[jaycroft]

So this is why when I called a locksmith last week, they took down my info and then 30 minutes later got a call from no less than 5 other locksmiths who were "on their way to my house". Nobody's phone number matched, nobody wanted to tell me who they worked for. Totally sketched out with Google Maps' suggestions, I switched to yelp. The first service I called on yelp was reasonably priced, was actually the person coming to my house, and totally hassle free. How is Yelp dealing with this when Google can't seem to?

[schappim]

I wouldn't give Yelp too much praise. It's been alleged that Yelp engages in astroturfing and unfair business practices[0], and the documentary "Billion Dollar Bully"[1] even accuses them of "Mob-Like Behavior".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelp [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Dollar_Bully

[jaycroft]

Oh definitely - I can't say that I've had stellar experiences with Yelp in the past for restaurants, barbers, etc, from the consumer side, and I hear it is much worse as a business. I was just very surprised that in this niche Google performed so poorly and Yelp so well. I wouldn't go on to generalize from this experience though.

[narrator]

I have had great luck with Yelp. Maybe this is where Google's "no customer service" strategy starts to screw them up?

[gmd63]

The last time I used Yelp was when it asked me to install their app to use the full feature set.

[captainkrtek]

These kinds of businesses are common for scams, by kind of business I mean “urgent” ones: such as a locksmith, or garage door repair. In either case its unlikely you already know/have one, and you urgently want the issue fixed, so you’re most likely to search google and pick the one with the most reviews.

I had this happen to me with the garage door case, dude showed up, different name on card than the van, and different than who I even called. Searching google maps for “garage door repair” turned up tons of businesses with fake sounding names, all a ton of fake 5 star reviews.

[CPLX]

Carpet and furniture steam cleaning is also a major offender.

[splonk]

I used to work in this field (verifying local business listings). Locksmiths are traditionally the spammiest and scammiest industry of them all (along with taxis, before rideshare cut down their ROI). Basically any service area business has huge incentive to spam any and all business listing providers, and for whatever reason the locksmith industry became the worst of them. Flower delivery and personal injury lawyers often fall into the same bucket. You'll still see companies named "AAA Locksmith" and the like because this behavior dates back to the days of the Yellow Pages.

As to why Yelp is better than Google on this, I'd guess it's either that you got lucky, or that Google is more targeted than Yelp these days. I'm not up on the current state of how listing verification works now, but it's possible that Google's process is easier to target than Yelp's, and if there are any weaknesses, a locksmith marketer will figure it out pretty quickly.

[splonk]

(Too late to edit original post)

Just to illustrate how long locksmiths have been a problem, here's an article from 2009 talking about locksmith spam on maps. The techniques have changed but the general reliance on sketchy tactics hasn't.

https://searchengineland.com/despite-fixes-google-maps-still...

[austinpena]

Specifically for locksmiths and garage door companies, Google Ads tries to fight back against this[0]. I've gone through this with a few clients.

However, they still let lead aggregators get verified, provided they have a local business license. However, "legacy" google ads accounts like locksmithdirectory.com seem to be able to advertise anywhere in the nation.[1]

[0]https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7167635?hl=en

[mgerdts]

Several years back I needed a plumber in a bit of a hurry. I used Angie’s List, now angi.com, with a little less hesitancy than using Google reviews or yelp.

The plumber I hired this way did a good job at a fair price. For less urgent work I hired this company for other work even after getting bids from others.

[odysseus]

When I needed a plumber I reached out to a bunch of buddies to see who they use.

I got quotes from three of their recommendations and ended up using the one a buddy found on the back of a church bulletin. Guy was amazing - a one man shop - super professional, fair price, quality work and replacement parts. Done in less than 1 hour. It's great to have a trustworthy plumber.

[TylerE]

That’s basically the same business model. It’s just a funnel.

[dmitryminkovsky]

This happened to me in New York, City in 2015 or so. Fun times. Really nice to understand after all these years what happened!

[lock-the-spock]

I don't know about the US but in Europe many cities/communes will list registered businesses in the area, usually these are manually curated lists. so while you don't necessarily get ratings/reviews (which I have basically stopped trusting altogether), you'll get legitimate.

[kc1dmf]

Hiya jaycroft, et al. First time / long time, here. It sounds like you're already taken care of, but I hope this will benefit /someone/ reading through here. Iofd, I am a card-carrying ALoA member and professional locksmith.

The Associated Locksmiths of America (ALoA) [0] has its own search tool [1]. Of course, the same rules apply as everywhere. Not all good locksmiths are members, and not all members are good locksmiths. But, personally, I'll take the word of a trade organization over that of an advertiser any day. The real tragedy here is that both google and yelp apparently missed the opportunity to serve up a tool like this, in favor of (I'm guessing here) whoever bought the most expensive SEO package.

To answer your question: In my experience, yelp is dealing with this by being a smaller service, in every sense.

Google has, by making itself the de faco choice for each and every mode of search, become a "bucket of crabs" [2][3]. As such, it as an environment is selecting for that crab who can best pull down the other crabs, and not the "tastiest" or whatever.

That said, I can't think of anyone, off the top of my head, who puts any money into yelp. Where I live, it simply isn't popular. It's not a part of the culture, the same way that google is, and so is not as attractive to interlopers, "puppy mill"-style franchises, etc. I believe you're getting better results simply because it's too small a bucket for bad-ish actors to see it as a viable feeding target.

Back to the trades: Imho, screw search engines at large - even ALoA's. Ask your friends for recommendations. Don't have any friends? Call up your favorite cafe, and ask them who they use. Even if their tradesmen work strictly in the commercial space, and you're looking for someone to do some residential work, they /really should/ be willing to recommend another tradesman. One doesn't work in the trades for very long, without being exposed to the other players in one's area.

Lastly, I beg you: if you've found a tradesman who treated you well at a fair price - evangelize on their behalf. Tell your friends and family. Ask that locksmith for a dozen business cards. Most of us will knock a few bucks off of a service call if we were recommended by word-of-mouth. Not everything needs to be an on-line affair.

[0] - https://www.aloa.org/index.html

[1] - https://www.findalocksmith.com/

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

[3] - The only entity that wins, in this scenario, is the cat who owns the bucket... I know a number of very good tradesmen who feel like they need to spend very big money on SEO and advertising just to come out one index-position ahead of their competition. If the numbers -one and -two position, on google specifically in my area, would put aside what I call their "advertising cold war," they could both afford to take a very nice holiday every year. Sadly, they choose to subsidize some advertiser's very nice holiday. So goes the world.

edit: formatting...

[flir]

Maybe nobody's trying to game Yelp because it's not the 800lb gorilla?

[jaycroft]

That's very possible - reviews by obscurity or something. Although I really feel like 10 years ago the roles of Google and Yelp were very much reversed here. Changing times changing strategies I suppose.

[ge96]

Oh man drives me insane towing companies

I will keep that yelp idea in mind next time