Submitted 7 hours ago by WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world to [deleted]
I like to leave reviews for places I stay and eat. But, I hate to keep feeding the Google machine. Yelp seems to be mostly a US thing, and I’m not a power Trip Advisor user (although I have nothing against them).
Where do you read/leave reviews the most?
Yelp is shit. I used to be a small business owner and they would call me trying to get me to sign up for a paid account strongly suggesting that they could ‘help’ with bad reviews. To me that means that businesses can just sign up and get bad reviews removed or pushed out of regular view. What good is a review site if the business can hide bad reviews?
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard a similar story from a small business owner and I stopped using Yelp for the most part. I overheard a conversation that Yelp was really pushing the owner to subscribe for the same reasons. They got pretty aggressive about it. The owner said no and Yelp started boosting negative reviews to coerce the owner into subscribing. I checked Yelp vs Google reviews and there was a stark difference. Yelp was primarily negative reviews and Google was primarily positive reviews.
If they can hide negative reviews, they can also hide positive reviews.
Better Business Bureau does the same thing. Ratings are based on their paid subscription tier, NOT reviews.
I don’t anymore. I don’t know a single page that is reliable. On google even three star reviews get removed, so good reviews are meaningless.
Btw there is a small german lemmy community for posting and requesting product reviews.
!kaufempfehlungen@feddit.org
I don’t know if something in english exist.
Pornhub.
Now that OP mentioned it, I just realized how few alternatives to Google Maps…
For reading reviews, sadly I think Google is still by far the best review aggregator especially for restaurants, in big cities especially the star ratings are scarily accurate. I guess expert reviews (such as all of Michelin’s ratings) are good too but they are limited
For writing reviews, I sometimes use apps (recently using Too Good To Go) so I’d still leave comprehensive reviews on those. If the place is not on OpenStreetMaps I’d add it. Other times sadly I just don’t, I don’t really have a functional Google account at this point
Agreed Google maps is the best review aggregator (and I wish it wasn’t) but “the star ratings are scarily accurate”? I think you mean “hugely inflated”. Like almost any review system a I’ve seen recently: if you like a place and you give less than a 5 then you’re hurting it.
Yes they are… the reason I think that way is that I like to look at relative rankings; as in, it’s not accurate to just look at how many stars a place got, but rather compare it with other places around it
If I recall… at least in Chicago where good restaurants easily get 500+ ratings. I have never had a “miss” at a place 4.7 stars or above on Google, and the local “cult classic” was at like 4.9; 4.5-4.6 can be hit-or-miss; any fine dining below 4.5 is almost always a miss. Obviously since almost none of those establishments got below 4, just looking at the number of stars isn’t useful… but if I have a comparison it’s actually quite useful
Sadly I have no clue whether it translates to other places. Fairly certain ppl in my current city are a lot more critical (so maybe a 4.7 in Chicago would be… 4.4 here, or something like that)
I’ve got this obsession with reading 1 star reviews of places in about to eat, or even when choosing some place to get some scran.
It doesn’t sway my opinion, I just like reading what the unhinged Karen’s are whinging about.
I’ve worked most of my life in hospitality so I guess I’ve a slanted (biased) view on things
Anything but Yelp. Depending.
On a rare occasion I leave reviews on a seller’s page on a local online marketplace as part of a trust system. I don’t use a Google account or anything else that requires my name to be connected to a review. Since I mostly buy directly from manufacturers, I will sometimes leave a star rating if there is an option.
CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world 22 minutes ago
The last like… 5 times I’ve left an Amazon review with some criticism, I’ve gotten full refund offers. The most recent one they want to send me a new version.