Not much, I suspect. I’d love to see a YP or someone like Gannett plunk down cash for nothing.

And Yelp. Come on. Does anyone really think they are any different.

It’s not just reviews. It’s business detail and decent search.

Kudzu.com blows every one of these guys away. Regrettably, these guys only cover four markets (San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Atlanta) — and Atlanta is where they truly shine. But they actually have advertising and actionable info.

Judy, Angie and so on and so on are flavors of the month.

“Insider Pages could not find that page…
Oops! We can’t find the page you were looking for. If you followed an incorrect link from elsewhere on our site, please accept our apologies; it should be corrected soon. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”

Yelp is a hookup site disguised as a review site for foodies who would like to have some dinner before sex. Partially joking but I like Yelp mobile, it’s helped me when I land somewhere and need some tips to start conversations with locals.

Insiderpages is a name I cannot ever remember when I want a review site/yellow pages.

WTF?

On the other IP has more of a business feel to it, targeted to consumers/providers of services such as hair salons, medical/dental, and home repair services.

Both firms cast a wide net but Yelp is getting a better results because they cater to a more specific audience . It feels like IP failed to gain traction in their market segment and then went for the be everything to everyone model, which also failed.

IP has some great technology and may be valuable to a larger company that can re-purpose it. No knock to IP, I just don’t see the same user passion or focus as Yelp.

I have a question, if you raise 8.5 million and get sold for a few million more, is that money split according to each parties stake, or do the investors get their money back first and what ever is left goes to founders and equity holding employees?

The Zagat survey *is* completed by thousands of participants, but it can suffer from a prominent selection bias. It’s an open survey that anyone can volunteer to take, not a representative sample of all diners. An eager chef can ask his diners to take the survey and sing his praises. See The I’s Have It, from a 5/06 NYT food blog.

If you poke around, you can find a lot of questions and criticism around Zagat’s methodology.

I don’t really believe in canonical Best Of lists, because they all come with biases. I have my favorite restaurants, and I can tell you why they’re my favorites, but reasonable people can disagree with me. The trick is finding a cluster of people (or even a single person) with tastes similar to your own and trading information with them.

As for #15, “When someone is PAID to write a review, then can you take that review at face value”, makes no sense to me. Professional critics are paid and can write useful reviews.

But it’s true that there are two models, the expert view vs the wisdom of crowds. In the latter, some reviews may be worthless, but they’re offset by the large number of other reviews on the same topic.

All in all, the problem is not *should they* pay reviewers, but *can they afford* to pay enough reviewers to make the site broadly useful.

Then the actual search results contained nothing I was looking for. The top result was for a male strip club.

Well done IP.com

As for these yelpers, you can’t argue that the probable motives behind a review for a paid vs. non-paid will be different. For yelp to secretly “mix” these people in some of their markets to me seems pretty weak. If someone is a paid yelper, they need to disclose that info to the general public. How do I know that the review is not being written by the owner of that local business too? #23 made a good point. Anyone who writes 471 reviews is someone I could care less about. Either they are driven on ego; wanting to see their stuff online (in which case I am not valuing their opinion). Or else they are on Yelp payroll (in which case I am not valuing their opinion). For someone to tell me how good or bad a place is with absolutely no motive one way or the other is the purest form of referral/non-referral.

And to not think Zagat and Yelp are different is silly. They don’t allow joe blow to put content in their book. they also have a pretty clear monetization strategy.

As for Insider Pages, a more appropriate name would be OutsiderPages. Aside from all the confusing ads they throw at you (not exactly contextual when you do a search for Nobu, and you see ads for refrigerated trucking and a modeling agency), every review seems to be written by a tourist. I spent some time on the New York edition, and one of the “insider” tips on shopping and attractions that received 5 stars from a number of “experts” and was a “can’t miss” was the South Street Seaport. Probably the city’s biggest tourist trap (even bigger than Time Square because of its location), it is home to national chains like GAP, Bath&Body Works, Abercrombie - not exactly hidden gems of commerce that New York City is known for.

As an aside, do the ZAGAT folks publish their material for free? The authors aren’t paid? I didn’t realize that.

I don’t see anything inherently wrong with this — don’t let the current wave of user-generated content make you forget that magazines still hire writers — but it could be abused if the writers have an undisclosed bias.

You trust Zagat? How quaint.

I hate to say it, but that is what is totally wrong with the Yelp business model. When someone is PAID to write a review, then can you take that review at face value. Did that person really like that restaurant enough to spend 30 minutes creating a Yelp account and writing a nice review? Or did that person write a review because they were getting paid to do it? Also when you have paid people milling about the website, a user has to ask himself “Is this review by a paid person or unpaid?” It’s difficult to compare one review to another because of this model. I truly wonder how many legit reviews are on that website that are not written by a paid person or employee of Yelp.

Personally I could never believe a review of a place on Yelp (that I have yet to visit) because of that primary flaw in logic. And isn’t that the entire reason people use reviews? Yelp is not ZAGAT where I can trust a complete stranger based on his reviews. That person is a professional.

I am a former Yelp! contributor (Austin) and your assessment is off base. At face value, it is easy to say, “they are paying people to review things, so it’s fake!” However, that is not the case.

There is an unfortunate connotation out there that just because someone is being paid to do something means that they are doing it in a disingenuous manner. I was paid by Yelp! to write about my city. Since I love Austin and I love to write, taking the position was a no-brainer.

Sad to see that nobody has the balls investigate in stuff like this.