Business travel takes me all over the country and Yelp is incredibly reliable. I've lost track of the number of times that someone recommends a place, Yelp says it's a 2-3 star place, we go anyway, and yup, it's average at best.
I hear and see the complaints of restauranteurs about Yelp. Yet my experiences at places usually match what's seen in reviews. There's a restaurant in my hometown where the owner, a friend of mine, constantly complained about Yelp reviews where the the sentiment was that his food was too expensive and not of consistent quality (I agreed with the reviews). A few weeks ago he decided to close the place because of declining revenues. Had he listened to the reviews, settled for a bit less margin, and worked with his staff to produce a consistent product he'd still be in business.
Edit: I neglected to add that it's really important to read reviews for context. Sometimes you just have people bitching because they're a gluten-sensitive nut-allergic vegan and the place didn't cater to their highly specific needs.
So, if your willing to spend a while going over them it's better than nothing. However, actual restaurant reviews are more accurate, take less time to use, and your less likely to read 10 reviews and learn nothing. IMO, Yelp way over hyped for how little value it's actually providing.
Could we stop shutting down opinions using the sample size argument? It's one of the weakest arguments you can make:
'I think different so your opinion isn't valid because anecdote!' 'Oh you don't agree with my opinion? Well that's not valid either because anecdote!'
Not every discussion is capable of having prior polling as evidence (polling has its own issues with bias anyways). A highly voted on comment has >> 1 people who share the same sentiment and the beauty of sites like these is highly up-voted comments bubble to the top.
I reserve the right to shut down my own opinions, especially the anecdotal ones. I have known my anecdotes to be 91.3% bullshit.
Regarding upvotes as a proxy for "me too": an upvote doesn't mean "me too" in many cases, it means "this comment was something I thought contributed to the discussion in a meaningful way." Thus using upvotes as a proxy for a sample size counter, isn't even remotely accurate because upvotes do not necessarily correlate to me or anyone else sharing your sentiment. They only correlate to someone saying that your posting added value.
I upvote things all the time with which I disagree because the commenter made a strong argument and it added to the quality of the discussion. I downvote things with which I sometimes agree because perhaps the point was badly made, inflammatory or otherwise not enriching to the discussion. And then, I also downvote comments that use trendy I "haz cheeseburger" level diction. Of course, given my own guidelines, I probably ought to downvote myself.
I have noticed this as well, but if you read the reviews you get a good idea of what is happening in SF: tourists.
Joe and Jane Honeymooners come to SF from Tulsa/KC/Duluth/DesMoines and have the "best meal/coffee/pastry/brunch EVER".
Good for them.
I actually often stay at a hotel that has small [edit: 170 sq. ft] but deliberately engineered for the size rooms and I rather like it.
Both types of review are valid, but the former is more valid for new-to-NYC vacationers while the latter would be better suited to those who are repeat travelers or people people who have migrated away from NYC and are vacationing home.
The complaint though, is that there's no way to distinguish between them. How big is big? How small is small? Reviewers seldom list the square footage, and the net result is that one person's anecdotal evidence is countered by another's opposite anecdotal experience. At the end of the day, unless there is an equal number of use cases, we're left reading reviews for context, which renders the star ratings useless.
Also, the implication that everything is better in SF/NYC compared to Tulsa/KC/Duluth/DesMoines and thus the opinion of Joe and Jane Honeymooner isn't as useful is really rather snobby.
But since we're stuck with the five star system...here is how I leverage Yelp review data when it comes to selecting a small business to patronize:
1. Normalize for the true Yelp rating scale of 4 - 4.5 stars. Filter out anything below a 4 star rating. If a small business is unable achieve 4 stars on Yelp, then something must be really wrong.
2. Quantity of reviews is important. For starters, you need a significant sample size of review data for the star rating to be meaningful. Further on the review quantity front: massive review numbers relative to other similar businesses in that given city is a good signal of popularity (though not necessarily quality).
3. You need to supplement your Yelp findings from points 1 and 2 with other sources, ideally critical reviews (e.g. Eater, Serious Eats, Time Out, NY Times, Chicago Mag, etc).
4. The content of individual Yelp reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. Your individual priorities and tastes might be radically different so there is limited value in an individual's rating. I've come across some truly great restaurants with 1-star reviews because the reviewer tried to dine at the restaurant on a Monday...when it was closed.
But the modern convention is 5 stars as "good", and getting too many 4s is a failure.
But, I think in the long run it doesn't matter. It just seems consumer based reviews are useless overall and people should stop relying on them.
My experience is that higher star ratings on Yelp equate mainly to presentation over taste and that higher prices tend to mean a better rating (Out of a few average Chinese food places, the higher priced one will be rated the highest).
If you assume an efficient market, they presumably wouldn't be able to charge a higher price if people didn't like them better. Of course, the average rater may care more about presentation than you do. A lot of people do go to restaurants more for the "experience" than for the food.
I run the restaurants team at TripAdvisor and we're working to solve problems in finding the best place to eat. If you think you can do better, you may be right; come prove it!
Drop me a line, especially if you're excited to work on big piles of data, NLP, ML, a heap of phone stuff and crazy stuff like using word concreteness scores to analyze review value.
You get restaurants that would be a solid 3-stars (maybe even 4!) anywhere else in the country, but because they are competing against all the hot new places that food snobs like me love, they are only 2-3 stars max.
IIRC the highest rated restaurant on the site is 4.62 (I might be off but it's not 5.0) Most restaurants are in the 3.0 to 3.6 range.
A curious difference in culture to Yelp
And these days, it seems average restaurants are sporting the "TripAdvisor Certificate Of Excellence", so now that's meaningless too. I've seen it on one genuinely top-class Indian restaurant, but recently saw it on some distinctly mediocre places in Singapore.
In my experience, TA seems to have a larger self-reinforcing effect than Yelp: Top 10 places get more great reviews, stay top 10, even if they're dropping off in relative value or weren't that great to begin with.
Stereotypically most negative reviews are about booking issues (e.g. lost booking, someone arrived too late and the booking was given away, etc). Or moaning about the free food or free/paid WiFi.
I don't think management replies add anything, unless they're being a jerk/dismissive. It is better just to say nothing than to be a jerk, since others reading the reply will assume that they will be treated the same way.