Yelp – Yikes!!
You may have noticed that I took down the link to the reviews of Mick’s on Yelp. This is the short version:
I find a place that I like enough to work through the menu and blog about, so I decided to write a review on Yelp. There were about 8 reviews yesterday, and only 2 were bad. Once was by someone who just didn’t like the food – that’s fair enough. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it.
The other negative review, however, from a “Tony C.” wasn’t just about the food. His review covered everything about the place; comprehensive? Sure. Accurate? Not really. His obvious insider knowledge of the food service industry leads me to believe that he works (or has worked) at a restaurant or similar type of business. His review of Mick’s is the only one he has on Yelp; the same goes for me, of course, as Mick’s was my first review on Yelp. I don’t understand the concept behind starting up an account just to leave one bad review; that just sounds suspicious.
I did some research on the web and discovered a trend with Yelp reviews; some disappear, some get moved mysteriously, and some never get posted. Toss it up to the software model if you like, but there have been accusations that some businesses were promised better reviews and fewer negative ones for upgraded pay-services through Yelp. I don’t know if that’s true, but today there are only 2 reviews for Mick’s – the bad ones. Of all the reviews that could have been marked as fake or “malicious” they left the most obvious one.
There is a “Flag” option for reviews – my guess is someone flagged the other reviews. I have flagged the suspicious Tony C. review; we’ll see how Yelp responds. I will probably not be using Yelp in the future.
Tags: Beer, Big Turkey, Fries, Miller Lite, Virginia Club
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