Do you Yelp?

A chat with a friend last night got us thinking about Yelp. It wasn't that big in Portland when we were remodeling our house, but just about every business down here in the Bay Area has a bunch of comments on Yelp.

When we've attempted to do research on stores that sell green products using Yelp, we've often just ended up totally confused...

(survey after the jump)

So we're wondering if you find it helpful, and how to tell when a negative review is just a case of sour grapes. What's the best way to use Yelp in your experience?

Comments (4)

I like to click through to the profiles of negative reviews and see what their other reviews are like. If they hate everything, I pretty much disregard their review. If they have a decent range of other reviews that seem reasonable, I take their review more seriously. There is definitely a contingency of yelpers who only give 1s and 5s, and their opinions are pretty useless in my opinion.

posted by Jessimuhka on August 20th 2008 at 12:24pm
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Watch out for fake reviews.

People involved with a business will make up reviews to inflate said business' score. They have no pictures, no profile, no other or few reviews.

posted by stickyricemama on August 20th 2008 at 1:15pm
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I pretty much do what Jessimuhka does. I also look at the range of reviews the business has. Since Yelp started in S.F. there's definitely more reviews for any one business you could stumble upon, making it more accurate and useful.

posted by Mitzi on August 20th 2008 at 2:25pm
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I yelped in the Bay Area years ago, it was helpful. In Miami it wasn't that great. I live in Colorado now and my husband is a yelping machine as of late. It is pretty helpful since we are still rather new to our area.

posted by kmarie on August 21st 2008 at 8:00pm
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