Hacker News Reader

Comment by faitswulff | Hacker News Reader

What do you use instead?

This might not be helpful, but I decided to rely on serendipity. Sometimes I feel like we think too much about finding the best of the 'best' and we rely on expert opinions of the crowd instead of taking a chance ourselves and trying out new things.

It is helpful, this just might not be the most receptive crowd. I agree with you 100% fwiw.

You might be surprised, I too agree

One more agree-er for the bunch ;-)

my personal method when out and about is "ask a stranger," with using my hand computer as a backup. i delight in answering these questions as well, so i'm inclined to believe people generally don't mind.

I travel a lot and talk to a lot of people and I can tell you from my experience that a lot of people don't know the best restaurants in their town. Most people haven't eaten at all of them to make the comparison. The best way to find out is to have some way to ask a bunch of people then compare their collective results and see what everyone's experience adds up to. That quickly starts looking a lot like Yelp.

I travel a lot, and I never ask for the 'best' place to eat. What you ask is very, very important. I always ask what their favorite place to eat is. That is a different result.

What I've noticed is if you ask a random stranger what the 'best' is, you get the same generic, expensive fusion something made into a paste cuisine. If you ask their favorite, you find small, off-the-wall places with terrible selection, but amazing food.

I don't rely on the rankings to find the "best" I just use reviews as a basic litmus test if it is terrible or not. I am basically just looking to avoid getting food poisoning or eating somewhere with terrible service, stuff like that -- I'll try most everything at least once. You have to be pretty consistently terrible to have something like under 3 stars, so that's my cutoff.

I typically use the reviews you get from Google. No review site is flawless, they all have fake or bogus comments. I just look for patterns. For example, I was recently debating on going to a recently opened Asian restaurant so I looked at the google reviews. A majority of the negative reviews pointed out the same flaws, that to go orders were often wrong, dine in food often came out cold/nasty, and the sole manager that handles day to day operations generally refused to help anyone that had an issue. It wasn't just "The manager sucks", it was detailed accounts of how horrible of a person this manager was and how she routinely screwed over customers. I decided not to go. There were some good reviews too, but knowing my luck I didn't want to chance having an issue and needing to deal with this manager.

yes.. and what's the url for this "serendipity" you speak of?

When Im traveling out of the country, I just walk around at meal time until I find a spot with locals waiting in line out the door. Hop in line, watch what the people ahead of you order, and then get the same. Every once and a while I'll get something that I don't enjoy, but 8/10 times you end up with super tasty food you may not have otherwise tried.

You seem like a perfect early user for our new social places recommendation app bibimapp.com . We're trying to create an viable alternative to crowd sourced averages which allows people to discover niche and personally meaningful places and experiences. Google places and yelp are consolidation funnels and it's ruinning how we experience the world.

Google maps reviews is just as good if not better in some ways IMO. That's what I use as an alternative.

This is really really not true. I did a local comparison any Google map reviews were REALLY REALLY bad whereas Yelp knew what the good restaurants were. Not even close, at least in my area.

ditto, google maps reviews are weirdly inflated with almost all restaurants having 4+ stars, even terrible ones

yelp's review quality has been on the decline as of late though. it used to be great

Seconding this. Yelp reviews have their problems but at least there's always content in the review and I can validate some of the reviewer's reputation if they're being suspiciously positive/negative in their review. Most google ratings I see have very few reviews behind them, and most of them are under a sentence long.

Someone on Google reviewed my local cemetery. One star rating, because it made them sad to drive past it. Why even allow reviews on a cemetery?!

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pacific+Ocean/@-0.1930911,...

Google Reviews of the Pacific Ocean.

I love that some of the reviewers are even labeled "Local Guide"s

Someone once gave 5 stars to a business project that I had created but never launched (no business, product or service with zero customers) but which had a Google Business listing. I suspect people routinely fake review places to inflate their egos but also because Google offers them real benefits.

Why not? Some cemeteries around here are beautiful, and worth visiting. Plus like any other public service, they can be badly run, and it might be worth warning others who are planning to be buried there about it.

Doesn't hurt to have the option, I guess. If a place doesn't need reviews then it probably doesn't care about bad reviews, and sometimes the reviews are useful nevertheless or at least funny.

See: https://m.xkcd.com/1803/

I don't think you can really use any absolutes here. It depends very heavily on where in the world you are.

How useful yelp is varies enormously if you travel. In the U.K., as an example, Yelp can feel like a wasteland - often little or no reviews, and it has nothing like the mindshare it enjoys in the US. As a result many businesses do little or nothing to keep the information on their Yelp page accurate, it’s barely even on their radar. In the US one can often use Yelp almost as a verb in a conversation (“let me Yelp us somewhere for lunch...”), this is met with blank stares in much of Europe in my experience.

The lack of good data on Yelp in the U.K. has indirectly hurt other players there too, when Apple maps first launched business location information was largely drawn from Yelp, which basically seeded Apple maps with very bad information. Locations were wrong, many businesses that simply didn’t exist anymore would appear. Granted it’s been years since I last checked, but in the first few years of Apple map’s operation it was a pretty significant issue. This methodology worked great in Cupertino I guess...

While I use google reviews more often than other review sites, I know it is a problem. A big chunk of the issues has to do with the whole "local guide" or whatever its called program. People are incentivized to leave reviews anywhere they can because it makes them seem prestigious, so they spam all the restaurants they've not been to or don't care for with negative reviews. This is also a rampant issue for tourist destinations, entertainment locations, local businesses, etc.

Nope, it’s gamed. Reviews are useless. Had a terrible experience with a business.

Google maps does not show all entries. I stopped trying because restaurants would show or not show based on zoom and other factors unknown to me. It’s not rating or ads.

It’s really frustrating as sometimes searching for “Mexican restaurant” won’t include all Mexican restaurants in the map area. And will include random weird stuff. And it won’t show the top items.

Restaurants: Tripadvisor, Google, Zagat

Service Providers: Homeadvisor, Angie's List

FYI, Zagat's parent company is Google/Alphabet.

> FYI, Zagat's parent company is Google/Alphabet.

No, it's not. Google sold Zagat in March to The Infatuation.

I forgot about that! I've been using Zagat since back in the day when you filled out a form for some city you were familiar with and they sent you a free restaurant guidebook for that city in exchange. I still think they're the best guide (except possibly for the local newspaper site) for people who have a somewhat foodie orientation. But they only cover a relatively small number of US cities.

I stand corrected.

Obligatory TripAdvisor fake restaurant story.[1] Not that it means TripAdvisor doesn't provide value, it's just a wonderful story. :)

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15861136

Angie's List is less useful than it should be. It seems that the reviews are largely promotion-driven (i.e., vendors that offer coupons get reviews, others get no reviews).

Homeadvisor is just not a good source for service providers, especially when compared to Yelp. Angie's list is a little better, but Yelp still beats it. Maybe it's because Angie's List started as a paid service which limits the number of reviewers, even though it slightly improves review authenticity

Angie’s List lost me with their user-hostile behavior. For example, cancelling an account required a phone call, also you can’t change your membership location at will, so if you spend any time outside of your local area, they didn’t let you see information for other locales.

I don't know if this is accurate, but I have the sense that Trip Advisor is kind of taking over the space, at least for food and cultural stuff.

I find TripAdvisor extremely inflated and I somehow always end up at tourist traps using it when I'm countries where yelp isn't available. It's more useful for finding out about sights but I avoid it for food and services.

I'm not intending to say that it's good, just that it seems a lot more widely used than Yelp lately.

It does depend on where in the world you are too.

TripAdvisor is hilariously easy to game[1]

[1]https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/434gqw/i-made-my-shed-the...

Trip advisor is turning into the experts exchange of reviews. Great seo, not useful material.

I was recently trying to find the best fish restaurant in Key West and TripAdvisor was all over results with the same stupid results.

I like Foursquare though I find the quality of the data/reviews are spotty depending on the city (NYC is good; SF is only so so)

Not the OP, and I find that yelp is in a better league than the competition (google, tripadvisor), but I tend to look on Eater.

I use TripAdvisor. Much less mean and agressive in terms of review quality as what I have experienced with Yelp.

I just avoid user-hostile sites tbh. I don't go to expensive restaurants so if it's a miss I just avoid it in the future.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com