Comments on: Yelp Throws Down On CitySearch

By: mainlandheathen

mainlandheathen — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:18:44 +0000

Yelp has to be the biggest trash site on the web. It is usually a very cliquish site withing the city you Yelp in. I placed hundred of reviews and pictures on Yelp and kept getting repeatly banned for what seemed like no reason. All Yelp support would tell me was due to multiple accounts. Which I only had one account going at a time and would start up a new Yelp account when they deleted the previous one. Edgar from Yelp in email told me I am banned from Yelp for life. They now have my ISP blocked out. Yelp is RETARDED and the RAG of the internet!

By: Popularity | Yellow™ Lab Blog

Popularity | Yellow™ Lab Blog — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:20:14 +0000

[...] our own research into this (which unfortunately I can’t go into) but others have shown that positive ratings tend to eclipse negative ratings. The second and lesser reason is that being a business directory, we need to be a little sensitive [...]

By: NeilB

NeilB — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:02:12 +0000

..wow just read your post and checked your site as part of some research…

….your site sucks -$250,000? How much less?? Looks like you spent 10 bucks on it, seriously.

well, you aksed for feedback. Why didn’t you get a pro-designer?

By: Steven Lybeck

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:35:45 +0000

I know this is months old, but it’s worth noting that their graph actually shows 97% of Yelp users to be college educated if you include those with a grad school education.

By: John Emmons

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:31:40 +0000

I have researched Yelp, CitySearch, BackFence, Americatowns, and Smalltown. The largest problem with local, is getting the SMB involved with the site. The issue that all of the sites have is finding an interface that local SMB’s feel is easy to use and edit and has tracking built in to said interface. That being said that wonderful and quite possibly magical interface needs to make the business owner feel as though the site is on their side. The only site that seems to give control, or that “feel good feeling” part of UI is smalltown.com, but they only fill part of the void because while smalltown has wonderful edits and a replyback feature that is unrivaled; Smalltown has no tracking system that I am aware of. If yelp could combine their SEO with the SMB UI of Smalltown the site could obliterate Citysearch.

I will continue to Watch the hyper-local race…

By: Helene

Helene — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 07:15:43 +0000

I, for one, am looking forward to Citysearch viably competing with Yelp. As an insider to the Yelp brand, I am all too familiar with the manipulative tactics Yelp uses in order to get businesses to advertise with them, even if there’s no good reason to do so. Yelp’s credibility – both B2B and B2C – is in doubt, and this is the perfect time for a competitor to swoop in and capitalize on Yelp’s rookie mistakes. What fun are monopolies anyway? There’s so, oh, anti-American, if you will.

More power to you, Citysearch.

By: Neil

Neil — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:43:13 +0000

I posted several reviews, all but 1 positive. All the reviews are still in my profile but no longer public on the restaurant pages. Has this happened to anyone else? Anyway, my days of providing free content to Yelp have ended.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:49:23 +0000

I believe average rent in Nor Cal (Yelp) is higher than rent in LA

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:23:59 +0000

Another Yelp victim:
http://la.eater...izza_victim.php

By: dan

dan — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:40:35 +0000

Mike,
Look into citysearch syndication. I worked there for years, its such a scam that its a joke around the offices.
Someone mentioned they should change the slogan from “live like an insider”, well the employees have come up with a great new slogan, “Everybody caps out”. This is refering to the fact that no matter what kind of business you are or what your monthly budget or monthly cap is you will reach it. The sales team gets paid on billed revenue, if they have $75,000 in monthly cap and only $60,000 of that bills out they are losing a lot of money. This is where syndication kicks in, for example, a plumber may get 3 or 4 “clicks” per day for the first three weeks of thier monthly billing cycle, then in the last week all of a sudden there are hundreds of people looking for plumbers and they are getting 50 – 100 “clicks” per day and they reach thier monthly budget with a few days to go in their cycle, setting the account up for a nice upsell. This was the biggest obsticale to overcome, a merchant sees this hyge jump in “clicks” but zero people refer to citysearch in that week.

By: Local Is A Toughie

Local Is A Toughie — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:52:33 +0000

you cant charge small biz with $500/day in sales over $250/month and expect to have tons of customers but then again how are you gonna pay for a los angeles office like citysearch without that kinda money

By: Oscar Myery

Oscar Myery — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:36:18 +0000

It seems as if Yelp! is doing something right. There sure a lot of comments about them. Small businesses are becoming smarter about where they put there money. They like tangibility and Yelp! is doing a good job of delivering this. It makes it easier for them to purchase. They, like others, will run into scalability issues with regards to cost. In the end it’s the small businesses who have to buy to make the site a financial success. Newspapers are trying to tackle local as well and are having a hard time justifying the cost of sending there reps out for a small ticket item. But they realize that it takes time to convince a small business to part with there hard earned money.

By: jrs

jrs — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:25:55 +0000

Seriously! Coming from insiders, that would be a VERY good question to delve into Mike.

By: jrs

jrs — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:24:23 +0000

How are they monetizing their traffic? Really? If that’s a serious question – they sell advertising – between $300 to $1000 a month for between 1500 and 10,000 “impressions” that run across the site on competitors profile pages and search results. Just impressions – not clicks. It’s a VERY expensive CPM ($200 CPM) with lackluster if not ‘not compelling’ results. It’s also a site fortified with a demographic that is, lets say, a bit cynical to “advertising”.

By: JO

JO — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:21:01 +0000

prehensile – wow, what a vocabulary word!

By: Ward Shepherd

Ward Shepherd — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:16:23 +0000

There seems to be so many well informed people here. I would sincerely appreciate you evaluating our site that is very similar to City search and Yelp. Bringusadeal.com. We have spent the last 2 years with no venture capital and only 5 employees and we can do everything Yelp can do and So MUCH More. We built it with less than $250,000 and we are taking it globally January 1st 2009. Please anyone guide us with any knowledge you care to share. Im humbly asking for your help through your opinon. Thank you!

By: Envy

Envy — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:52:23 +0000

I have to agree name plays a role, but not in this case….

I person types in “XYZ pizza reviews”, or “pizza places in XYZ city”

They don’t search for “City search”

So in this case name does not matter…. Name matter in direct goods like Vibrators.com or Cars.com

By: Envy

Envy — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:47:48 +0000

RTFA, if you read the article that the blog post links to you would clearly see

“But it is not true. Businesses cannot pay to rearrange reviews, according to Yelp’s Web site. If Easley had paid the $300 a month, she would not have been able to rearrange the reviews — it’s worth noting she has received only perfect 5-star reviews to date.”

If your going to spew blog opinions atleast do a little looking on your own before you make up your opinion…

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:18:34 +0000

I don’t think you are being fair (and I have been considered a prick by many, including Arrington). There is not a clear way to monetize these businesses, but I’m sure with one night’s discussion I could have several possible methods that could be subsequently tested for results over several months. It’s all about trust, there is nothing else. Lose that, the business is done.

By: Damned If You do...or Don't

Damned If You do...or Don't — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:15:30 +0000

A couple of points:

1. CitySearch has lots of curtains and funny accounting, but they actually pay partners for delivering their content to consumers. This allows sites and applications to make a little (VERY little) money.

2. Yelp, by contrast, is the most prehensile entity on the Internet. Yelp pays nothing to their partners. Quite the opposite, they demand their partners paste their sites with links back to Yelp. This shortsighted approach explains their tiny size in four years of doing local search on the net. If they had shared a little of the wealth, more partners would carry their content. As it stands, partners get screwed and Yelp runs the table.

As far as content goes, Yelp’s is Horrid because it’s “user provided” reviews, which anyone knows is biased. The quality is completely erratic and there is no servicable information beyond stars. Big whup!

Yelp is yet another example of an idea that fails in the market because of the arrogance/greed of their management team, where Citysearch grifts and shortchanges everyone involved.

Take the best of both, and you might have a real functional application. But we’re talking tech here, people. Egos, Venture Capital, uncharted territory. And don’t forget idiot Barry Diller and his infamous “Diller Discount”.

And that is all I have to say on that.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:23:24 +0000

I love to bash companies for violations of trust, but yelp has given me no reason based on reviews in my area (Denver). So, many people are disgruntled and/or backstabbing in SF/ NorCal and I have more trouble accepting them than the local reviews that I can mostly verify (I’ve been to most places).

If yelp fucks up, you can bet your ass I will bag them as fast as possible. I skeptical ofmost companies, and I come from the VRM mind-set.

By: Hudin

Hudin — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:01:37 +0000

This is ridiculous. I have it on good authority from business owners in SF that Yelp is running the anti-Google strategy.

By: dan

dan — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:06:25 +0000

I worked for citysearch as well and couldnt wait to leave. They see yelp as a huge threat. The search algorithm is terrible, try going to citysearch right now and do a search for anything and see what results you get. They opened up their search to include reviews, if the word you are searching for is mentioned in a review it will show in the search return. They supposedly made all these great partnerships with big companies and used that to sell advertising but there is no association between citysearch and these other companies. They also fired all of their editors so the local content for all cities is coming from one editor in NY, not very local anymore.

Citysearch’s traffic all comes through google, there is almost no organic traffic at all. Heads up for advertisers, they have something called syndication. This is when you have a monthly budget to spend with them and you arent close to reaching it with a week left in your monthly cycle syndication turns on. Meaning you will reach your budget no matter what it is or what category your business falls under. Syndication is a running joke at citysearch, a business owner thinks all their “clicks” are coming from citysearch.com but 70% of them are coming from this garbage syndication network that isnt even localized. Ask your sales rep for a list of sites in syndication, you will get a good laugh.

By: Q dub

Q dub — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:31:38 +0000

Yelp wins on UGC hands down. UGC isn’t an exact science, but with so enough reviews, you’re guaranteed to get a general feel of what a venue has to offer–and that’s Yelps game, the law of large numbers. The other two sources of information (owner and editor) provide absolutely no value to a consumer…who cares what the owner or a single sample point has to say?

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:06:12 +0000

I like yelp, and I have tried citysearch in the past but felt the user experience was lacking. Looks like they have made progress in that area, as well as giving the ability to add more credibility to the reviews/ reviewer.

I have used yelp in a place i have lived for 15+ years (Denver Metro), so I know the area well (restaurants and bars). It is always to read the reviews for places that I’ve gone for years, worked at in college, and/ or know the owners. I have found yelp to be quite good (though I’m a cynic and still reserving judgment). In fact, my girlfriend was annoyed at a number of reviews on yelp for places she frequents being written by a bunch of whiners and she wanted to know more info about these people reviewing (eg. more credibility), for the opposite reason people above are questioning the legitimacy (eg. overly positive vs. overly negative)

Facebook Connect will just becomes table stakes, not a differentiator that is difficult to emulate. Open Social integration would be good as well; these are fairly simple integrations.

I don’t care about site analytics data for more than giving a qualitative view. CitySearch, I’m sure, is welcome to send Arrington their GA data. We’ll see if that happens.