The gist of the article is that consumers rely on Google, Facebook, and 3rd party sites more than Yelp when selecting an automotive service provider.
As a business owner, it is my duty to warn others about Yelp and its predatory tactics.
Today, r/yelpsucks received over 2,000 visitors and we’ve been up for only a few hours.
Fuck Yelp. Let’s be the last nail in the coffin for this shithole of a company.
Keep WallStreet out of my small business!
Take a look at how TrustPilot’s users view Yelp. 6,000 reviews, 1.4 stars. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.yelp.com
TrustPilot is crushing Yelp in terms of growth and users. https://www.wmtips.com/technologies/compare/trustpilot-vs-yelp/
Despite collecting more revenue, their profits continue to decrease. This means higher advertising costs to appease WallStreet.
Hey everyone! I'm u/CompletelyMoronic, a founding moderator of r/yelpsucks.
This is our new home to complain about Yelp and trade reviews anonymously. We're excited to have you join us!
What to Post
Post anything that you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, photos, or instances where Yelp has tried to screw you over!
Community Vibe
We're all about being friendly, constructive, and inclusive. Let's build a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and connecting. Please note if you block people who disagree with you, you will be banned from the community. We’re here to have an open dialogue, not censor people.
How to Get Started
Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/yelpsucks amazing.
My company was scammed by Yelp a few years ago. We had dozens of 5 star reviews and Yelp was calling us 2-3 times a day to sign up for their advertising. Eventually we agreed to give it a try, but the results were awful. Our phones were literally inundated by solicitors as soon as we signed up. Dozens of calls from people trying to sell us leads, services, or inquiries about products we don’t sell. So we cancelled. Yelp was not delivering a return on investment, their services were literally tying up our phone lines and frustrating the hell out of our agents.
As soon as we tried to cancel, we got the go around. Eventually one of their “sales managers” called me and resorted to insults. Told me I didn’t know how to run a business and that my business of 14 years would fail if I stopped advertising with Yelp. Then the very next day, some of my reviews got filtered by Yelp’s algorithm.
At first I dismissed the obvious, but after connecting with hundreds of other business owners through programs like SCORE and The Alternative Board, I learned that is how Yelp operates. Harass you until you sign up, harass you when you try to cancel, delete your honest and well-deserved reviews for cancelling.
Yelp has been failing for some time. Their stock is down more than 20% YTD while the S&P shows gains of 12%. The company tried to expand internationally but also failed. The CEO and COO are dumping shares like it’s a fire sale, and Yelp is facing “long-term rebalance and traffic decline”
Don’t fall for this sinking ship. The company is failing and if you advertise with them, you won’t be happy.
I was looking through Yelp's own statistics and something doesn't add up.
Yelp says it has roughly 8.4 million businesses listed and 330 million reviews. That's an average of about 39.3 reviews per business.
They also report around 2.4–2.5 million visitors per day, with the average visitor spending just 2 minutes and 7 seconds on the site.
Here's where it gets interesting.
Yelp has also stated that users spend about 2.5 times more time looking at photos than reading reviews.
If the average session is 127 seconds and photos get 2.5x the attention of reviews, that suggests only a small fraction of a user's visit is actually spent reading written reviews.
Let's be generous and assume users spend 35–40 seconds reading reviews during a visit.
If the average business page has around 39 reviews, that works out to roughly 1 second per review if someone were to look through them all.
Obviously people aren't reading every review. Most likely they're scanning star ratings, looking at a few photos, glancing at the first review or two, and making a decision.
Which brings me to the part I can't stop thinking about.
Based on Yelp's own numbers, it doesn't seem mathematically possible for the average visitor to spend meaningful time reading reviews.
The platform contains hundreds of millions of reviews, yet the average visit lasts just over two minutes, and Yelp says users spend far more time looking at photos than reading review text.
If that's true, then what is the actual purpose of all these reviews?
Consumers appear to be making decisions based on star ratings and photos. The written reviews seem to be the least-consumed part of the experience.
Yet businesses are constantly told they need more reviews. Customers are encouraged to write longer reviews. Elite reviewers write essays. Reviewers are rewarded for producing more content.
For whose benefit?
Because if consumers aren't spending much time reading reviews, then the primary value of those reviews may not be helping customers at all.
Instead, the reviews may function as an endless stream of user-generated content. Every review adds more text, more keywords, more location references, more service descriptions, more food descriptions, and more searchable content attached to a business page.
The reviewer thinks they're helping future customers make a better decision.
But based on Yelp's own usage statistics, the average customer may never spend enough time on the site to read more than a tiny fraction of what's written.
The customer looks at the stars.
The customer looks at the photos.
The customer decides.
Meanwhile, reviewers spend their time creating detailed descriptions filled with the exact words and phrases that search engines love: menu items, neighborhoods, services, products, amenities, experiences, and local keywords.
At some point, you have to ask whether Yelp is really a review platform or whether it's a search-engine content machine powered by unpaid contributors.
The irony is that the people investing the most time in reviews may not be the people reading them.
They're the people writing them. 🤣