[GCA10]

So this is where it gets frustrating. When I'm heading to a new city for business meetings (which happens often) Google is great about auto-magically surfacing restaurant names close to where I will be. It's much faster and easier to use than Yelp.

But Google's "reviews" aren't really reviews at all. They're one-liners that people type into their phones, without telling me anything about local specialties or WHY some particular dish was good or bad. (What's "too spicy" for someone might be just what I want, etc.)

The best Yelp reviews are really informative. They're quirky and opinionated, but that's part of the fun of reading them. I routinely collect a couple Google-generated names and then look up the places on Yelp to get the real deal.

I understand that Yelp's sales team plays dodgy games with merchants to "fix" negative reviews, or to shake down merchants who don't buy ads. Wish they didn't.

But from a consumer standpoint, a seriously flawed Yelp is still more useful than a deluge of momentary burps from a Google system that is practically insight-free.

[daxterspeed]

Google has the annoying tendency to ask people to rate and review places they've been near. When they get it wrong you get reviews like "never been to this place 1/5 stars".

I wish Google would incentivise helpful reviews and better verify that a user has actually been to a place before prompting them to review it. Something as simple as creating a guide on how to write a meaningful review could probably go a long way.

[dredmorbius]

Depth vs. breadth paradox.