{"id":1938,"date":"2015-10-31T18:56:23","date_gmt":"2015-10-31T22:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/why-yelp-isnt-relevant-what-can-be-done\/"},"modified":"2015-11-03T15:00:35","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T20:00:35","slug":"why-yelp-isnt-relevant-what-can-be-done","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/why-yelp-isnt-relevant-what-can-be-done\/","title":{"rendered":"WHY YELP ISN\u2019T RELEVANT + WHAT CAN BE DONE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Act 1 \u2013 An Inciting Incident<\/em><\/p>\n

A lucky fly on the wall of a Mini Cooper recently traveled back with 4 passengers from State Bird Provisions, a Michelin starred restaurant in San Francisco. The foursome had spent the evening there celebrating Kissy Suzuki\u2019s 56th<\/sup> birthday. Flymaster Fly\u2122 reported back on the conversation \u2013<\/p>\n

Kissy \u2013 The dim sum there was great \u2013 I loved it! The crowd was fun too!<\/p>\n

Dr. No \u2013 What a hellhole. I\u2019d sooner call it \u2018Bird Flu\u2019. Thank goodness all of you ate my dishes. I\u2019m glad you all enjoyed it, but I\u2019m having some kabab as soon as I get home.<\/p>\n

Cash-Strapped Khashoggi (CSK) \u2013 It was alright. It doesn\u2019t stand up to the places I used to frequent with my crew in Hong Kong, but I suppose it was fine. Nothing amazing, though.<\/p>\n

Sonja Petrovskaya \u2013 Ambiance was fun, but the servers were too familiar. I\u2019d have to agree with CSK \u2013 food was just alright. Dim sum dumbed down. Fun place overall though.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s wrong with this picture? This crowd of four comes from the same socio-economic background (yes, even CSK at this point), typically shares similar tastes, and this place has the Michelin stamp of approval, after all. If they all posted reviews to Yelp, who should I believe? Worse yet, who do I trust when it\u2019s not just a crowd of four, but a crowd of 1,490 and counting, and I don\u2019t even know anything about those people?<\/p>\n

\"bird<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Yelp<\/a>
What to do, what to think, when Logan S.\u2019 review comes up first in the list of Recommended Reviews?? Even Michelle L.? Who\u2019s to say she\u2019s a Kissy Suzuki, Dr. No, Cash Strapped Khashoggi, or a Sonja Petrovskaya type of character?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Act II – The Conflict<\/em><\/p>\n

This brings us to the problem of relevance<\/em> on Yelp, or the lack thereof, when it comes to reviews of experiences that are highly subjective, such as restaurants.<\/p>\n

The fact of the matter is, Yelp provides no dimension to capture this when reviews are submitted. As a consumer of reviews, I\u2019m therefore left to blindly guess the relevance of a given review, or even the relevance of the average star rating from1,500 people vis-\u00e0-vis my own taste. The point people make that about the \u201claw of large numbers\u201d \u2013 that an average over so many people should be indicative \u2013 doesn\u2019t hold, because I don\u2019t know who that group is, or what standard they represent. \u201cWhat is their average an average of<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

To summarize, these are the reasons why a Yelp restaurant review fails to capture and communicate relevance, and also why their level of accuracy can\u2019t be trusted:<\/p>\n