Yelp vs.Google: Sinigang at Chee-Bog, as described in my Yelp review.
I am a Yelper. This comes as a surprise to chefs I meet, who typically hate Yelp because they see it as the source of sour grapes write-ups by amateur reviewers who want to bring a restaurant down. But for someone who uses Yelp on a regular basis, it’s easy to spot these reviews and ignore them or discount their value. Consistent reviewers get voted “Elite” for the quality of their reviews, and user feedback on individual reviews is another benchmark. If you know how to read the reviews Yelp can be a very valuable resource, if for example you’re traveling and want to find a good place to eat in a new city.
Google Maps has emerged in the last couple of years as a serious Yelp competitor. I write reviews for both. I don’t cut and paste but repeat as few sentences as possible word-for-word out of respect for Google’s algorithm, which would penalize duplicate listings on multiple websites. Initially (I started writing Google reviews maybe 5 years ago, pursuing some now-forgotten incentive) I felt I was a voice in the wilderness; the reviews were as prescriptive as a listing in a directory. But now there is a lot of thoughtful commentary—not just I liked it, but WHY I liked it. And, very important, there are often many more reviews for a place on Google than on Yelp.
Let’s look at a case in point: Chee-Bog, a Filipino restaurant in Cohoes, NY, a suburb of Albany. The Yelp listing is here with currently 15 reviews, including mine. The Google Maps listing is here, currently with 63 reviews, including mine. But the Google reviews skate the surface, and are so uniformly positive one becomes suspicious; no place can be THAT good. Try this: do a search for “kumayan” on both sites; this is a set meal which is a big part of Chee-Bog’s appeal though it is “secret”. It’s described in detail in Leo Y’s Yelp review and alluded to only as “fantastic” on Google.
Avid Yelpers pride themselves on the specifics in their reviews and are careful to back up positive (or negative) statements with examples from their experience. We have “OYEs” which are Official Yelp Events where Elites get together in person to try a restaurant and the conversation typically is about other restaurants we have visited recently, and where we are going tomorrow. The bar is set high.
Unfortunately, Yelp like other channels has suffered since the pandemic. We have many fewer events than we used to and recently lost the Community Ambassador who arranges them. But I hope Yelp survives. It remains my go-to resource when I need a boots-on-the-ground perspective.
P.S. What about TripAdvisor? This has historically been a reliable source of information for travelers, mostly about accommodations but also about restaurants and attractions. It seems to have fallen by the wayside in the face of Google’s ascendancy. There are currently 0 reviews for Chee-Bog on TripAdvisor.
At their best Yelp and Google reviews are useful. I give the nod to Yelp. At their worst it’s like choosing between e coli and salmonella. Facebook review groups are like choosing listeria. Trip Advisor seems to be morphing into a booking site. Remember when Roadfood had forums that were useful?
And remember Chowhound? I was very active in the Bay Area chapter, which was scrupulously monitored by my friend Melanie Wong. Now Chowhound is “back” in the sense that a random company bought the right to use the name, but there is no evidence the discussion boards will return. And the discussion boards were key to the value of Chowhound. I actually had a useful email exchange with Jim Leff, the founder of Chowhound, way back about 1998 when I was thinking of starting a BBS (online bulletin board) and wanted his opinion of the platform he was using.
The boards were the core of the Chowhound experience even though the interface was very clunky. A place where people could have serious conversations about food. Yelp is that to some degree, in that you can look for reviews from people you respect. But Yelp discourages directly referencing other reviews so there’s not the back-and-forth like we had with Chowhound.
Chowhound was great. It’s successors Food Talk Central and Hungry Onion seem to be alive as are eGullet forums. I don’t find any compelling. I think blogs took over, then social media. Both being easier to administer and monetize than the old style web communities. There are a few good things on Facebook, but FB overall is about money for Meta, not what its denizens write.
as a fellow Yelper….I too agree it helps tremendously when eating out while vacationing in unfamiliar territory. Still need to get to Cheebog!!!