My wife and I have started going out for lunch once a week to have some time to ourselves and explore a bit. We were initially pretty skeptical of the local restaurants after living in NYC for quite a while. Turns out we just didn't know where to look. In NYC word of mouth will go pretty far in letting you know what to pay attention to. Also, there's so much competition in nyc restaurants that the bad ones can't really stay in business. I just started picking places and I was surprisingly impressed with what I found close to home. To be honest, I was overlooking strip malls because they're strip malls.

Anyway, when I have a particularly good meal, I like to spread the word to help out the restaurant. I've been posting and reading reviews on yelp more. I'm entertained to see places that get mediocre reviews where I've had an unquestionably excellent experience. Everyone has bad days. But past that I've noticed a community of people who are super dedicated to their yelp reviews. The reviews start to fit a certain format - overly verbose, often 4+ unremarkable photos of the restaurant. I guess this is what you get when you encourage people to make content.

I'm just realizing that they're in competition with google and others for reviews. I often see reviews in google results but there's something about it that feels like an afterthought.

Any prolific yelp reviewers here?

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Found some excellent Azerbaijani food two miles away from us. It was quite a treat - very well done and something very new to us.

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There was a restaurant a little ways from where I worked in Richmond in 2012 that prided itself on Yelp 1 star reviews. They were funny/sarcastic about what a jerk the owner was, but nearly always mentioned good food. Generally 200 to 300 words long. He refused to buy into their strongarm tactics (at the time, not sure if it's improved) and asked regulars to 1 star.

It takes a while to build credibility as Yelp reviewer. I never got into it much since I don't eat out that often.

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In tha 360. MRF User Map

I do them fairly often, although I don’t go out that much these days. I like to help out the good places and warn about the bad ones. They’ve asked me to become elite several times, but I refuse to put my whole name on my account so everyone can see it.

I found that Yelp has evolved over the years to be inconsistent.
With the appearance of goog reviews, now I have 2 to compare.

Went to a new place on 9th yesterday. Kausa.
Both had lots of really good reviews. That and a peak inside got my buddy an I to venture in. Kausa was excellent.

Certain styles of food, the reviews are more dependable. But I think that's because those styles are more dependable.

Pizza (in NYC), Thai, Latin are dependable reviews. Hi-end places are way more inconsistent.

I do when a place really stands out.

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!#$@@$#!

I've avoided due to the strong-arming also.

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“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in."

I'll review when something is really good and should have a boost. I tend not to write in a verbose style and yelp will push for more than I want to say in a review.

Otherwise, I add it to my bookmarks list in yelp.

Do people still review Domino's Pizza, McDonald's and Denny's on Yelp?

About a dozen reviews in the Yelp era.... all either extremely awesomely fantastic, or stay far, far away because they're rotten to the core.
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This is not an answer to the question, but my reaction to it.

As a consumer, I use Yelp reviews, but parse them. People complain about things that may have nothing to do with the business.

As a business owner, I am frustrated by Yelp. We recently got a 1 star review by someone who never was in our shop. When I reached out to yelp, they refused to remove it because "the customer has the right to express their opinion". Another poor review was for a another shop in the same franchise (different ownership. Yelp said "too bad".

Most frustrating is the "hidden" "not recommended" review section. We have a slew of 5 star reviews in thatvsection. When I asked Yelp why they were not recommended, the only answer I got was that's the way the algorithm works.