Hacker News Reader

Comment by yibg | Hacker News Reader

I used to look at yelp reviews before deciding on a restaurant to eat at. I'm now completely ignoring yelp reviews because I don't trust them. Strange I do still trust google reviews. Maybe I shouldn't since I don't know how reliable that is either. But at least I'm not hearing about the same shaddy tactics there.

View on HN

I think the local guide system google set up is the only reason I bother to read Google reviews. It's nice to have the guarantee of "here's a review by what is probably a real person who lives near this business and reviewed this out of kindness/boredom"

unless somebody hates on the business, not for their food or whatever, just hating the owner or a person there or whatever. than he makes a negative review and it's impossible to actually remove it. even if the comment just says "i don't like person XYZ". heck most people don't read reviews so they see this 3-3.5 star business and think it sucks (when it only has like 3 reviews)

basically google review is like the opposite of yelp. if somebody posts trash it will be their forever. even after the business died.

I had a bad review from someone I interviewed and didn't hire. Disputed and it's still there, 2 years later.

I use Yelp purely for discovery, and even then, only on Apple Maps (because Yelp provides the data for Apple Maps). I otherwise find that it directs me to higher-priced venues, presumably because those are the only ones that can afford the "value-add." This is not a rap on those venues, to be clear.

Not sure even if Google can be trusted as reviews can be from friends/family, I've seen owners give themselves five stars, and recently saw signs posted on stop signs about buying five star reviews for businesses on Google.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com