of five.
Yelp: 5-star or flop-star?
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