Yelp Official Blog

Yelp vs. YouTube: A Ratings Showdown

YouTube caused a little stir recently when the company posted a graph on its blog showing the distribution of user ratings of videos on the site. Like Yelp, YouTube offers a five-star rating system, with five being the highest. As you can see on the graph, YouTube users gave one star to a few videos, and five stars to virtually all the rest. Very few got anything in between; folks either hate or love YouTube videos, and mostly love 'em. Which raised an important question for the folks at YouTube: how useful is a rating system if most videos get the highest score?

Some people seem to think that online reviews are exactly that, only rants or raves, resulting in consumer websites comprised solely of ratings on the extremes. Which, we agree, wouldn't be very helpful.

But we see something entirely different here on Yelp. To date Yelpers have written more than seven million reviews and the star ratings are spread across the board.

Looking at the chart you'll find that 85% of all reviews are neutral to positive. Yelpers, being the passionate local consumers that they are, use the site much like a blog. They are reviewing their day to day experiences with local businesses and the distribution is a direct reflection of that. More often than not we are patronizing three and four-star businesses. Think back: how many one-star experiences have you had this month?

Sure there is the occasional Yelper who has all one-star reviews. But as a reader when you look at that profile you have to step back and wonder "either this person is a complete Debbie Downer, or they were kicking puppies in a previous life and have some serious bad karma when it comes to choosing local businesses." You make the call.

Yelp offers not just lots of reviews, but lots of varied experiences from which to choose. Isn't diversity great?!

How your iPhone got you to 2nd Base. No, really.

The iPhone can do many things: you can Yelp on it, play a game of Bejeweled, even pretend you're Luke Skywalker.

Now, you can also do dinner and a movie on it. But really, really well.

Yelp's teamed up with movie social-networking service Flixster.com to bring you the ability to not only search for movies playing in your neighborhood, but also find the best places to grab a bite to eat or a drink in the area.

If you're on your iPhone, the Flixster app will include a "Restaurants Nearby" button that will pull up reviews either via Yelp for iPhone or Yelp Mobile for places in the area to nosh before or after your flick.

Additionally, if you're doing the research beforehand (because you're a smart date, right?), Yelp.com will have links to "Now Playing" movies on our theater pages, and will also have links to "Movies Nearby" below the map on those theater business pages, as well.

OK, what are you still doing here? We did all the work for you. If you don't get lucky this time, it's not the restaurant, it's not the movie, it's... the popcorn. You should've gotten Milk Duds, dude. Gets them every time.

From the Yelp Workshop

Here at Yelp, we have a lot going on behind the scenes and this week we unveiled some updates to Yelp.com that we wanted to make sure you were aware of. While they may not all mess with your sense of reality, they should prove both rad and useful when you're navigating throughout the site.

The first one is a follow-on to the Related Searches function we released last week. On business pages, we'll show search keywords people used to find the business that you're viewing. Perfect for discovering the specialties of a given business (like BYOB...)

Additionally, we have now made the complimenting experience even easier. You can now respond to all the hoards of compliments you get in-line. Now you don't have to miss a beat when you're thanking a fellow Yelper for their witty words!

Finally, we've also launched Photo Voting for logged in users. Meaning you can vote on which photos you find the most helpful when researching a local business. If you're the photographer, you can also see which of your snaps got the most love!

So get in there and let us know what you think either via Talk or directly to feedback@yelp.com. We'll also continue to keep you updated on all the tricks and treats the team consistently brings to Yelp products across the board.

Yelp Eats! Restaurant Week Tour Continues

So there was a little promotion that we kicked off this Summer in a handful of amazing cities; Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Miami and Phoenix to be exact.  Yelp Eats! Restaurant Week was a one week program where our Community Managers in each city sought out some of the most talked about eateries in their metro to offer a Yelp approved, prix fixe dinner menu at a discounted price.

The program proved to be a popular one with both consumers and business owners so we've decided to extend the tour!

UP NEXT: the SF Bay Area and P-town (aka Portland)

Monday, October 5 - Sunday, October 11

For a list of restaurants, menu options and price please check our events page listings: San Francisco,  East Bay,  Silicon Valley  and  Portland

This deal is open to all Yelpers and non-Yelpers alike!  Reservations are highly recommended as are pants with elastic waist bands. Bon Appetite!

To Solicit or Not to Solicit?

Recently, there's been some discussion about a restaurant offering a 20% discount to entice patrons into reviewing the establishment on Yelp. This is an issue we see occasionally, so we thought we'd take this opportunity to talk about why this isn't a great idea, how Yelp works to create an authentic experience for consumers, and how small business owners can embrace Yelp while avoiding potholes like these.

As a general rule, Yelp has advised business owners not to offer incentives for reviews. For starters, paying people to write reviews about your business is another form of shilling and that's just wrong. Second, very often you'll offend a customer and the offer will be quickly outed in your reviews, resulting in unintended negative reviews and/or negative publicity. Finally, it's typically a fruitless exercise.

Why? In an effort to minimize spam and maximize trustworthiness of the site's content, Yelp actively weeds out suspicious reviews through a combination of community self-policing and automated filtering; aggressively solicited reviews can ring hollow at times and end up flagged by users or the website for removal. The system is designed to ensure the reviews consumers rely on are as authentic and useful as possible.

If you own a business, you might be wondering "Okay, how am I supposed to get reviews?" Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media just ran a great piece on how businesses should get involved on Yelp here and Robert Scoble of building43 interviewed a business owner about his experiences with Yelp in the video below. In the meantime, here are a few suggestions to help you get started:

1) Unlock your free business page via http://www.yelp.com/business. Why? Not only can you upload photos and edit listing information, but you can add information about who you are, your history, as well as track overall traffic to your page. This also ensures that Yelp will include your business page in search results we provide consumers.

2) Post Sales and Special Offers. Yelp gives business owners a free way to promote themselves via the site and our wildly popular iPhone application. With more than 14,000 offers on Yelp worldwide, this is a great resource to help consumers discover and try new businesses on the go while simultaneously saving money. Business owners, this is also a great mobile means for you to attract Yelpers in the door without outright asking for a review.

3) Respond to reviews. Feeling irked by that stray negative review? It eventually happens to everyone, and you shouldn't take it personally. Unlocking your free tools allows you to respond privately and publicly to your reviews. We recommend being diplomatic in your response. There's some great tips from other business owners at yelp.com/business

4) Focus on great customer service. If you build it, they will come. By investing a few minutes in your listing and using biz.yelp.com as a reputation-management tool and word-of-mouth barometer, you will attract new customers through Yelp. Those who discover you through Yelp, in turn, are much more likely to share their experience with your business via a review on Yelp.

So, while we definitely encourage business owners to engage with their customers and, of course, get creative, what has made Yelp stand apart is that we cultivate real experiences -- and the best ones aren't solicited.