So you try to think of all kinds of speculative reasons why restauranteurs hate yelp, but do not bother listening to what they say. Restauranteurs are very clear and vocal about why they hate yelp -- it is because Yelp uses reviews as a way to blackmail them into buying advertisements in Yelp. That is pretty fucked up behaviour and has been confirmed by many people many times.
By the way most restaurants have always relied on customer satisfaction to attract customers. This is true for most small businesses but it especially true for small restaurants. And this was true before yelp and even before the internet. A restaurant where each customer goes only once is usually doomed to failure (the exceptions are places in tourist traps and high traffic locations ... these restaurants are usually reliably awful, but they are the minority).
If you are the usual non-franchise non-tourist trap restaurant, you cannot afford much advertising or promotion. Your best hope for customers is someone wandering in, being happy and coming back again. Or maybe even telling their friends.
So the idea that restauranteurs now hate yelp because yelp somehow forces them to up their game is silly. Most of them have always relied on customer satisfaction as their main driver of business.
"Restauranteurs are very clear and vocal about why they hate yelp -- it is because Yelp uses reviews as a way to blackmail them into buying advertisements in Yelp. That is pretty fucked up behaviour and has been confirmed by many people many times."
No, it's been alleged many times -- by unreliable sources. It's never been shown to be true, and in fact, the allegations that have made it to court have been dismissed for lack of evidence:
By the way most restaurants have always relied on customer satisfaction to attract customers. This is true for most small businesses but it especially true for small restaurants. And this was true before yelp and even before the internet. A restaurant where each customer goes only once is usually doomed to failure (the exceptions are places in tourist traps and high traffic locations ... these restaurants are usually reliably awful, but they are the minority).
If you are the usual non-franchise non-tourist trap restaurant, you cannot afford much advertising or promotion. Your best hope for customers is someone wandering in, being happy and coming back again. Or maybe even telling their friends.
So the idea that restauranteurs now hate yelp because yelp somehow forces them to up their game is silly. Most of them have always relied on customer satisfaction as their main driver of business.