# Yelp is Yuseless (Filtering) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 7, 2012, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352 "2012-12-07T21:19:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/21 "2012-12-19T13:54:30Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > Yelp’s policy doesn’t strike me as being out of line, really. […] At least you can still look at the filtered reviews, if you feel you must. I have the feeling you didn’t read any of the comments in this thread. I don’t think anyone could and come away with the sense that Yelp’s filtering practices and policies make the reviews better, or that the filtered reviews are not worth anyone’s time. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/22 "2012-12-20T02:25:54Z")
> [@DiosaBellissima](#): > > For a while there, Yelp filtered all of my reviews that were either 5 stars or 1. Determined to not get lost in the filtered page, I made an effort to build my Yelp standing. I added “friends” on Yelp, gave and received “compliments,” and did a few more reviews. Now, my reviews are literally never filtered, good or bad. > > While Yelp undeniably leans toward the business owner’s favor, I suggest adding “friends” and sending “compliments.” Showing you’re a real person and not the business owner’s son trying to give a 5 star review or the business owner’s enemy trying to bring them down with a 1 star review will help get your stuff up at the top. I agree that they’re looking for consistency and/or community. I’ve written 50 or so Yelp reviews with a fair amount of variance among the scores, and none are filtered. Presumably if there’s an extortion scheme involved, sooner or later ones of yours or mine would get filtered…which hasn’t happened so far. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/23 "2012-12-20T03:53:58Z")
[Here](http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-georgia-rib-company-marietta) is one example I noticed. (Disclaimer: I’ve never been to the restaurant, just looked it up because a friend was planning to go.) 16 reviews and 31 filtered. The filtered reviews are overwhelmingly negative, but most of them don’t appear to be hit pieces or incoherent. Most of them appear, on their face, to offer legitimate (and fairly consistent) complaints about the food and service. Because they were disallowed, a restaurant that would otherwise have received almost unanimously bad reviews has a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, which gives the impression that most reviewers liked it. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/24 "2012-12-20T18:59:10Z")
I find the filtering interesting. Obviously, it’s a pretty tough problem to solve, and it’s important that Yelp do **something** about it or the whole thing would just be stuffed with fake 1 and 5 star reviews. I actually have an RSS feed of yelp reviews from my neighborhood (via [EveryBlock.com](http://EveryBlock.com), which appears to require an account now, but they let you build a custom RSS feed for various occurrences in your neighborhood, like crimes and yelp reviews) that I read regularly, but I only ever read the one-star reviews, because they’re the most interesting. They generally fall into one of two buckets: 1) legitimate warnings about shitty businesses (you can tell because they’re coherent and tend to agree with each other), and 2) absolute crazy people who are on a crazy rant about something hilarious and stupid. I recommend it. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/25 "2012-12-20T19:11:40Z")
So there’s a very popular (and overpriced) restaurant in St. Paul, MN that I signed up for Yelp specifically to review. There was an endless tide of praise for the place, and when I went there, it was just so overwhelmingly _average_ that I went home to write a review right away. I didn’t slam the place, but did review the dishes my friend and I had as spectacularly mediocre, and that it was just factually inaccurate to refer to the place as “fine dining,” as many of the reviewers had, considering the wait staff wears jeans. It stayed up for a while, got marked helpful a few times, and another reviewer wrote that he agreed with me and was majorly disappointed. Next thing I knew, both reviews were filtered. But whatever. I don’t really care about that. What I care about (and I started a thread complaining about this) is how useless Yelp reviews are, apparently in part due to their absurd filtering policy. It boggles my mind that 2/3 of Yelp reviews are 4 and 5 stars! How can every place be so uniformly good? I completely ignore Yelp reviews these days, because I could get as good accuracy by rolling a die. I use it as a restaurant search engine, and ignore the star ratings and reviews entirely. Yelp sucks. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/26 "2012-12-20T20:25:44Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > But whatever. I don’t really care about that. What I care about (and I started a thread complaining about this) is how useless Yelp reviews are, apparently in part due to their absurd filtering policy. It boggles my mind that 2/3 of Yelp reviews are 4 and 5 stars! How can every place be so uniformly good? I completely ignore Yelp reviews these days, because I could get as good accuracy by rolling a die. I use it as a restaurant search engine, and ignore the star ratings and reviews entirely. > > Yelp sucks. As the OP, I could hardly have put it better. I find it hard to use Yelp as just a listing service, because it’s built around ratings and reviews and you have to restructure the presentation as you browse through it. I wish there was some clear vision of what Yelp \*thinks \*they are doing with this bizarre, opaque process. As it stands, it’s baffling and somewhere between idiocy and madness. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/27 "2012-12-20T22:35:50Z")
> [@NitroPress](#): > > Whether Yelp’s intentions are good or bad, the filtering is a huge black mark on them, IMHO. It’s mysterious, erratic, semi-hidden and does not appear to be based on any very sophisticated algorithms. . Actually no. I like the filtering. I hate obvious shill reviews or short useless reviews. And, yes, of course they get hit with shills & spam, and they’d be silly to post their metrics for IDing such crap. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/28 "2012-12-20T23:34:39Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Actually no. I like the filtering. I hate obvious shill reviews or short useless reviews. And, yes, of course they get hit with shills & spam, and they’d be silly to post their metrics for IDing such crap. The evidence is that as many legitimate reviews get filtered as anything obviously a slam or shill. That’s my entire point: their filtering makes no sense, does not eliminate obvious shill posts, does not eliminate one line “this place sucks” posts, and seems actively biased against what seem to be thoughtful, detailed reviews by people who actually visited the business and came away with something good or bad to say about it. I think their “metrics” were written by a programming intern they hired from Craigslist and could be written on a matchbook cover leaving room for two jazz progressions and a phone number. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/29 "2012-12-21T00:16:18Z")
> [@NitroPress](#): > > The evidence is that as many legitimate reviews get filtered as anything obviously a slam or shill. I see no such evidence, I have indeed checked the hidden reviews, and never have I found anything of use or interest. I am sorry one of yours got filtered. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/30 "2012-12-21T03:52:38Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I see no such evidence, I have indeed checked the hidden reviews, and never have I found anything of use or interest. I am sorry one of yours got filtered. _shrug_ I guess it’s a boon for condescending assholes who are sure the system has their best interests in mind, then. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/31 "2012-12-21T04:46:41Z")
> [@NitroPress](#): > > I am at best a rusty, outdated programmer and it’s been years since I did any formal info-processing, but I could write in a day or so a stack of filtering algorithms that would be effective, meaningful, hard to game and an asset to a review site. Speaking from experience: no, you couldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/32 "2012-12-21T04:50:39Z")
> [@NitroPress](#): > > Can you make any sense of their apparent reasons and rules? It’s likely that the filtering is not done on the basis of content, but on metadata. For instance, they might be filtering out reviews posted through proxies, or from networks that don’t match the location. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/33 "2012-12-21T15:54:27Z")
> [@tellyworth](#): > > Speaking from experience: no, you couldn’t. I don’t by any means mean create fully implemented instances, but the list of meta-instructions, certainly. I’ve done it for other platforms and purposes. Once once once again, what baffles me about Yelp’s purported filtering system is how wildly erratic and nonsensical the results are. If we, the poor end-stage lusers can see it, it would seem that their in-house people could see the same faults and do something to correct it. A review system that rejects a high proportion of quite evidently sincere and real reviews in favor of a generic center-model smacks of a simplistic, first-draft idea that’s never been re-evaluated. As a WordPress plug-in, fine, who cares. As the system managing - automatically, and autonomously - the reviews on one of the largest review systems in the e-world, it’s… just yet more baffling. Compare it with, say, Amazon - a review system I trust completely because while the system rejects some reviews (this just happened to me; see other thread) whatever standards they use don’t arbitrarily push the results to some center. There’s no reason Yelp can’t do as well. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/34 "2012-12-21T18:31:12Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > [Here](http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-georgia-rib-company-marietta) is one example I noticed. (Disclaimer: I’ve never been to the restaurant, just looked it up because a friend was planning to go.) 16 reviews and 31 filtered. The filtered reviews are overwhelmingly negative, but most of them don’t appear to be hit pieces or incoherent. Most of them appear, on their face, to offer legitimate (and fairly consistent) complaints about the food and service. Because they were disallowed, a restaurant that would otherwise have received almost unanimously bad reviews has a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, which gives the impression that most reviewers liked it. Take a look again, the vast majority of those are explained by review count, I think. There are 3 or 4 exceptions though. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/35 "2012-12-21T19:00:31Z")
> [@NitroPress](#): > > I don’t by any means mean create fully implemented instances, but the list of meta-instructions, certainly. I’ve done it for other platforms and purposes. If you can solve this problem easily, you should probably be making a lot of money doing that instead of whatever it is you’re wasting your talents on. > [@](#): > > Compare it with, say, Amazon - a review system I trust completely because while the system rejects some reviews (this just happened to me; see other thread) whatever standards they use don’t arbitrarily push the results to some center. There’s no reason Yelp can’t do as well. You mean aside from Amazon having about 100 times the resources and infrastructure Yelp does, and generally being a fairly cutting-edge technology company? ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/36 "2012-12-21T19:03:18Z")
I wouldn’t say they’re being coy or obscure about its existence, or not clear about the apparent reasons for it - they’ve had this posted for over 3 years: > [@](#): > > One question we occasionally get asked on this topic is why reviews sometimes “disappear” from a business page. While the overwhelming majority of reviews aren’t affected, we figured this might be a good time to offer some specifics on why reviews sometimes don’t appear on business pages (and why we think this helps make Yelp the most useful consumer review site around). > > Yelp has an automated Review Filter that many people are surprised to learn was put in place soon after our big launch in 2005. Of course, it’s evolved over the years; it’s an algorithm our engineers are constantly working on. Its purpose, however, remains the same: to protect consumers and business owners from fake, shill or malicious reviews. > > \ (screenshot and description of an ad looking for someone to post fake Yelp reviews) > > These types of practices aren’t fair to consumers and they certainly aren’t fair to other businesses. If they were allowed to occur, they would erode trust…which would reduce the usefulness of the site for both consumers and the good businesses that rely on the positive word-of-mouth they’ve earned. While Yelp relies heavily on our community members to catch shills and point out things that look suspicious, they can’t be everywhere. (Though they’re not shy if they find some.) That’s why we believe our Review Filter makes Yelp stand apart from other review sites. > > Is it a perfect system? No. Building a scalable, automated method to identify spurious reviews and protect the integrity of website content that includes more than 7 million reviews is difficult. Does legitimate review content sometimes get lost as a result? Yes. Our filter takes a conservative approach and errs on the side of protecting the consumer, when necessary. Customer reviews directly solicited by a business can fall into this category at times, which is why we caution against the practice. It’s unfortunate, but this is what is required to maximize trustworthy content and provide value to consumers and businesses alike. And while we work to improve our system every day, we’d argue it’s one of the more effective systems out there (if not the only). > > \ > > That said, we know our system’s not perfect, and we always encourage feedback. [http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/10/why-yelp-has-a-review-filter.html](http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/10/why-yelp-has-a-review-filter.html) Oh, and they also made a 3 and a half minute video to describe it: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player\_embedded&v=Dqi-jjbEKcs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Dqi-jjbEKcs) ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/37 "2012-12-22T00:16:44Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > I wouldn’t say they’re being coy or obscure about its existence, or not clear about the apparent reasons for it - they’ve had this posted for over 3 years: Yes, but it doesn’t really say anything. “Yes, we filter. No, we won’t tell you how it works. It’s automated and prone to changing its mind. And we change it around from time to time.” And it’s clearly not doing a very good job, as a dozen and more people here have pointed out, with specific examples of crappy and suspicious visible reviews and inexplicably filtered reviews. It’s my belief that we’ll eventually find out that it’s the product of one quirky (=pathologically idiosyncratic) programmer or SA who controls the entire process. It just has that hallmark; I’ve used too many programs written and maintained by one person with a peculiar, and feedback-resistant, view of how the app should work. As for Yelp vs. Amazon, ALL Yelp is is a review and ratings service - so I’d expect them to do at least as well on Job #1, managing user-contributed reviews, as does Amazon, which does dozens of things, most of them well, where review management is probably Job #38. ---
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/38 "2012-12-22T00:26:11Z")
A place I used to work at currently has a pile of 4-5 star reviews, when you jump through the hoops you see a pile of 1 star reviews from pissed off customers. interesting indeed. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/39 "2012-12-22T00:42:19Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > It boggles my mind that 2/3 of Yelp reviews are 4 and 5 stars! How can every place be so uniformly good? If I had to guess, this is due to a sort of heuristic (has elements of the availability heuristic and peak-end). When one wishes to review a restaurant, the most salient examples will be the best and worst restaurants one attends. Restaurants which are significantly below average will tend to receive less patronage than the better joints. Even the very act of dining out could be favourable enough to an individual that they rate such an experience as above average when compared to their typical meal. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352/40 "2012-12-22T01:02:24Z")
I get that. Not a lot of people are enthused about adequacy, but I do raise an eyebrow when reviewing restaurants and it seems like \*everybody \*likes _everything_. Then you skip to the filtered reviews and go “Oh, actually, a lot of people hated this place.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yelp-is-yuseless-filtering/643352.md?page=3)