Yelp, a user generated review site that continues to do very well with traffic growth, was still a bit boring in my opinion. Reviews of the local restaurants and flower shops are useful for some people, but it isn’t exactly as sexy as hanging out in MySpace.
Perhaps I’m wrong though…some of the bored housewives in silicon valley may want to check out this review of Jose’s Landscaping in Menlo Park. Seems like a full service operation.
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Yelp is amazing.
It is a total scam. It removed my reviews. You have to pay to look OK on it. Another site for suckers like you. Google maps much better.
Thanks, Mike–Now Jose is going to raise his prices!
Yelp is losing its significance as 60 people write about a business just to tell their life story leading up to the event.
It’s fun to read about ‘mow and blow jobs’ but their reviewers just try to one-up each other on being funny as opposed to writing a ‘real’ review.
“I worked out a flat fee for a mow and a blow job…”
Nice, I see you chose your screenshot carefully. ellohell
yelp is a scam; they pay people, mostly young fresh out of school attractive women to review stuff…its canned.
Nobody has reviewed my janitorial service yet. It’s just par for the course. We clean up the sh*t for some of Silicon Valley’s top firms and get sh*t in return.
Yelp is fake. I live in San Francisco and have left bona fide reviews on Yelp of businesses I’ve gone to. All of my reviews were removed. I could not get them re-instated. I left new ones and they got taken off, too. I used a couple of services on Yelp that got 5 stars and that turned out to be awful. It looks to me like some business owners have friends at Yelp. I won’t use their site again because it seems to be a scam.
Hahahahhaahhaah can not laugh harder on the keyboard, what a review….
Man I want to be reviewed as computer technician, fix the hard drive or the softdrive, and just perfect cables to plug in,
Vijay
I do not think “blow job” means - head in this instance.
All of Marian G.’s insightful reviews can be found at:
http://www.yelp.com/user_detai.....NWJoesKmmw
Thanks for posting this review, Michael. I just realized that the reason that Drama-Free Janitorial isn’t getting great reviews from our customers is that we’re not a “full-service” janitorial service. From this moment forward, that’s changing.
“Seems like a full service operation.”
Hahahahahaha.
Andrew: ORLY?
Some people will find it useful, I’d imagine — and when I say some, that includes me.
Would it be more or less humorous if it said “blow and a mow job?”
I think they’ve cottoned on and taken down the post
Guys & Gals, Yelp is not a scam — I have found dozens of restaurants that I love that I normally would never have taken a second glance at. Yes, some of the reviewers go overboard with their reviews (they’re encouraged by Yelp to make them “interesting”) but never has Yelp failed to meet what the general reviews have said about a restaurant — if its highly rated, you can bet that the food is yummy. Also, their mobile version kicks ass as it is fast and just gives what you need when you’re on the road looking for something.
One issue I see comes in reviews of things like “Auto Body Shops” or “Dentists”… the average person does not use multiple auto body shops or multiple dentists, so their ratings are truly not very useful as it is not truly comparative.
Overall I recommend Yelp highly, and friends I have referred it to love it.
Yelp is a scam and I can prove it. I wrote 15 reviews, some good some bad. After some time they all were removed. Don’t believe me, try yourself. Another thought, some of this reviewers have like a 1000 reviews. I mean can you imagine the time it takes to write all this crap. Nobody is going to do it for free. Another thought in my town there is two businesses on the same street. Business one 30 years old 1 review, business two 3 years old 5 reviews all 5 stars. If you still think Yelp is great I have a nice bridge for sale, CHEAP!
thats funny
we have some troll from yelp.com doing a very poor job of disguising a pr post
# lemon obrien
July 9th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
yelp is a scam; they pay people, mostly young fresh out of school attractive women to review stuff…its canned.
—
Any proof of this Dan Rather?
Take a look at yelp’s intern jobs
http://www.yelp.com/jobs
especially the last sentence and i quote:
**
Note: This is non-paying gig at this point, but college credit, a stellar letter of recommendation, the opportunity to work around your own schedule and many fun perks are available.
**
Yelp is pretty useful. Most reviewers are real people - you have to provide a real photo and name to become an Elite reviewer.
That being said, the tendency of reviews online in a social setting is to “one-up” the previous reviewer which leads to some hilarious reviews which keeps it entertaining.
Yelp is far better than Citysearch and other similar rating services because of the social nature. Furthermore, on Yelp, one can say “I’m looking for X restaurant in Y neighborhood” on the message board, and the community helps you find one.
This is actually a useful social site.
Can I ask you, that real photo, can it be a photo of me or somebody else or maybe if it can be somebody else can I get it from google images when I google lets say Jay. Wow “Results 1 - 21 of about 63,200,000 for jay [definition]. (0.23 seconds)” that’s a lot of real photos of real people Jay or should I say sucker.
Vic.
Oh and that’s my real name.
yep. i swear by yelp too. i don’t understand the yelp hate. with a bb pearl, yelp mobile, and google maps anything is possible.
I think even more hilarious are the serious comments to this post.
Shoot, I had just attempted to convince Kari this isn’t some big frat party, and now look. Hey!Spread was defensible– this is pure lowbrow guy humor at its finest. I’m going to get a beer as I chuckle to myself. “Blow job…” He he he…
To Richard Corsale, have a little too much paranoia for breakfast this morning? See any reptillians recently? The Illuminati out after you? No… well, I am not a troll from Yelp, dunce. You think what I wrote was PR? No, its just that I actually can write. I use Yelp. Period. I am a manager of usability for a very successful dot com company. Yelp is
To Richard Corsale: have a little too much paranoia for breakfast this morning? See any reptillians recently? The Illuminati out after you? No…? Well, I am not a troll from Yelp, you dunce. You think what I wrote was PR? No, its just that I actually can write. I use Yelp. Period. I am a manager of usability for a dot com company in LA… and it’s not Yelp (i.e. Atlanta is not in Los Angeles) . Yes, Richard, there really ARE products out there that are built well and are useful… time to wake up and smell the coffee, Richy.
I’m still confused about whom is blowing whom unless Marian is hiding something. Jose, care to comment? He’ll be back in the afternoon unless he is checking this post on his iPhone.
nice find! some women apparently do get really bored…but hey, she’s a creative financier - her valley husband should be proud (if there is one)!
on a serious aside, there’s a lot yelp could do to improve - including a cap on reviews with the ability to rate up and unpublish the crappiest (perhaps just buried but visible upon request, like the comment system on omidyar.net)
MA, you need to get out more
http://wordpress.com/tag/mow-and-blow/
its just the leafblower guys…
ORLY, oh really! No way, like ORLY!
Wow! I didn’t realize what a reaction I would get raving about my landscape gardener! In our neighborhood, we refer to “mow and blow” for over 20 plus years. Yes Eric is correct. It’s a leaf “blower” and they “mow” the lawn. I didn’t expect such an observation, I was so happy to get my front and back yard done for under $13,000 done in a week! And, to have a regular garden work done at such an agreeable rate. I am retired and a baby boomer. (oh, are you going to find a double entendre for that too?) No money was ever received for my reviews.
Could one more person please enlighten all of us that “blow job” really means leafblower in this instance?
You know I reviewed my landlord at Yelp. I was so happy to see it come up #2 on Google in searching for them. They are awful, but several people have written me asking what building i’m in (they manage a bunch).. very satisfying to know you can share the knowledge about a service like that.
In other news regarding the misuse of the English language in CA, they also use the article “the” in front of the highway they are describing: “take the 4″, “Get on the 405″, etc. (Hint: you DO NOT NEED “the” to describe the highway when using the designated state or federal number).
Ugh!
Were you seriously unaware that “blow job” is commonly used to refer to something else?
Do you really care if they use a leaf-blower rather than a broom?
Hey Will! I think blow job refers to blowing leaves around to clear a pathway. ORLY!
My front and back yard is 2,000 square feet. It would take a long time to sweep with a broom. I think that your term bj is commonly used today. It is not common in my circle.
yelp is going bad the way epinions did, bad reviews dont scale.
The idea of reviewing sites isn’t a bad idea….And I think MySpace is being abandoned for Facebook - sure you don’t want to change analogies?
I must say that techcrunch reviews have been really decreasing in value in the last few months and this is such a good example of that. More likely than not, this was a joke. Why was this techcrunch worthy? What is techcrunch doing these days anyway? Too much money coming in to report on any real technology stories? Hey, why don’t you print a story that degrades guys in some way and see how much conversation you get going.
Well, I think Yelp had/has potential in the sense that City Search sucks, and the idea behind both could be useful, but I don’t think it’s structured to fit that gap and I don’t think it’s useful enough to go beyond people wanting to write reviews about wherever they hang out (which are too hard to read and I end up skipping most). I am on it and write stuff about L.A. but only because I get bored writing about business and fashion, and I don’t think i have in a while. My friend is obsessed with it, but I think she’ll tire of it too.
They need to do something different. I am not sure what.
taken a second glance at the site ,o(∩_∩)o..
“isn’t exactly as sexy as hanging out in MySpace”
MySpace is sexy? Michael, you’re great, but you desparately need to get a better life.
Thanks for clearing that up, Marian G!
There is actually probably a much greater chance that one of Jose’s caballeros wrote this review (perhaps while wearing a sun dress, for inspiration).
ORLY!
A website is claiming to help people addicted to yelp:
http://yhelp.org/
Marian, just in case you are still reading this - I think most people realized that you were referring to a leaf-blowing service. The reason your review was highlighted was because it was unintentionally funny - of COURSE you meant leaf-blowing, but it came out in a slightly different way that was amusing to some. It isn’t a criticism of you that it was read that way, it’s just an amusing tidbit…nobody thinks you didn’t know what the OTHER meaning of “blow job” was, we just think you were focused on writing a quality review and didn’t realize the double entendre.
As for everybody saying that Yelp reviews are paid - I was about to say “well damn, where can I sign up, I write mine free!” - but then I realized that Washington DC has intern positions available, so…I guess that’s where I sign up.
A more interesting question about Yelp is whether a negative review can hurt a small business. I know of one prolific Yelper who quit the service because of a friend’s experience. Someone had not been happy with the business this Yelper’s friend provided, and so posted a review of the business saying they had child molesters working there. This was patently false but Yelp refused to investigate it and the person’s business was hurt as a result. It’s one thing to say “I got really bad service” but it’s another thing entirely to say “my kid got molested” just to be vengeful.
I agree with those who have said that Yelp Mobile is awesome. Me and my Sidekick 3 definitely love Yelp Mobile. I just wish I could WRITE reviews on the go!
Thank you Meredith for your insightful comment. I had no idea to how a simple review could be so effective. There are always two sides to any new idea.
Yelp is a huge and horrible scam. They edit posts down in response to complaints. They scam the people that get good and great reviews.
My current dentist, had HORRIBLE yelp reviews, my former one, who was a HORRIBLE dentist, had excellent ones. I found out that yelp tries to get you to buy advertising from them for like 300 bucks a month, and if they contact you and you decline, boom, there go ALL your good reviews !
Yelp is essentially a big FRAUD. I refuse to use it anymore. They have zero credibility with me, and if I were to meet someone who works for Yelp, I would tell them they should be ashamed and make it clear that I think they are big liars and frauds.
Consumer, beware !
Yelp is total scam! I left some reviews on it. Some was good some bad. Guess what after some time they were all removed. Yelp says that it removes suspicious reviews. My were normal reviews of normal businesses. Nothing suspicious. Don’t beliwe my try it for yourself. Yelp is another site for suckers. Vic.
Yelp has been aggressively contacting local small businesses in my area and asking for $500 a month to get yelp “benefits”. When they are denied, reviews magically disappear and negative ones are added to the top. This is extortion. The lawsuits will be flying and yelp will be gone soon. More opportunist internetting to come! What a sad state these scumbags are in. Why don’t they just bust in their door with a baseball bat and threaten their family like real mafiosos!
YELP is a total scam. My review about an auto repair shop that got me to do a bunch of repairs I didn’t needed was remove 4 times. The last review was on for a couple weeks and now when I came back it’s no longer there. The auto shop only have good reviews now. I will never use YELP again. The reason I am mad is because YELP was the only reason I went to that auto repair shop in the first place.