Yelp’s Local Reviews

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1. Justin Bitely
   

   October 13th, 2005 at 3:08 pm

   Yelp is available in more cities than just San Fran. There are plenty of listings for here in Boston.

2. seshasayanan pratap
   

   October 17th, 2005 at 6:28 pm

   I have tried out all three sites mentioned - Yelp, Judy’s Book, and InsiderPages - and Yelp is the best of the lot. The user interface and social networking capabilities of Yelp are extremely very well designed and implemented. The site has recently added a mapping capability that makes browsing for local establishments a breeze.

   My initial interest in Yelp was to just look around, but I found some great restaurant reviews and decided to invite several friends to join within minutes of signing on to the site. I haven’t had a similar experience with either of the other sites

3. kaveh
   

   October 24th, 2005 at 10:30 am

   One cannot ignore Yahoo!’s recent big push (has always been active in this area, but) in the local search & review space.

   The problem with Yelp, Judy’s Books and alike services are the lack of incentives for users to participate when it comes to submitting a review. I bet you would find a very high search to contribution ratio … what motivates people to contribute to wikipedia is very different than review of local listings … this may or may not be the best ‘by the people for the people’ type service. When you have a dedicated group of reviewers writing the review, then rest of us commenting on it by sharing our experience may be the way to go.

   Even a bigger issue is the fact that these services are not wikis!! Why not? The emphasis should be put on letting users easily add new businesses, correct a description of a place, post comments and pictures, etc. Instead, Yelp has become another CitySearch, with fancier member profiles. We need more member profiles, like we need another hole in the head!!

   Sorry guys, Yelp is not a Web 2.0 company and is not even innovative enough to be a notable Web 1.0 company.

4. Dork Master
   

   November 9th, 2005 at 9:24 am

   One new twist on this idea is another SF site, NiftyGuy (www.niftyguy.com) where people review people (instead of thousands of restuarants, etc). Sort of like a P-pinions, you can find reviews on doctors, dentists, agents, hairstylists, etc and even dates!

5. tom
   

   December 15th, 2005 at 1:40 pm

   kaveh, yelp *does* allow you to add new businesses, correct business info and post photos/comments. it may not be totally wiki-like, but the features are there.

6. nick
   

   December 27th, 2005 at 12:00 pm

   Another great social network site with local reviews is http://www.revju.com . Here you could be a winer of an ipod too.

7. rose
   

   January 19th, 2006 at 10:51 pm

   ya, its wonderful, u can find the biz, but y look 4 all these & contact them, when u can find all the info @ this site http://www.wuraweb.com/. its the local reviews(every1 luvs + prices) what more can u ask 4, already in my bookmarks. its a growing site, so u may want 2 give them time. but i guess they workin on that because they lettin advertisers list free.

8. mo
   

   January 31st, 2006 at 1:05 am

   One major flaw…it’s a walled garden.

   it does not provide the necessary info (phone number, weblink) to the business. why? because they are trying to force the businesses to pay a fee to advertise with them. if the business does not know about yelp, they would have no link to their own site.

   now with the handful of these local hubs popping up, what’s a local business to do? have advertising deals with all of them?

   google local is free. once google add a public comment feature, yelp is dead.

9. privacy issues
   

   July 13th, 2006 at 10:08 am

   what about the fact that yelp is providing people with the opportunity to disclose personal and private information about individuals for the world to see? i have a right to my personal information such as my name and my address, but a user of yelp has posted this information for all the world to see. while reviews are useful, the way that it is presented is essential in maintaining a universal respect.

10. Phil See
    

    August 10th, 2006 at 8:16 am

    Yelp has moderators to ensure the address of a company is correct. It also allow you to upload pictures of the business both in and out and to input the url of the business and they are now in a few major cities. They also organize Yelp events where Yelpers will dine at the same new establishment and then each yelper will write their own review of the place. It’s also a way for Yelpers to meet other members of the Yelp family. The only problem I have with Yelp is their talk boards. I think they should be on a totally seperate site and unrelated to their home site with the exception of a Yelp talk page relating to businesses and services only and as a means of providing tips to new businesses. Otherwise, I don’t think Yelp can be beat by anyone, even wikis. And I predict they are going to be the measure for related sites.

11. no credit check
    

    August 27th, 2006 at 1:34 am

    clock suffocate paying parentage detained?reversing belying - Tons of interesdting stuff!!!

12. Monique
    

    December 4th, 2006 at 4:06 pm

    Super!
    http://www.chausstran.com/webverzeichnis/

13. Mark
    

    December 16th, 2006 at 11:52 pm

    Rave About It is an Australian website that aims to provide an enjoyable way in which users can search, rate and discuss what they think of services in their local area and beyond. Check it out!
    http://www.raveaboutit.com.au

14. Larissa
    

    January 10th, 2007 at 7:54 am

    Yelp is good. Judy’s book has become waaaaaaaaaaaay to commercialized. Didn’t even know Google’s local was functional. There is another great review website called Buzzerfly at http://www.buzzerfly.com. Like it cause it’s easy to navigate and no commercialization.

15. Geeta
    

    March 2nd, 2007 at 6:03 am

    A really new cool social networking site for Indians/South Asians worldwide is GoYaar.com. It has a Yelp like local review section for all major cities in India and cities around the world with a lot of South Asians - it is integrated with GOogle Maps - but until google maps gets better in the India city address - it can’t really pinpoint the location. Has 100s of categories to review like Yelp…but the social network features are much more in-depth than Yelp…ajax enabled..yada yada