Yelp Reviewing

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Yelp

[[Image:|frameless|300px|]] "Yelp Reviewing App" text Type type Launch Date 2004 Status Active Product Line Yelp Reviewing Application Platform Yelp Website Yelp

Y

elp is an iOS application/website whose purpose is to “connect people with great local businesses” . These businesses may include, but are not limited to restaurants, hair salons, bars, coffee shops, gas stations, drugstores, nightlife, and shopping locations. Yelp accesses a user’s location with their permission and based on their selection from the options above, the app will provide a list of nearby locations to satisfy the request. The Yelp user also has the opportunity to narrow down the results based on the amount of money they would like to spend, whether the business is currently open, whether the business delivers their services, or even whether the business accepts online reservations.

History

https://www.eater.com/2014/8/5/6177213/yelp-turns-10-from-startup-to-online-review-dominance

Y

elp started out small. It was considered a startup company when it originated ten years ago. However, it wasn’t always an iOS application. Instead, “Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons funded a glorified “email circle” that allowed friends to directly swap business reviews.” It was more difficult to become a part of this “email circle” than it is to download the app on the apple store today. The difference between then and now is that everyone who has the Yelp app in today’s day and age has access to the reviews for all of the businesses that are listed on it. With more users in more locations around the world, Yelp’s network has expanded and has effectively become a more efficient system.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yelp-discover-local-favorites/id284910350?mt=8 If you want to download from the Apple Store, click here. https://www.yelp.com/about If you want to learn more about Yelp’s history, click here.

Features

https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/14/yelp-q-and-a/

A

s the company has progressed, it has added many features that contribute to the experiences that users have on the App. It allows users to rate local businesses on a scale ranging from 1 star to 5 stars: 1 star meaning that the user had a terrible experience, and 5 stars meaning that the user had a fantastic experience. It also has a Question and Answer feature, where users can ask on a businesses page about specific details regarding their services. Yelp also allows users to post photos, filter their searches, respond to reviews using comments.

Ratings

Y

elp’s platform was established based on the users: the number of users that utilize the app and their contributions to the app. In other words, Yelp was created with lists of businesses around the world and information associated with their payments and amenities, but their ratings and reviews were initialized as a blank interface. It allows anyone who has an account to rank their experience from one to five. These ratings may or may not influence people in the future from using a business’s services.

Comments

Comments are construed underneath the ratings, so that people have other ways of responding to experiences that people have had with a business. They are important for others to develop an idea as to if there is a general consensus on whether the business was successful with their services or not.

Photos

While reviews are a good indicator as to whether the local business is a good one, a picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes, it is important, for example in a restaurant, to see whether the food looks appetizing to the user, or if the restaurant is clean. As much as aesthetics don’t determine whether the food is good quality, some people value the atmosphere of the restaurant when determining if they should go there. Photos are the only ways that users can access that information without being physically present in the restaurant, in this case.

References

Yelp is an app that allows users to rate restaurants, businesses, and companies based on their experiences. They determine a rating based on the number of stars they click on. They can choose between 1-5 stars and every time someone looks up that business/restaurant/company, they are able to view all the ratings from previous people. However, Yelp only provides a user with 3 ratings at first. While the ratings show up based on how recent they were posted, a company can “mask” negative reviews by paying yelp to hide the bad reviews. In other words, the 3 reviews on the main page aren’t necessarily bad, but once you click on “See more reviews”, bad reviews can come up, even if they are the most recent ones. Most people are unaware of this situation, but if you log onto Yelp yourself, you’ll see the reality of it.