Oh my, Yelp still doesn't get it!
I am a fan of reviews. Reviews keep us honest, alert and wanting to improve. But, I am also a fan of fairness and honesty. If Yelp would adjust their algorithm to focus on identifying "fake" reviews and post reviews chronologically, I would be much happier and these type of reports and blogs would disappear.
This is a link to a video to yet another story on how Yelp seemingly extorts money from reviewed merchants. Yelp sucks as long as they continue providing such an unfair service. In my opinion, as soon as a new review site comes along that offers the same amount of information, with reviews posted chronologically, Yelp will become less relevant. And, that's fine with me. Yelp never addresses their algorithm relating to date stamping. Why is that?
Even consumers are starting to look for alternatives. It's a good directory (so is Google), but it isn't a fair review site. The average review is what, 3.5 stars? Seems like a low-end attempt to create a crowd-sourced content site. Moreover, they are not creative. They haven't figured out how to monetize Yelp beyond advertising. Or have they?
See video at YouTube here.
Watch video here
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Hi Michael,
ReplyDeleteI think the problem you have identified is and will become much bigger as consumers write their experiences on review websites that are growing. Currently up to 60 and includes Google, Yahoo, Bing,City Search, Local.com (they went public), and many others.
Consumers will ultimately decide which website they will go to in order to post their reviews.
The bigger issue will be the local business and small business who are dependent upon the local consumer for their revenues, don't and won't have time to manage all these locations.
All these locations that show up in search results and mobile searches. All these reviews that will be used for search engine rankings in the future.
As you can imagine services are available to help the local and small business to manage these local listings and reviews. You can read up on one from KillerStartUps at this web address:
http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/smartfindslocallisting-com-be-found-online
I am hoping that the local and small business (banks to lawyers to doctors to retail etc) will be early adopters of local listings instead of waiting for this to happen upon them.