By The Peninsula Foodist
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We are constantly on the lookout for new and undiscovered meals, from Michelin-starred restaurants to tac… (More)
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Comments
Great press for an interesting restaurant!
I wonder how Yelp really comes up with a “Top 100” national ranking, if the method has any claim to being truly objective (given that so many different numerical factors surface, pointing in different directions — Yelp mentions them on the linked page, but the exact procedure is vague and must be somewhat arbitrary).
Yelp’s business is selling advertising, marshaling both readers and writers of reviews to that objective. Yelp famously doesn’t screen reviewers or reviews for “quality.” Almost the opposite: Contributors posting large volumes of even vacuous reviews, or who get many reactions from a large network of “friends” they created, got invited to what’s called an “Elite” squad but that seems mainly about incentivizing people to write more reviews. It has little to do with posting information most useful to potential restaurant customers. One outstanding former Yelp member on the peninsula, who had an insider’s understanding restaurants and may have been a very experienced chef — his reviews were detailed and insightful — gave up, saying he’d realized his Yelp writing was scarcely being seen, so why bother? It was buried in the sheer volume, plus the more-visible “Elite” reviews full of comments about how hip their table was and what they all were wearing . . .
Oh great. Now I have to drive to Burlingame to get a sandwich!
@Common Sense, I usually avoid yelp because it’s a place where more people take their complaints rather than praise. So I think it’s really hard to get a good yelp rating. I would trust a good yelp rating more than a bad one.
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