The volume is changing, more people are moving to google
Wrongo about the search option
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I am clearly behind the times. Thank you for letting me know, it was easy to find once I knew it existed. I remember last time when I tried to figure it out a couple years ago the feature didn’t exist.
And then look at some of their other reviews to make sure they’re not shills.
I think they are definitely wising up and improving it. It’s a smart part of the search business
Agreed, though I will read the reviews to see if they’re all the same complaint.
My favorite is when the Yelper complains about the owner being nuts or whatever, and the owner writes a response proving the point. I had a beautiful one in 2009 that I should’ve taken a screenshot of.
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If there was no Yelp, we would not have the ever-entertaining and enlightening The Best Of Yelp thread here on FTC.
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Thanks. I was meant to be productive tomorrow with our Month/Year close but now I have to read this entire thing. How did I miss
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This is very famously how Bludso’s got big - by shilling CH
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Really? That’s interesting. I am not familiar with this story. Care to elaborate?
I think FTC is pretty discerning and there are a lot of heavy users that would quickly out any shills.
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DV: You’re still a young barbecue joint, but you’ve gotten plenty of accolades. How did they start to roll in?
KB: When we opened in 2008 I put some stuff on Chowhound, just throwing it out there under an anonymous name. That got us started, then Jonathan Gold ranked us as one of the 99 essential restaurants in L.A.
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from what i remember, Kevin Bludso was trying to tell everyone to come to Bludso’s on CH under an anonymous name. He got called out. But TonyC had already been and confirmed it was good, then a lot of CH’ers started to go and JGold got word of it.
feel free to correct if i got the story wrong.
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Yep. I’ve actually heard KB in-person crediting TonyC as having a significant impact on putting Bludso’s on the map.
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I seem to recall the chef from Little Jewel posting on CH to build interest while getting the place up and running; I don’t remember if he did so anonymously.
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Subsequently, the Hop Woo folk(s) used FTC to help get traction for their ventures. Though not anonymously.
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He was open about it, but it also was a different time. There used to be a strict rule on Chowhound about not allowing industry to post. I only skirted past it because I was on the supply side (when I first joined). And even then… I got an ‘okay.’
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you folks are getting all worked up and you’ve missed the point: having worked on plenty of IT projects involving designing, building and cleansing/scrubbing databases where a single bad piece of data could result in financial exposure upwards of a million bucks, it’s essential to understand that any data set’s accuracy or usefulness can only be determined by first identifying how the data is going to be used. preferring yelp to ftc is like preferring a wrench to a screwdriver.
if you WANT a wrench - or anything that you can use to bludgeon someone else, then yes, the wrench is preferable.
if you want a screwdriver, or something where you’d stab someone through the heart, or an eyeball, then the screwdriver is preferable.
yelp is a business that has chosen to cater to a particular demographic. the values of that demographic overlap with some of my values. as i mentioned before, i evaluate source and delivery as well as content for any given review - as much on FTC as i do on yelp. and i have not found that it takes that much more time to draw conclusions concerning the biases of prolific yelpers than it does on FTC, because the people whose values mirror mine tend to want to try.the same places that i do - and those who’ve read my few reviews tend to send me friend requests. that actually makes it EASIER to identify whose values align with yours vs. looking up who likes your post. i ignore all cumulative ordinal rankings (and while i would tend to ignore this particular list, i might be interested to review just to determine the criterion - and could decide to give more weight to a future list done by this person.) i also identify places i want to know more about before i even go to yelp. i do not use yelp for recommendations. i think i have a pretty good idea on the reliability of yelp in relation to my personal sensibilities and i have set my expectations accordingly.
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Fascinating. Which Bludso’s are you guys talking about? Compton or La Brea? And which one did JGold put on his Essentials?
It was the Original Bludso’s back in the day, the Compton one.
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Chowhound started out much like FTC, as a place for informed discussion. After almost 20 years of organic growth in that direction, CBS reorganized the content to make the site first and foremost a search engine.
i hammered them pretty hard on their choice to go with tags vs. allowing searches on text. there was sufficient backlash to cause them to relent and retain the text search function - i think. they could have since removed it and i wouldn’t know since i have no reason to search CH. but you can’t force fit data into a specific configuration without first determining things like how it’s going to be used and how you expect to be able to locate the data you want (your search keys, indices, etc.) their engineers didn’t understand the data at all and the self important VP that was in charge of the process proved himself to be an idiot.
if i had a chance to tweak yelp, i’d have it weight rankings if any or only selected 'friend’s or reviewers on yelp reviewed the place. so if a friend whose opinion i trusted gave a place 5 stars, it would come up first even if no one else ranked it more than 3 stars. but you’d have to balance that against the percentage of users who’d actually take advantage of that; sadly, most folks are like lemmings. i’d also tweak their search function to allow for the use of quotes. it’s kinda like writing a phone app. it can be well designed, but most people will want a re-write to incorporate functions that accommodate their own personal idiosyncrasies.
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